Do You Hate Freezer Meals? You Should Try Them Anyway
I used to hate make-ahead freezer meals. They never, ever appealed to me.
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Five or ten years back, my friends got into “freezer dump” meals. Like, really into them. They would post all these pictures online of ziploc bags layered with meat and veggies. They’d go on and on about how good the food was and how liberating it was to be freed from the “tyranny” of cooking and all I could think was: stop filling my Facebook feed with pictures of squished up RAW CHICKEN.
Honestly, I didn’t get it at all, because a) I like cooking, and b) I don’t love making all my meals in a slow cooker. Oh, and c) nothing is less appetizing than the word “dump.”
Freezer Meals: Attempt #1
Despite that, the constant ringing endorsements convinced me to give it a try. And you know what? It was … meh. The method just never took off for me. Probably because of the word “dump”.
Actually, my biggest hurdle was remembering to thaw food in advance. I know, I know — moving a bag of food from the freezer to the fridge is a silly thing to trip up on. But I never remembered to take the food out of the freezer.
And yes, I know there are hundreds of Karens (middle-aged mom bloggers) and Sharons (old church potluck ladies) who swear that they always put frozen meat right in their slow cooker and they never get sick. My manual specifically said not to do that, though, and a quick Google search confirms that slow cookers let frozen meat linger in the temperature “danger zone” too long, giving bacteria a chance to multiply. Why risk it? Goodness knows I’ve been sick from food enough times in my life, thank you very much unrefrigerated-salad-bar-dressing-at-the-university-food-court.
So fine, maybe once or twice I managed to plan ahead and thaw out my frozen-meal-in-a-bag, but then I got all confused about the actual cooking times.
If the recipe says 6-8 hours, does that mean 6 or 8? If I plan for 6 and then my food needs 8, we’re going to be super hangry by the time we eat. Or vice versa — what if I plan for 8 hours and it’s ready after 6? I can’t let it sit there for two more hours — I hate mealy chicken and mushy carrots.
Interesting.
Freezer Meals: Attempt #2
Back in August, I went to the library to grab a book that I had on hold: Good Cheap Eats by Jessica Fisher. While there, I randomly grabbed another book from the cookbook aisle called Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook. I don’t know what possessed me to pick it up, given that I hadn’t yet experienced my freezer meal epiphany of 30 seconds ago, but I checked it out and took it home with me. (Funny enough, both books are by the same author, but I didn’t realize that until months later.)
Flipping through the freezer cookbook, I could tell the recipes had potential. Oh a whim, I Googled the cookbook for reviews. What a surprise to see a glowing review by Katie Kimball on kitchenstewardship.com — one of my favourite blogs. Katie Kimball praised the Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead and Freeze Cook Book Cookbook for not relying on canned soup or convenience mixes — everything is from scratch. Really? “From scratch” is my love language.
So I dove in. I think I tried the Chipotle Chicken Wraps first — an immediate favourite. I’ve made them a half-dozen times since then and they never last long. My husband and I also love the burrito recipes — he eats the beef ones and I prefer the bean ones. They’re both so good.
I’ve become hooked on the casseroles too. Fisher’s Chicken Divan with Cheddar Crust is straight out of my childhood, and I’m delighted that my husband likes it too — I never thought of him as a casserole guy. Oh, and the Shepherd’s Pie with Green Chile Mashed Potatoes? I could eat it three times a week and never get tired of it.
I think what sets the recipes in NYM Make-Ahead and Freeze apart from other freezer meal recipes is that they don’t use the word dump the food is often cooked before it’s frozen. The meals taste better for it.
But cooking everything in advance doesn’t sound helpful, does it? Does this method of meal planning actually save me time or money?
Oh my goodness, YES.
I can’t stop talking about how much better my life is. We’ve been freezer-cooking for six or seven months now and I can’t say enough good things about it.
My evenings are less stressful. We’re eating better. We’re wasting less food. We are saving money. I do half the dishes I used to do. I thought about sending Jessica Fisher a Christmas card in December because I swear I love her like she’s family now. That’s how much freezer cooking has made my life better.
And I want you to try it too.
Three Reasons to Try Freezer Meals
1. It Saves So Much Time
Cooking for hours can be exhausting, I won’t lie. But it’s worth it when I won’t have to stress about cooking for the entire rest of the week.
Spreading the various tasks out over a few days keeps me getting too tired. I’ve got a good routine going, and that helps.
On Thursdays, I plan my meals and order the food. I sit down at the computer with my cookbook and a cup of tea. I check the online flyer for my grocery store, plan a few meals, and then submit my order online. That’s it — Thursday’s task is done.
On Friday, I head over to the store and pick up my groceries. My store now offers parking lot service for $3, which means I show up sometime during my two-hour time slot and an employee brings the groceries out to me in the van. My kids don’t even have to unbuckle (but, of course, they do).
The staff at my favourite location even bring out snacks and drinks along with our groceries, as if I’m doing them a
Once I’ve got my groceries and my complementary lime-flavoured fizzy water, I take everything home and throw it in the fridge. Friday’s task is done.
On Saturday, I cook. I cook until I can’t stand up for one more minute. Honestly, I don’t mind it at all — like I said before, I enjoy cooking. CBC Radio has a bunch of good shows on Saturday too, which pairs nicely with a day in the kitchen. And if I’m lucky, I’ll use a recipe that calls for wine — if you add a grape or an apple slice to the rest of the bottle, you can call it sangria, which is perfectly acceptable to drink at 10:00 am while you sear five pounds of beef. Happy cooking day, indeed.
