Slow Cooker Freezer Meals

A while back one of my co-workers posted on Facebook that she was so proud, because she had made and frozen enough crockpot meals to last the whole month. Needless to say I was a bit jealous, and was certainly eager to try out the idea for myself! So, I found a weekend and made a couple of test meals.The recipes I used came from hello glow. I made the Beef and Vegetable Stew, and the Sausage Lentil Soup. There are stacks of free recipes online, as well as cookbooks to be purchased.

The first thing you should do is to write the name and instructions for the meal on the outside of a gallon-sized zip top bag. That way, if you are making more than one meal at a time you won't be confused as to what goes where.















Open your zip top bag an insert it into a container of some sort. A canister or a pitcher would work best, just so that the bag will stand up while you fill it. It also helps if you fold the top over the edge of the container, so that the bag doesn't fall down into it.

Start prepping your veggies. If you have a mandolin slicer or a chopper it will make the process go by much faster.

You may also need to trim, slice, or cube the meats you are using. For the sausage soup I sliced my keilbasa into bite-sized pieces.
















There will also be recipes that will call for meats or other ingredients to be cooked before they go in the freezer bag. I cooked my onion and browned up the sausage a bit, then let it all cool to room temperature before putting it in the bag.















While my onions and meat were cooling I began assembling the rest of the ingredients. All the chopped veggies went in, as well as a can of tomatoes. I sorted out my lentils (and found a rock!) and added those too.

Once all the ingredients are in the bag, squeeze out as much air as possible and seal. You can lay the bag flat to freeze, then it is easier to stack them once they are frozen. Most recipes will call for you to remove the meal from the freezer the night before, and place it in the refrigerator to thaw. When you are ready to cook it up, just empty the contents into the slow cooker and add in the liquid. The best part about a crockpot meal is that you can put it on to cook while you do other things. So, go to work, run errands, clean the house, visit your granny, whatever is on your agenda for the day, and your meal will cook without you!

Here are some links to more slow cooker freezer meal recipes:

Side Tracked Sarah

Thirty Handmade Days

The Krazy Coupon Lady

Crock-Pot Ladies

New Leaf Wellness

Have fun! Happy crock-potting!

Food Storage: Buying in Bulk

It used to be that at our house buying in bulk and having a well-stocked pantry were just not things that happened. One day, though, something clicked and we began to realize that keeping the food items that we use most often on hand is much easier and cheaper than going to the store and back a million times. So, how does one keep the things they need on hand at all times, without going broke in the process? Buy as much as you can while items are on sale, while shopping with coupons, or while shopping at stores that provide bulk amounts at discounted prices (such as Costco or Sam's Club.) The questions you should ask yourself when selecting items to purchase are: Is this something my family will use on a regular basis? Do I have a means of storing this item long enough for my family to use it? Will my family go through enough of this item quickly enough that it doesn't spoil or go to waste? You should be able to answer "yes" to all three questions in order to select an item for purchase. Purchasing food that will not be eaten is wasteful, and we all know my opinion on wastefulness.

Let's talk about storage for a bit. Storing canned and prepackaged dry goods is fairly easy. Store in a cool dry place, rotate oldest product forward and newest to the back. In the restaurants I've worked at we remembered FIFO: first in, first out. I also like to face my canned and prepackaged dry goods, so that you can read the label and know what it is, and group like items together, such as all your veggies in one spot and another spot for broth and gravy.


Frozen goods should also be pretty easy. If your food is individually wrapped, fine. If you have things you need to portion, remember to label and date your container. This way to know what you have, and when it went in, so that you can determine when it will go bad. For help here, please see my Load Up Your Freezer post.




Often times staple items such as sugar and flour are sold in large bags. Buying these commonly used ingredients in bulk is a very smart way to go, so long as you have a way to store it. Five gallon buckets will usually fill this role rather nicely. You can typically purchase buckets and specially designed lids at hardware stores, feed stores, or super centers. The lids that we use are called gamma lids, and are snap on lids with a screw on inner lid. This makes it fairly easy to access your food without having to constantly pry off the lids. It also allows you to open the bucket without accidentally dumping in any dirt or debris that may have accumulated on the lid during storage.







