It’s funny that after four rounds I’m still pretty much ending up back at my mother’s method of meal preparation.  We used to always have ground beef cooked up in the freezer and usually some other meat ready to cook.  As a teenager, this was great because I ate spaghetti or tacos a lot. 

We sometimes would prep a lasagna to the freezer as well.  When I had my gall bladder removed I pretty much couldn’t handle red sauces well and it continued to get worse so my defaults were out.

Instead, I’ve mixed the meals I’m prepping a bit.

I still find it easiest to prep some ingredients to the freezer rather than entire meals.

Ingredients I’ve found valuable to have prepared:

Meats:

In my past posts, you’ll see that I’ve been preparing rotisserie chicken cubed and in serving sizes, steaks in salt and pepper, and even stew beef in salt and pepper.  Additionally, I’ve tried a few things that have failed to work such as Lemon Parmesan Salmon (it’s actually a Tilapia recipe anyway).

What makes the difference:

To some degree, it’s a matter of how mushy it was before freezing.  It will only get more so.  At least without baking again.  Regardless mixed ingredients have a lot of time to mush back together while baking and you can’t regain the texture of the crisp Brussel sprout.

Water-based veggies do well, but leafy veggies do not seem to do well.  Though they could probably be added to stews without issue as they will be cooked and wilted in the end.

I haven’t found that parmesan cheese thaws well and most things don’t cook from frozen well.  I think this is why the fish and Brussel sprouts were doomed.

Veggies that freeze well:

Anything blanched seems to do fine.  Chopped onions, shallots, green onions, and such.  I’ve never had to blanch onions though they can last longer if completely covered in butter.

I often put leftovers right back in the freezer after eating, but I hesitated with the originally frozen veggies that were microwaved.  I guess I didn’t figure they would be okay but ultimately I think carrots and peas, which is what I used during this meal plan, would have been fine.  Now they are spoiled, so I now wish I’d freeze them.

Carbs:

I’ve also successfully prepped rice to the freezer and unsuccessfully stored cooked Brussel sprouts in cheese in the freezer.  Rice and noodles freeze wonderfully. 

Cheese and butter:

I freeze bags of cheese as it’s so easy to run out and I like a variety of cheeses.  Butter is another thing I freeze as I don’t go through it fast.

I even freeze scrambled eggs in my fried rice.  There’s really no reason not to, but if you have time to cook them when you’re going to eat them they will taste richer.  I also think they don’t last as long in the freezer and I can’t imagine freezing a raw egg is a good idea, but I’ve never heard of anyone even trying it.

What I don’t like to freeze:

Milk and bread.  My mother has frozen both of these things and they are edible and safe.  However, milk never really goes back together right after that.  The texture of the bread is never really right either after.  You’ll have to decide for yourself if the ease of this is better than the loss of texture and taste.

I actually keep instant milk on hand for the odd recipe that doesn’t need much milk.  I think instant milk is good on cereal too but it does taste a bit more like a vanilla flavored alternative to cow’s milk in sweetness.  I prefer instant milk to alternate kinds of milk.  The downside is that it takes 8 hours or so to turn water into milk, so you can’t make it on a whim.

Making meals is easier from frozen ingredients:

In my next post, I’ll go into specific meals I made with little planning due to ingredients that were prepped already.

Basically, if the meat is there that will direct you to a basic ingredient.  I’d highly recommend using marinades in the frozen stored chicken and relying on salt and pepper seasoning when freezing steaks or stew beef.  For both raw chicken and beef (should be true for fish too), they will thaw in whatever you froze them in and so they get a lot of time soaking up the marinade without any morning prep work.

I haven’t experimented much with fish, though I should get back to this soon.  I think it’s very likely that the lemon parm fish recipe could have worked but just not with the parmesan frozen on it.  The remaining ingredients probably would have been fine.  I’d add most of the butter and parmesan cheese before baking or grilling it next time.

Ground beef makes many super quick meals as I mentioned above.  However, shredded chicken is pretty much as versatile.  It just doesn’t last quite as long in the freezer.  I also have stored patties in the freezer raw.  The key is making sure they thaw all the way before cooking.  This method is even better because you can turn the patties into ground beef pretty simply.

I often make chicken pesto and all of these ingredients freeze well and cook from frozen pretty well.  The pasta needs to be cooked before it will thaw in the microwave ready to eat but you can freeze it and then thaw or cook and it does well.  Usually, since cooking pasta is so fast I only cook what I need for that meal and one leftover which I keep in the fridge, but I would have confidence in freezing the entire dish together as well. 

In my last post, I mentioned how restocking my freezer and pantry stores was sabotaged by buying groceries purely from my meal plan.  You can read more about that here.  As you use these stores up, you want to make sure you build in time and buy the ingredients to restock them.