Cooking multiple meals at once might sound complicated, but it’s not. Most everything has to be cooled before it can be assembled, so it doesn’t matter if I whip up the cream of celery soup three hours after the chicken is done — I won’t be assembling the final meals until the end of the day anyway. Sometimes I don’t even do that part until Sunday.
And you might think that devoting a whole day to cooking doesn’t end up saving me any time. It does though — through the rest of the week, supper is almost effortless and I have half the dishes to do afterward. Ditto lunch, when I realize that hello, it’s 1:00 already, and I pull frozen waffles or grilled cheese sandwiches out to reheat.
It’s more than a redistribution of labour, though. Cooking everything at once just doesn’t take as long as cooking the same amount of meals separately. My favourite tip is to cook lots of the same thing. For example, cooking enough enchilada casserole to cover three different meals takes less time than cooking three separate suppers.
It doesn’t take much longer to cook two pounds of beef than one pound. It doesn’t take much longer to grate one pound of cheese than a cup. And when I do it all at once, I only have to wash the dishes once; if I were cooking a new meal each evening, I’d have to wash those same dishes every time.
Wouldn’t that get boring though, eating the same thing three times in one week? No, because two of those casseroles are saved for some future date and this week I’ll be eating meals that I froze earlier in the month. And besides, I could eat a Shepherd’s Pie three times a week and never get tired of it, remember? There are green chiles in the mashed potato...
2. Less Food is Wasted
The second reason I love freezer cooking is that I’m keeping so much food out of the composter. I can’t count how many times I’ve thrown away moldy bread because we don’t eat it quick enough — extra painful when the bread is gluten-free and costs $7 a loaf. Now, I prepare eight or nine grilled cheese sandwiches at once and throw them in the freezer to melt later.
Freezer cooking has changed my mindset completely. Everything goes in the freezer now. When I grate cheese, I grate the whole jumbo-sized brick at once — anything not used in a recipe is frozen and used another time. I don’t have to throw away soft, green potatoes anymore — any potatoes that are not used right away become mashed potatoes and frozen for later. Bread crumbs? They last forever in the freezer. Left-over waffles? I’ll keep them in the freezer until next week. Brownies? I don’t know, they might freeze okay. Ours never last longer than 24 hours, so I wouldn’t know.
To cut back on food waster further, I freeze almost every meal in single-sized portions so I can heat up the exact amount I need. No more leftovers going soggy in the back of the fridge — almost nothing is wasted anymore. And, of course, that doesn’t just save food, it saves money too.
3. Freezer Meals Save You Money
Our grocery budget is still higher than I like, but I’m happy to say I’ve cut it back by a good 30% — maybe even 1/2. How are we saving all this money?
One. I save money because I only cook what’s on sale. Beef is cheap? Then I buy a lot of it and only cook beef that week — I can do that because we already have a variety of chicken, pork, and meatless meals in the freezer. Or is nothing on sale? Fine, be that way. I’ll spend the weekend making soup or baking breads and rolls instead.
Two. I save money because I buy in bulk. Unless I can find a better price (and I always check), I stick to club packs for meat, cheese, and anything else that comes in “family-size”. Well, I think I’m saving money when I buy in bulk. I know the price is better, but I also know we eat food faster if there’s a lot of it. I could buy a teeny bag of chips for $4 at the grocery store or a giant bag of chips for $6 at Costco — I’m still going to eat the whole thing over the weekend. Salt is my favourite food group. But you might have more self-control, so I’m sticking this money-saving point in for your benefit.
Three. I save money because we aren’t running out to the grocery store 3-4 times a week. Before freezer cooking, I’d often come up with a food plan to cover the next day or two and then one of us would run to the store to grab whatever I needed. This worked fine when we had a deli down the street and our daily walk to the butcher was a lovely part of our day — but this habit of last-minute meal planning continued after the deli shut down and the grocery store sucks up a lot more money.
You know how it goes, right? You run in to buy some chicken and lettuce, and then oh look, goldfish crackers are on sale! The kids love those. And maybe we’re low on milk? Better get some of that too. And what’s the current status of cheese? Yeah, grab some more, just to be safe. And on and on and on. It’s even worse when my husband goes for me because he hits the snacks aisle, knowing how much I love potato chips (refer to section above).
When we go to the store once and only once, we don’t end up impulse buying. It’s like a bonus dose of willpower. Now if we run out of something like breakfast cereal (who am I kidding, my kids only eat Cheerios), we are forced to eat something else and wait for grocery day. It sounds like such a little thing, but those regular grocery store visits pecked away at our budget. Thanks to the less-frequent grocery store runs and the parking lot pickup service that I happily pay for, I might not even step foot in a grocery store for weeks at a time now.
Four. We eat less takeout. Now if it’s supper time and I completely forgot to plan ahead, I can grab something from the freezer instead of running out for fries. And when it’s 10:00 at night and I’m starving, I throw a burrito in the oven. Having premade meals in the freezer has virtually eliminated our burger runs, and that has saved us money too. I can’t get over how much money even McDonald’s costs these days, let alone a good burger joint. (OK, I actually love Big Macs. Please don’t tell anyone, it’s embarrassing.)
For years, I looked down my nose at freezer meals. Now we’re saving up for a big freezer to stick in the garage because I keep overfilling the one in our kitchen. If my kids weren’t always playing Minecraft on my phone, I’d be the one filling my newsfeeds with pictures of squished up meat in Ziploc bags, like my friends did all those years back. I’m proud of the work I put into our meals each weekend, though, so forgive me if a few freezer bag shots do end up on Instagram. I promise you that the meat will be cooked, the food will look tasty, and that I will never once use the word “dump”.
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