If you don't have the money to invest in this bucket and lids system, just do what my mom did when I was growing up. Start purchasing your laundry detergent by the bucket. When the bucket is empty, thoroughly wash and dry it. Line it with a drawstring garbage bag and add your foodstuffs. Draw the top of the bag closed, fold it over and apply your lid. The garbage bag will prevent the aforementioned dirt and debris from being dumped into your food. No matter which method you use, remember to label your containers so you don't have to guess which bucket your bread flour might be in. At my house we have all-purpose flour, bread flour, corn meal, white rice, white sugar, and ramen noodles in buckets. Mom kept egg noodles, lasagna noodles, flour, sugar, powdered milk and pinto beans.

For those food items that you have a lot of, but not enough to justify a 5 gallon bucket, you can use half gallon canning jars. We use half gallon jars to store our salt, powdered milk, popcorn, coffee beans, brown sugar, lentils and chickpeas. (To name a few) You can purchase plastic storage caps for your jars, so that you don't have to mess with the ring and lid combo, and you can use a label maker to label all your products. For items you don't use often, you can buy a lid sealer what is compatible with a Food Saver vacuum storage system. It will vacuum seal a canning lid onto your jar to keep the food inside fresher longer.

Food Storage: Load Up Your Freezer!

There are so many things that can be kept in your freezer! More often than not I feel like we associate frozen food with frozen burritos, TV dinners, and store-bought frozen vegetables, but there's all kinds of stuff that you can make, buy and grow to keep in your freezer!

Bread & Baked Goods

My grandma always kept an extra loaf or two of bread in her freezer, and it makes sense to do so. If bread is on sale, buy a few extra loaves to stash in your freezer. That way you have extra on hand in case family drops by. Defrost it in the fridge if you have a few days to allow it to thaw, or on the counter top if you need it right away. Likewise you can freeze hamburger or hot dog buns, hoagie rolls, dinner rolls, tortillas or whatever it is that's on sale. If you like to bake you can also freeze your homemade concoctions, bread, muffins, corn muffins, banana bread, tomato soup cake, biscuits, etc.

Vegetables

There are a great many different vegetables that you can freeze and keep. So far I have frozen onions, jalapenos, snow peas, bell peppers, and pumpkin. You can also freeze corn, peas, carrots, potatoes, asparagus, tomatoes, squash or green beans. We froze our jalapenos whole, diced the onions, and cut the bell peppers into strips. For the snow peas, I froze them individually on a wax paper-lined baking sheet before I put them into a zip-top bag. I would highly recommend spreading out diced onions or cubed vegetables on a baking sheet to freeze before bagging it up as well, otherwise you will end up with one big clump.

Fruit

Most fruit freezes and keeps very well in the freezer. I have frozen berries, bananas, cantaloupe, and kiwi fruit. You can also freeze mangoes, plums, peaches, grapes, or any fleshy fruit, really. For instructions on freezing fruit, and for peeling kiwi fruit, please visit my blog post Make It Yourself: Frozen Fruit.

Stock & Broth

This Thanksgiving Willie decided to use the "spatchcock" method of cooking our turkeys. So, the spines were cut out of the birds so that the carcasses laid flat and cooked more quickly. He also decided to remove the wings, as we never eat the wings from our turkeys. When faced with the dilemma of what to do with these extra turkey parts, he decided to make turkey stock. It was decided that the stock would be frozen so that we could use it later. Some of the stock was put into resealable containers and frozen "in bulk" and some was portioned out into muffin tins for use in smaller recipes. We lined the muffin tins with silicone baking cups for ease of extraction, but you can put the stock directly into the tins as well. If the stock is difficult to remove, just dip the bottom of the muffin tin in hot water to loosen it. Put it in a zip top bag and put it in your freezer! It is very helpful to measure how much liquid your muffin tin/baking cup holds so that you can estimate how many portions to use in a recipe. My silicone baking cups hold about 1/3 cup.

