Freezer Meal Stock up

Freezer Meal Stock up

Freezer meals can be an amazing time saver.  Maybe not so much on the actual prepping day, but on a day to day basis they give you some great options with not  a lot of effort.  Freezer meal prep can also be a total rabbit hole.  There’s so many different options and approaches.  So what really works? Frankly whatever works for your family.  Total example, I have yet to do any dump meals.  Don’t get me wrong some of them sound delicious.  I just haven’t gotten there yet.  (note rabbit hole and a half in the dump meal department)

What works for our family might be a disaster for yours.  Think about what your goals are for the freezer meals and what you think will work for you.  Oh, and don’t forget to consider your space and budget.  And HUGE side note here: Make sure you try the meal before freezing a bunch of it.  It will do you no good if it would be pulling teeth to actually eat it.  Throw it on your to try list, try it, then decide if it’s good enough to make your cut for the freezer.

How to approach freezer meals

There are so many different paths here.  So for lack of a better direction I’ll be focusing on what we’re actually doing right now.  But seriously experiment and see what your family likes.  I can not emphasis that enough.  We’ve had some we loved, and we’ve had some we hated out of the freezer.  Some were so so and edible, but never to be seen from again, while others we keep on hand almost constantly.

So from my perspective there are two main directions you can take when it comes to freezer meal prep.  1. you can prep entire meals and have them ready to go.  Think dump meals, prepared dishes in those foil bins.  2.  Keeping the components of dishes on hand so you can build up your go to list or 3.  A combination.  This I think is where we’re mostly at.  While we have mostly components in our freezer we do have some pretty complete meals available.  They just tend to be sized into individual portions.

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Freezer Meal Ideas

Apparently I need to get some more pictures.  Guess I haven’t prepped freezer meals in a while, but that will be changing very soon so stay tuned.

Chicken

  1. Grilled Chicken (staple for us)

    Grilled Chicken for your freezer with Gardening Foodies
    Great basic ingredient to make life easier and keeps fantastic in the freezer

  2. Breaded Chicken (won’t lie we used to just buy prepared here but haven’t found a good sub yet)
  3. Coconut Chicken
  4. Pulled Chicken (make a big batch and freeze the leftovers)
  5. Turkey stuffed peppers
  6. Lemon Garlic Chicken (better fresh, but totally worth it from the freezer too)

    Easy Lemon Garlic Chicken
    This easy lemon garlic chicken held up surprisingly well in the freezer which made it great for adult chicken nuggets or an easy grab when we needed something for the little toddler

  7. Individual Pot Pies

Beef

  1. Taco Meat
  2. Ground Meat
  3. Enchilada filling (make a huge batch and freeze the leftovers)
  4. Stuffed Shells
  5. Meatloaf (always individual size)
  6. Roast Beef (we buy at the deli and keep on hand)
  7. Chili
  8. Taco Soup

Pork

  1. Pulled Pork
  2. Breakfast sausage
  3. Italian Sausage

Pasta

  1. Baked Zitti
  2. Chicken Broccoli Alfredo

    A light version of Chicken broccoli alfredo that is great fresh or from the freezer with gardening foodies
    Who would have thought that home made chicken broccoli alfredo could be easy and tasty from the freezer.

  3. Mac n Cheese
  4. Lasagna (individuals)
  5. Stuffed Shells
  6. Rattlesnake pasta

Veggie

  1. Quinoa Stuffed peppers
  2. 1/2 peppers
  3. Pepper strips
  4. White Onion Diced up
  5. Red Onion Diced up
  6. Breaded Eggplant (currently buying prepared)
  7. Veggie Chili

Random

  1. Grinder Rolls
  2. Hamburger buns
  3. Hotdot buns
  4. Pizza Toppings
  5. Pizza Shells (we grill off our own)
  6. cubed bread

Breakfast

  1. Pancakes

    easy to go breakfast with homemade pancakes
    Homemade pancakes ready for the freezer. Once they’re frozen we store them in freezer bags.

  2. Banana Pancakes
  3. Muffins

    strawberry chocolate chip muffins with gardening foodies
    Love these strawberry chocolate chip muffins. Great fresh or even from the freezer for an easy to go breakfast

  4. Individual Quiches can be great for homemade egg sandwiches

    individual quiches make breakfast quick and easy
    individual quiches make breakfast quick and easy. From the freezer to table in just minutes. Try these even if you think you don’t like quiche.

  5. French Toast
  6. Waffles (currently buy from Bjs)
  7. Bagels
  8. Cinnamon buns (experiment was a success.  better fresh, but I’ll take easy and not turning on the oven sometimes)

Can’t have it all

Now my list of ideas is ever changing and we don’t do everything on this list. I would love to, but we just don’t have the space.  Nor do I have the budget to spend all of it at once.  I will say what I actually end up preparing is dependent on my available budget, some what time, space available, and what our schedule is going to be.  When I was working in Public Accounting.  Let me tell you I would stock our freezer with everything I could so make life easier during tax season or my crazy times.  It was a pain in the butt, but I loved being able to have actual food available pretty quickly without a lot of effort.

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What’s really nice is thanks to bon COOK a lot of these can be prepared for individuals.  Most of the chicken we just freeze on bon MATs, then store in bags.  Anything that has substance to it, we use our trays which just depend on how large of a serving we want.  Now this is awesome for two reasons.  1. You only need to take out exactly what you want.  2. Makes it easy to not only grab for dinner, but you could also grab some for lunch as well.

Keep the basics

Now on top of our “meal prep” stuff we almost always have the basics.  For us this is meat, veggies, ice cream, some prepared foods that are just easier to buy than make right now.  So our freezers (yes plural, lol we have our regular one, a backup frig which has one, and an upright deep freeze) are usually pretty full.  While we have some things that never seem to change, we also seem to change our “meals” depending on our schedule.

I actually miss having my freezer meals.  I kinda hate the prep now with the littles around, but man do I miss those easy nights when you’re ready to pull your hair out.

So what do you keep in your freezer? Join the conversation over in our community.

 

Freezer Meal Stock up


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