Freezer Meals

Fall is an insanely busy time for our family. Although my 3 guys would never tire of pizza and fried chicken, I'm longing for budget-friendly home cooking that I can manage within my hectic schedule. So in mid-October, after being inspired by Pinterest and The Pioneer Woman, I decided to prepare 3 months worth of make-ahead freezer/Crockpot meals. I'll be honest; I spent a lot of time planning and list-making because this was my first time doing serious freezer meal prep. But I think the effort will be well worth the time it saves me on weeknights. And really, I didn't mind the preparation because I enjoy list-making and organization. So this was right up my alley.

This was my game plan...

1) Scour the internet and cookbooks for recipe ideas.
2) Made a list of meals and ingredients needed. (I tried to use as much as possible from my pantry)
3) Shopped (this took 2 days and 4 shopping trips because I kept forgetting things - poor planning on my part)
4) Enlisted the help of my Mom and Grandma for a big day of cooking.
5) Cooked for pretty much an entire Saturday.
6) Stocked my freezer and felt a nice sense of accomplishment. Woohoo!

Since my family is small and the boys don't eat much, I made the casseroles in 8x8 disposable foil pans (instead of 9x13). This means that a double recipe = 3 dinners for us. So, with a typical meal, we end up with enough for left-overs for the next day's lunch too.

The Menu:
3 Lasagnas
3 Chicken N Stuffing Casseroles
2 Baked Ravioli
3 Sausage Egg Potato Casseroles
3 Chicken Pot Pies
3 Sour Cream Noodle Bake (Pioneer Woman)
3 Rotel King Ranch Chicken Casseroles
5 Meatloaf
4 meals worth of Chili
4 meals worth of Taco Soup
2 meals worth of Veggie Soup
1 Chicken Fajitas - Crockpot
1 Pineapple Pepper Chicken - Crockpot
1 Curry Chicken - Crockpot
1 Honey Sesame Chicken - Crockpot
1 Lime Salsa Beef - Crockpot
1 giant pork roast prepared as Spicy Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork (Pioneer Woman) - in the Crockpot - divided meat into 4 freezer bags for later use as bbq pork sandwiches, carnitas, and empanadas
2 large beef roasts – Crockpot – shredded and divided into 4 freezer bags for later use in flautas, Italian beef sandwiches, Beef N Gravy over mashed potatoes, etc.
2 pounds of beef stew meat – Crockpot – ready to use in stew, soup, or Bush-Whacker Steak
Plus...
1 pound of cooked black beans - divided into 1 cup portions
1 pound of cooked pinto beans - divided into 1 cup portions
1 pound of white beans - for later use in white chili
1 pound of cooked Jimmy Dean sausage - great to have on hand
Enough Chicken Pot Pie filling to make Chicken A'La King over biscuits

(I actually had all the ingredients to make 4 more crockpot meals ahead to freeze, but I ran out of chicken so that had to be saved for another day.)

All of this plus the 1/4 cow we already had filled up my deep freezer to the point where I can't fit anything else in. What a great problem to have!

I'd love to give a review on how each meal has turned out, but we're about 1 month in and we haven't tried everything yet.

So far I've found the things that freeze and do really well are:
chili, taco soup, veggie soup, meatloaf, pre-cooked beans, pre-cooked shredded beef and pork, chicken pot pie, lasagana, baked ravioli, sausage-egg-potato casserole, rotel king ranch chicken, and chicken N stuffing casserole.

The shredded beef roast made some of the best tacos we've ever tasted.

The Crockpot chicken fajitas tasted really yummy, but I should have put the bell peppers and onions in 1 hour before serving, rather than at the beginning. They got way too soft.

The honey sesame chicken also had a great flavor. I'd make this recipe again.

Several of the casseroles needed quite a bit longer to bake than the normal recipes call for. I'm sure this has to do with them being partially frozen and/or very cold when they go in the oven. I ended up adding 40 extra minutes of baking to the rotel king ranch chicken and 30 extra minutes to the chicken n stuffing casserole.

I'm finding the best thing to do most of the time is to take the meal out of the freezer at supper time the night before, leave it on the counter until bed time, put it in the fridge overnight, get it out the next morning again, then leave it out until it's ready to go in the oven or crockpot. To inhibit bacteria growth, food should not stay between 40 and 140 degrees for more than 2 hours. Obviously, you keep an eye on it and if it gets to room temp too soon (maybe in the Summer months this could happen), you'd put it in the fridge again or go ahead and cook it. The soups don't need to do this because as long is the frozen block of soup will plop out of the plastic bowl and into the crockpot, it's fine. Pre-cooked meats and beans take very little time to thaw, so I've just been getting those out an hour before I want to make supper.

The one meal we didn't care for was (surprisingly) the Pioneer Woman's sour cream noodle bake. The egg noodles became too soft and it had a very wet consistency which we didn't like. It just didn't meld together well after being frozen. I won't be repeating this one.

So, my review of doing a 3-month freezer meal plan... I LOVE IT! It's totally worth 4 days of planning and Saturday of cooking. Expecially if you have help from your Mom and Grandma! We've really enjoyed the variety and I've been able to spend so much less time figuring out what to fix on a daily basis. There have been so many nights we've remarked that if we weren't able to just pop a casserole in the oven, we would have been eating peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches becasue our schedules are crazy and we just don't want to put the effort into it. And bonus - the clean-up is easy! Foil pans are the best invention!

I will definately be doing this again! Busy Moms, I highly recommend it!