Pre-Made Meals

As I'm sure you know, I really enjoy cooking meals to take with me to work. It is a lot cheaper to eat something you have made yourself than to go out to eat every day on your lunch break. Often times I will make a huge batch of whatever it is, portion it out into containers, and put half of it in the freezer for later. I've made chicken lo mein, chicken and ramen stir fry, kung pao chicken, chicken and rice, Mom's stroganoff, keema mattar, fajitas and Mexican rice, and chicken and stuffing. This year we also portioned out our Thanksgiving meal to freeze for later. So, turkey, potatoes and stuffing went together, and the gravy got its own container. When your meals in the fridge start to dwindle, just pull another stack out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge. Add a little water before microwaving, and you should be very pleased with your results!

Burgers & Meatballs

Yes, you can buy frozen hamburger patties already formed, but if you ever want to spice things up (get it) you can always make your own seasoned patties, or patties with "mix-ins." We have made patties with onion soup mix, or garlic herb soup mix and they have turned out really well. You can also mix in items such as blue cheese crumbles, bacon bits, diced onions, diced peppers, mushrooms, or shredded cheddar cheese before forming and freezing your patties. Just be sure to separate the patties with wax paper before you freeze them, or you will have a heck of a time separating them! The other pre-made beef product that we like to keep in our freezer is meatballs. We make and can our own spaghetti sauce, so it only makes sense to make and freeze our own meatballs to cook with it! You can find instructions on meatball making on my Meatballs blog post.

Rice

This is a concept that I had never thought of before, but Willie, being the genius that he is, suggested that we portion and freeze white rice to take along with our lunches. So, any items that need a rice accompaniment, such as Mom's stroganoff, keema mattar or any sort of stir fry not involving a noodle, will have its own portion of rice. Just put the entree in its own container, and put a portion of rice with it in your lunch. There is no need to thaw the rice, simply add a splash of water, cover loosely and microwave. You will need to stir it around (or shake it with the lid on) midway through the heating process for even heating. Combine the entree and rice and you're all set!

Meatballs

We ran out of store-bought meatballs a while back, and had nothing with which to eat our spaghetti sauce. I decided to put together some meatballs of our own to put in the freezer. The recipe that I liked the best was this one by Ree Drummond. (Please click the link to view the original recipe, and let her know that she's a genius!) I didn't quite have what I needed to follow her recipe to a tee, so I adapted!

Here's how my adaptation went:
1 lb ground beef
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 c plus 2 Tbsp grated Parmesan
1 egg
1/4 c plus 2 Tbsp Italian bread crumbs
1 Tbsp dried parsley
1/4 tsp salt
Black pepper to taste
Splash of milk

Start out with your favorite mixing bowl. Mine happens to be this red plastic number.

Measure out your dry ingredients, crack an egg in there and splash in a little milk.



















Add the meat, and mix it up with your hands, making sure to incorporate everything evenly. I like to use gloves for this part, so that my hands don't get yucky.

















Line a baking sheet with some wax paper, this will be landing zone for your finished meatballs. Put some more gloves on and begin rolling the meat into balls about 1" across, then place them on the wax paper lined pan.















For some reason I always end up with 30 meatballs. However many meatballs you end up with, space them out on your baking sheet so that they are not touching one another. Stash them in your freezer for about 10 minutes to firm up a bit.















In a flat bottomed skillet or frying pan (I prefer cast iron for this application) add just enough oil to coat the bottom of your pan. Apply medium heat, and when your pan is hot begin adding meatballs, a few at a time. Using tongs, turn your meatballs so that they brown on all sides.














Once brown on all sides, remove your meatballs and place them on a paper-towel lined plate. The meatballs will not be cooked through, you just need to make sure that the outside is totally browned so they will hold their shape. Leave them to sit on the paper towels to drain off any excess oil and to cool completely.













Once completely cool, you can put your meatballs into a zip-top container and stash them in your freezer until you are ready to use them. Be sure to label the bag so that you know what you have and when it was made. Nothing worse than playing "Guess What I Found in the Freezer." Ick! When you are ready to use your meatballs there are two methods that I have used with great success. First, you can put your meatballs on a baking sheet, or a baking rack with a foil-lined baking sheet underneath it, and bake in a 375 degree oven for 15-20 minutes. Once cooked through, add it into your spaghetti sauce. The second option is to add the frozen meatballs directly into your sauce. Heat it until simmering, then simmer for about 20 minutes. I prefer the first method, as it produces a meatball with a firmer texture, whereas the simmering method produces a softer textured meatball.

It's all up to you, though!