A Busy Woman's Guide To Freezer Meals
If you are a full time working mom outside the home or at home like me, you realize how hard it can be to juggle everything and provide your family with a healthy meal every night. Whether you are a new mom, have multiple children, work part time, full time or keeping up your home, your life is busy and you are constantly on the go. Last week we chatted about tips for better time management in the kitchen. Today, I'm sharing A Busy Woman's Guide To Freezer Meals that is sure to help you tackle one of the biggest time suckers in your life. Not only will these tips help you to feed your family hearty meals each evening with ease, it can be a huge way to reduce your grocery budget.
A BUSY WOMAN'S GUIDE TO FREEZER MEALS
MAKE WHAT YOUR FAMILY WILL EAT. One of the biggest ways to waste food is to cook large batches of food your family just doesn't like. While there are literally hundreds of freezer meal recipes out there on the radar to check out, only prep and cook the ones you know your family will eat. Cook meals you already would prepare and other variations of items you know they like. Avoid items you know they wouldn't typically enjoy unless you make a small batch first to test out with them.
IF NOTHING ELSE – COOK & PORTION ALL MEAT AHEAD OF TIME. Even if you don't think you have time to tackle a full day of prep in the kitchen for freezer meals, you can do this one thing. Whenever you find meats your family will eat on sale, simply come home season and cook then portion. Allow the meat to cool properly in your refrigerator, separate into meal or individual portions and wrap appropriately and freeze.
FIND A COOKING BUDDY. If you dread doing all the prep and cooking by yourself, find local friend who is willing to help you out. Both of you bring groceries and recipes to one location and work together to create all of your meals. One person can do prep while the other cooks.
PREP LIKE ITEMS ALL AT ONCE RATHER THAN BY EACH RECIPE. If you are making 4 casseroles that all use 1 pound of ground beef you can easily cook all of that meat at one time. Then you just portion that meat into each recipe as needed. The same goes for vegetables and sauces. Slice, dice, chop and puree everything you can at one time then portion out to go into recipes as needed. This saves tons of time in the kitchen during prep.
MAKE A MASTER MENU PLAN. We all know those top 5-10 dishes that everyone in our house loves. Spaghetti, Tacos, Stroganoff or even Chicken Tenders often make the list. Sit down and make a master menu plan of the most commonly requested or cooked items in your home. Even if you don't cook all meals and freeze in advance, you can do those specific 5-10 meals once every month or two to create a great easy to grab meal from your freezer at all times.
GET INSPIRATION.
Check out these great resources from around the web for some guidance and inspiration:
How To Plan Bulk Freezer Cooking from Money Saving Mom.
Guide to Freezer Cooking from The Pioneer Woman.
40 Slow Cooker Freezer Meals in 4 Hours from Who Needs a Cape.
Making Freezer Smoothie Packets from Around My Family Table
Making Freezer Meal Packets from Around My Family Table
Start building your freezer recipe with these freezer friendly Stuffed Shells
Sometimes it's not all possible to prepare in advance, so check out these ready made freezer food options for breakfast
here too.
Becoming a freezer meal cook doesn't require hours of long marathons in the kitchen. It, like most other aspects of your life only require a bit of organization and planning. If you feel your life is just too busy to do a full month of meals for the freezer each month, put into practice a busy woman's guide to freezer meals. Your family will love the ease of being able to grab their own foods when you are busy, and you'll love the extra time spent at the dinner table!
Have you ever done any freezer cooking? What did you make?
I find what works for me is to cook several meals or partial meals with 1 meat. For example I will get a couple bulk packages of Chicken breast or whole chickens and either grill or bake it all up. Once cooked I will make chicken enchiladas usually a couple dozen and freeze them in packages of 4 then do a couple small chicken broccoli and pasta Alfredo casseroles, bag up 1 cup portions for chicken salad or chicken sammies. When I have full chickens I will use the bones to make my stock that I use to make beans, lentils, quinoa, and rice. I do this also with ground turkey ... 5 or 6 pounds at a time I make meat balls, red sauce, taco meat,and meat loaves! Winter time is large crockpots full of soups or chilli .. These all go a long way for the 2 of us ... I am use to cooking for a house full of kids and they have all grown and gone ;( It is hard to break the habit of cooking for a group so I just freeze and actually cook less days a week .....
