In the meantime, I've updated my Recipes entry with all of my old recipes (thanks goes to my little sis for saving my old blog: it made bringing back the old recipes a lot more efficient). I've also added astericks to the recipes that I've frozen before.
Here are some tips I learned for the recipes I've listed that I've frozen:
- Let the dinner/bread thaw completely before warming it up. You can do this in the microwave, otherwise let it thaw completely in the fridge (which may mean taking it out of the freezer the morning of the day before you are going to eat it for dinner, make sense?).
- When freezing a casserole, line the casserole dish with foil. After the casserole has cooled partly, place the dish in the freezer. When the casserole is frozen, lift the casserole out of the dish and wrap the casserole in foil. Then, place it in your freezer.
- Soups can be frozen in freezer bags, or in rigid containers. These are great to have in the freezer because they are easily thawed and cooked in the microwave. (Tip: My Chunky Red Pasta Sauce can be dumped right into a crock-pot and cooked all day.)
- Always, always, always label with the type of meal and the date! Never eat anything that has been in the freezer for more than three months.
- When using a frozen cake, frost it before it thaws ... it cuts down on the amount of crumbs you get in your frosting.
- If you use frozen chicken breasts, or frozen meatballs, just dump the meat into a freezer bag and pour the sauce on top.
- If you can, flatten out what you put in freezer bags and place it on a shelf in the freezer. Once frozen, you can tilt them up on their sides to save space.
- Do not freeze potatoes! You can freeze mashed potatoes okay, but any other kind of potatoes gets a little yucky. I wish I knew how they make frozen hashbrowns and such to turn out okay. Everything else I've tried doesn't. Oh, you can freeze twice-baked potatoes since you take the pulp of the potatoes out and mash it before you put it back in the skin.
Those are all the tips I can think of right now. If you have any tips, or if any I've put up here don't work for you, please let me know in the comments! And, if you have any freezer meal recipes you've tried, I want them!!! Send them my way! I would love this to be a place for idea sharing!
Also, this is one of my favorite websites for freezer meal recipes:
3 comments:
I have yet to attempt to freeze meals...Maybe it's because there is a lot of stuff you have to remember to do so that the meal freezes well, thaws well, and still tastes good! :) Your posting your freezer meal ideas will hopefully give me that extra push that I need... :) I know it would make some nights not so hectic for me.
Those are really good tips. I used the foil casserole dishes and covered them with foil. I pressed the foil down right on top of the food. That way the dishes fit right inside of each other and don't use up as much room. I have heard to use gallon size freezer bags as much as possible. Most foods you can just slip right in. One of the meals I got were stuffed shells and my friend put the shells flat in the bag. This is definitely a learning process for me!
I also found a book with some really good recipes for the freezer. It is called, Trim & Terrific Freezer Friendly Meals, by Holly Clegg.
Please pass on any good recipes to me!
You are such a good resource for me!! I would never have thought of half of these things!
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