Monday, May 28, 2012

Adventures in Freezer Cooking

I had been hearing about Freezer cooking for awhile, and while that seemed like a great idea in practice I just wasn't sure how to make it work for us. Then, I read Andi's post at [Iron] Bowled Over and decided to give it a try. I decided to start small just to see how it goes.

The Menu
Teriyaki Chicken
Meatloaf
Honey Chicken
Chicken stir fry
Grilled Chicken
(yes, we eat a lot of chicken)

These are all meals that we eat on a pretty regular basis, so I figured they would be safe to try. I spent about 2 hours (including making dinner) and have 7 bagged meals, plus grilled chicken for Kyle's lunches/ cut up chicken for my salads! Each recipe is for two bags, except for the Honey Chicken.

Five bags of chicken meals!

Teriyaki Chicken
Matchstick carrots
Red onion
Minced garlic cloves
Pineapple Chunks
2 Chicken breasts
Teriyaki Sauce

Put in crockpot with 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce cook on low 8 hours.

Meatloaf
(I typically add in about a cup of oats, but we're not eating grains anymore! Hopefully it'll still taste good.)
2 pounds ground beef
2 eggs
Chopped onion
Minced Garlic Cloves
Worcester Sauce

 Place foil in pan, form meatloaf, pop out of pan and freeze. Then you still have your pan for later! Thanks for the tip Andi!
To cook, take meatloaf out of foil and put in pan to thaw. Bake @ 350 for ~20 minutes.

Honey Chicken  from mmmcafe
1 Chicken Breast
Minced Garlic
Chopped Onion

Sauce:
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 Tbs Vegetable Oil
1/8 cup Ketchup
I put the sauce in a small separate bag inside the larger bag because it needs to be thawed before going in.

Put in crockpot, cook on low 3 hours. Pull out chicken and shred toss back into sauce.

Chicken Stir fry
Cube two chicken breasts
I bag frozen stir fry veggies of your choice
I can sliced water chestnuts (optional, I just love them)

Put a Tbs of oil into skillet/wok, cook until tender.

Grilled Chicken
I took a whole bag of frozen chicken tenders. Seasoned with Montreal Chicken Seasoning and Lowery's. Grilled on the Foreman.
After they cooled, I cut up 5 into strips to add to my grilled chicken salads and froze the rest for Kyle to pull out and reheat for lunches.

Freezer filled with goodies.

EDIT: For an update on how they all turned out go here, Update!
at

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 4, 2012 at 8:29 AM

    This is such a great idea and a HUGE time saver. Was the chicken already cooked in the bags? I'd love to know how they turned out/if you'll continue this idea!

    http://laurensweetnothings.blogspot.com/

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  2. Erin @ Come What MayJune 4, 2012 at 10:02 AM

    For these recipes none of the meat was pre-cooked except for the grilled chicken. I do have some recipes that I want to try that need cooked meat. So far we had the honey chicken and it turned out perfectly. I'll let you know about the others, and if I'm going to keep doing this after I see how the rest turn out this week!

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