If you follow me on Instagram you probably saw a few pictures of my freezer cooking day a few weeks ago. I love freezer cooking and have been doing it for years.
There are many ways to freezer cook, but I don’t think there is really a right way or wrong way to do it. Like menu planning, I think freezer cooking is about making it work for you. I used to freeze casseroles and whole meals, now I prefer to focus on freezing parts of the meal because it works better for my schedule and the way we eat now.
Today I am teaming up Jessica from Life As Mom today to share how we do freezer cooking. Jessica is full of freezer tips and ideas. Today she is sharing 5 easy ways to fill your freezer so be sure to head over to Life As Mom for her tips. Jessica is also the author of Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook
. Yes, she knows her freezer cooking!
Today I am sharing a few of my favorite freezer cooking tips along with a quick look at my recent freezer cooking day. If you are gluten free be sure to check out my tips for gluten free freezer cooking.
On my recent freezer cooking day my counter looked like this.
Those three crock pots contain five to six meals worth of food for my family. One crock pot had homemade refried beans in it. One had chicken chili and one had chicken taco meat.
Now for my favorite freezer cooking tips.
Crock Pot Freezer Cooking
I use my crock pot all the time for freezer cooking. And as you can see I have three of them. Putting your crock pot to use when it comes to freezer cooking makes freezer cooking easy.
A few of my favorite crock pot to freezer meals are slow cooked chili, roast, taco meat, homemade refried beans, chicken chili, chicken taco filling, bbq pork, cooked chicken to shred, and soup.
Think Outside the Box
It is easy to freeze chili and take it out and eat it as a bowl of chili, but it is also easy to change it up. This will keep your freezer meals interesting.
Freezer chili can be served over baked potatoes, as chili cheese fries, or chili corn dog pie.
Taco meat can be used for tacos, but also for taco salad, enchiladas, quesadillas, taco soup, over baked potatoes, as taco fries or tater tot nachos. Taco meat is one of my favorite things to keep in the freezer because it is so versatile.
Roast can be served as roast or as roast beef sandwiches.
Cooked and shredded chicken can be used in soups, enchiladas, salad, sandwiches and more.
Freezer Containers
My favorite container for freezer cooking is not really a container it is freezer bags. I love freezer in bags because they freeze flat and don’t take up a lot of space. I have frozen everything from taco meat to chili in freezer bags and it works great. Just be sure to defrost the bag on a plate or container in case the bag splits or gets a hole in it. Yes, I learned that the hard way.
The other containers I love to use for freezing are simply glass pyrex type containers with lids. I have found that plastic gets brittle over time in the freezer and I have had too many containers crack and split. I do still use some plastic containers, but I am slower switching over to mainly glass.
There are a lot of brands of glass containers. I love pyrex, but I also have some with the lids that lock down and I love those also.
Cool Food Down Before Freezing
Always try to have your food completely cold before freezing. I almost always place my food in the fridge for a few hours or overnight before placing in the freezer. This really helps reduce freezer burn.
Those are a few of my tips, now I would love to hear your favorite tips or foods for freezer cooking.
Thanks for the reminder that I need to make a big batch of taco meat and freeze it. I have been seeing several pins lately about freezer-to-crockpot meals and made a few of them the other night. I’d love to see you do some of those. I think it took me two hours one night to make six or seven meals. With the kids back in school, I need to use their school time to catch up on my writing and blogging. I need convenient cooking. Tonight we’re having your Santa Fe Black Beans and Rice. Yummy!
How exactly do you do chicken in the crock pot to use for “precooked chicken” in recipes? I know this is a really obvious question, but the idea had never occurred to me and I’m not sure how to go about appropriately cooking it (boneless skinless?) without some kind of sauce AND without burning.
That is a great question. I just take a few chicken breast, or a crock pot full, depending on how many I want to cook, and cover them with water. You can use part chicken broth for more flavor, but I usually just use water. Cook on low for 3-4 hours. The time will vary depending on the size of chicken breast and the amount in the crock pot. Remove chicken to cool and cut into chunks or shred. I hope that helps.
Thank you! I will do that! I always see “cooked chicken” in recipes and honestly it usually makes me not do the recipe, because I’ve never been sure how to go about getting generic “cooked chicken,” and I loathe pulling rotisserie chicken off the bone (even if it does taste totally worth it — I just don’t have the skills and time!). Thanks!
I do shredded cooked chicken for the freezer sometimes too. What I usually do is place the chicken in the a glass baking dish, sprinkle with whatever seasonings I like that day (usually McCormick grillmates) and bake it at 375 for about 40 minutes. Take out of oven, let cool for a bit. Then I place the full baked chicken breasts in my Kitchenaid mixer. Turn the mixer on to low speed and let it shred my chicken for me. Then I bag it up into usable portions, usually 1 cup for our family. Freeze the bags and I have ready-cooked chicken for easy recipes ready to go! You could also cook in the crockpot too, just add about 1/2 cup broth or water to the bottom when you add the chicken.