During the summer of tired, my freezer was a MESS. I had a lot of meat, but no "meals." I'd peer into the vast piles of pork solders (buy one, get one free awhile back) and just draw a blank. I'd stare at the frozen chicken breasts. I'd puzzle over the roasts. All frozen. All possible meals, but at 5 PM, what would I do with a hunk of frozen, unseasoned meat? Discouraged, I'd shut the freezer and cook spaghetti...again.
Have you been staring at the contents of your freezer with no idea of what you can do with all that...stuff? I've been feeling that lately. Then I saw this video:
This short video has changed my approach to the freezer. I was so inspired that I went downstairs, pulled out all the random, frozen hunks of meat, and made meals of them. Now I have ready to dump in a crockpot meals instead of hunks of frozen possiblity. I have six ready to go pork shoulders (brown sugar pork, BBQ pork, beer pork, Mexican spice rubbed pork...mmmm...), two pot roasts, and several different types of chicken dishes. Now I just pull things out of the freezer to thaw or to dump into the crockpot. We're actually eating our bargains, and my husband thinks he's died and gone to heaven with all the "fancy" meals we've been having. I'm making it a goal to prepare the meal before I put it into the freezer. Anything that saves both time AND money is a friend of mine!
How do you avoid losing stuff in the freezer graveyard?
5 comments:
Oh what a great idea. I usually freeze up an entire meal, but have never done it quite like this.
So here's my question: you mentioned frozen meat: so you just took the frozen chicken and added spices to it or something and then stuck it back in the freezer?
What type of chicken dishes did you do and was all the chicken frozen when you did this?
Hi! The chicken and beef and pork was frozen already, and I just dumped stuff in frozen. Here's a fw of the things I did:
Beef: 1 can cola, garlic, cumin, and a bit of soy sauce.
Pork: Can of beer, small can of tomato sauce, brown sugar.
Chicken: Can of cheese soup. (For enchilada filling.
From now on, I'll do it while the meat is thawed when I bring it home from the market. We've already eaten one of the pork shoulders and it was delicious!
I am going to do this with tofu, veg crumbles and tvp. Great video!
Never thought to do complete meal ingredients like that.
My freezer trick is to cook up a bunch of chicken, dice it up, then freeze it in 2-cup portions. That way I always have cooked chicken available for those recipes that call for it. Sames a lot of time. I do that with ground beef, too.
I'm really into soups. One or two days a month, I stock up on dirt-cheap produce at my local flea market, then spend a few hours in the kitchen. I ladle two servings into a small freezer-safe plastic container, label with meal and date, and freeze. My fridge is a real GE from the 1930s, so it doesn't have a freezer - one of m best purchases ever was a big chest freezer. I try to freeze everything in the same size plastic containers to maximize space and minimize the chance of losing anything.
Conveniently, soups are great for using up just about any non-fruit ingredient!
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