I don't consider my life "busy" therefore the only thing I freeze is meat.
I like the idea of a cooking buddy. I could use one of those!
I would love to find a cooking buddy. I am not a big cook and find it hard to get motivated to make things. Thanks for sharing these great tips. I am certainly going to do some.
I love freezer meals. They are life savers for me. Thanks for the tips.
This are some great tips and tricks! Thanks for sharing
Thank you for the resources, those are nice to have around. I think freezer recipes are awesome, especially when you're busy!
This is a good post...I love my deep freezer quite a bit,it saves me money and time when cooking meals
Pinned thank you I'm a huge fan of freezing and precooking, it saves so much time and you can always have a home made meal.
This is something we need to do more of. We do break down all meats and poultry for our meals and label everything so we know what is what for what meal. We don't do it with veggies or anything though. I mean we plan everything out but we like to cook everything the night of. I know we were gonna try the make it and freeze it to see how it turned out but we just haven't had time yet. Thank you so much for sharing!!!
I would love to get into this but my husband will not eat reheated anything. he is such a particular he won't even eat left overs. It would make life so much easier 🙂
These are great ideas for busy moms! I did some of these when my kids where little and I was also juggling a full time job and housework. It seems like moms today are much more busy than they were in my day but life is a whole lot faster. This would be great even if you only used once a week just think of the time you would be saving!
I really like the bit when you talked about prepping like items instead of the whole recipe. That sounds like and easier and faster solution that I must try
these recipes sure look good for busy homes and busy people, right now for me as I'm not working, so I can make fresh food all the time.. shall surely pass on to busy friends and new mums.. thanks 🙂
I think you solved my problem when you said prepare the meat on a different day. I get to where I think I have to do it all at once, get overwhelmed and don't do it at all. We just eat to many meals out. My husbands getting tired of it, he's actually started cooking. hmmm maybe I won't do the freezer meals.
Pining this for later. Thanks for these great links… especially 40 Slow Cooker Freezer Meals in 4 Hours
Tha the tips. These options are way better than buying packaged frozen meals, that's for sure!
I really need to get better about making meals for the freezer. THanks for the great book ideas
Thank you for these tips. I need a good plan for fall--we are on 6 sports teams between my four kids and it's really important to me to eat dinner together as a family. If I can prep ahead of time, I'll be in good shape.
We do freezer meals every day in the weekdays and just eat out in the weekends. My mom finds it troublesome to prepare meals for us because she does not have enough time to balance work and life at home.
Great tips. We always cook fresh food that's why I have no idea about freezer meals. After reading this, I think I can make my life a lot easier if preparing food ahead of time. It saves time and energy I guess.
I just started doing this and love it; however, I would def use a buddy to make it more fun and easy for next time
I've never done this before, but I feel like now that I am going back to school in a few weeks, I may have to to make things easier. 🙂 It would be great to get a cooking buddy. Thanks for the resources!
Great guide for people who are very busy throughout the day.
Thank you so much for this because it came right on time. I have been needing to figure out a way to create meals for my son and I once school starts. Nursing school is so stressful and time consuming and I need something that we can do that is quick and easy.
I def need to start doing this for the Family. Raising 3 kids can be chaotic 🙂
This week, we are in prepare mode.. things are made the day before to get us out of the dinner jam.. and the cooking buddy is 9, and she loves to cook.
I've never specifically set out to do freezer cooking, but almost everything I make gets portioned for later meals and frozen. That's what happens when the kids move out!
I always cook and portion my meat ahead of time. It can save you so much time, its ridiculous!
This is awesome!! I need to get better at this but am struggling with the menu planning right now. Great tips!
I have to check out that guide and those recipes. I have been wanting to prepare freezer meals.
Oh I lived off of freezer meals when we were doing kitchen renovations. They made life so much easier. I wish that I had this to refer to for some great ideas!
Thanks for sharing my recipe! Off to check out the others!