My daughter, Cerrin, recently discovered the usefulness of Batch Cooking. Cerrin wanted to eat home-cooked meals but literally did not have time to cook them every night. She has a Customer Service job by day, is taking her last college course on-line, and was about to start a three month job workings nights and Saturdays for a tax-preparation company. (We will not discuss her sanity in this post!)
She and I have done some marathon cooking in the past but this was her first session on her own. She did a good job of organizing: she gathered recipes, purchased all the food necessary, gathered freezing supplies, and borrowed an extra crockpot.
She started one crockpot Friday night. The next morning she emptied that crockpot and packaged the food for the freezer. She then started that crockpot up again plus another borrowed crockpot. Once they were going she started a pot on top of the stove and also got the oven going. On Sunday she finished with two more crockpots of food. Once everything was packaged and her freezer was filled she had 60 servings. Since she is single that worked out to 60 meals. You can adjust that to serve your family. Here’s a list of what Cerrin made:
- Crockpot Tamale Pie (6 servings) (recipe here)
- Crockpot Red Chili (8 servings) (ground turkey, red and pinto beans, tomatoes)
- Crockpot White Chicken Chili (6 servings) (recipe at Recipezaar)
- Meatloaf in oven or crockpot (10 slices) (recipe is here)
- Corned Beef and Cabbage in dutch oven (6 servings plus 6 slices)
- Crockpot Lasagna (6 servings) (recipe coming soon)
- Crockpot Chicken and Rice (6 servings) (recipe coming soon)
- Mini Pizzas (6 servings) (English Muffins, pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese)
In each of these meals she made them into “plate meals” by adding servings of frozen veggies. As Cerrin said, ”It would be more like eating a home cooked meal and less like leftovers. Because you know how much I dislike eating leftovers.” She’s been eating from her stash now for a month and it’s going very well. She is staying out of restaurants or drive-throughs and eating healthier. In addition she’s saving money by not being in the grocery store every week. It’s working for her.
Thank you SO much for posting this list! I’m going to be going out of town for awhile and while I know my husband can cook, I’ve been trying to hunt down some goodies to leave in the freezer for him while I’m gone =)
I do this sort of thing too. I don’t cook all weekend, but whenever I’m cooking a meal for my family I tend to cook double the amount we need, and then freeze half for another day. It looks like you have some great recipes there – thank you!
I’ve just had a look at your tamale pie recipe, and it looks great – I think I’ll give it a try! I wanted to leave a comment on the pie recipe, but there seems to be a problem with the comment option on your blog. You can only leave comments when you are looking at a page, and not individual posts. I hope you can fix it, as you’ll probably get more comments then. Best wishes. J
When I made them I had to go to goodwill to buy more plates. Luckly I have a nice big freezer at work so I can take a couple plates and put them in the freezer at work and take the empty plate home.
During an Icy day here in the mid west noone wanted to go out at lunch time. So I did shate a couple plates with my friends. They were all impressed to get a whole meal at lunch time. It was much better then the frozen TV dinners. Home cooked and less salt and other additives.
I am no longer the girl who cant cook.
Crock Pots are wonderful.
Woops Anonymous was me too.
I want to add that making sloppy joes is another easy meal that freezed very well. I make mine with ground turkey. Because once you add the manwich you cant tell the difference.
Package it in the small 1/2 cup container and when you defrost it it makes the exact size for a sandwich. I put mine in hot dog buns…because it is a little less sloppy
Just wanted to add that little bit on too.
Thanks for the yummy recipes!
not sure i would have the patiences to do it all at one time, but i do try to double batches and freeze them for future use.
You’ve inspired me, but I just had surgery and can’t get to it right away. I’m going to write this down as a goal after recovery. Thanks!