It's happening again. The freezer cooking bug has burrowed its way under my skin and set up shop.
I have long since been a fan of OAMC/Freezer Cooking. Love the idea. Tend to fail miserably at the execution. I finally came to the conclusion not too long ago that 'true OAMC' (making thirty meals in one sweat-producing, food-processor-exploding hit) is both foolish and irritating (the planning! the shopping! the monstrous amounts of onions to dice!) Over time my theory on freezer cooking has settled into a much more palatable incarnation; a sort of loose interpretation of Lynn Nelson's Busy Cooks Pyramid approach. At least some of the time. Today we're talking about tier one, or Cooking For The Freezer.
It has to be the right mix of recipes, too. Not twelve different kinds of soup. Not eight different pies. And good gracious, no more Chicken Divan, which weirdly seems to turn up in 98% of all the OAMC meal plans I've ever come across online. Broccoli and I are living a very tumultuous relationship. In my brain it works on its own, lightly steamed, or married with cauliflower in a white sauce and crouton concoction. Dancing with chicken and smothered in some sort of condensed-soupy stuff? Not so much.
So whenever I feel the freezer cooking bug bite (whether that bite be big or small), I circle around the issue for several days. Mock up some plans. Discard most of them. Finally settle on five or six recipes only - meals that can be easily multiplied. And then remind myself that it will probably still take me three days to complete them. Life happens. These are not meant to be full, complete meals. You'll still need to throw together a salad, or steam some fresh vegies on the night (a common criticism of freezer cooking tends to be its distinct lack of fresh produce - this doesn't, and shouldn't, be the case). The idea, I think, should not be to eliminate all the dinner prep work in the evenings, just most of it.
Here are some freezer cooking tips that have served me well over the last few years:
Plan to portion off a meal for that night's dinner. Plenty of freezer cooks I know plan to order pizza on Cooking Day. However, in my experience a husband (well, okay, mine) can tend to get a smidgeon annoyed when takeout is suggested, considering we just spent "...all day in the kitchen cooking!" Suck it up and sacrifice one of the meals destined for the freezer and save your cash. Crockpot recipes are worth their weight in gold for this reason - fire up the crock in the morning, before you tackle your other recipes, and ta-da! A stress-free dinner on Cooking Day.
How much of each recipe to make is entirely up to you. However, unless its a first-time tryout (in which case you should never make more than a single family meal), all of your recipes for these kinds of mini-sessions should be at least doubled. Since they're already meals your family likes, not meals chosen by some faceless Martha Stewart-type you found on the net somewhere, there should be nothing on your list that your family wouldn't eat again within, say, a month. Other than that, go nuts. But just because someone else triples 10 different recipes for a full month worth of meals, it doesn't mean you have to.
Freezer cooking usually won't replace weekly grocery shopping. Sorry! You'll still need to hit the store for fresh produce and loss leaders regardless of what goes on your Cooking Day list. With this approach the idea is simply to create a few 'my head is killing me, the kids tore the curtains playing Tarzan and the dog peed on the freshly mopped kitchen floor' kind of escape plans. Your small cooking session might stretch as far as a couple of months because you're not eating exclusively out of your freezer stash - you could, of course, but this isn't usually how it works around our house. When it comes time to menu plan and compile a shopping list, drag out your Freezer Meal Inventory and squeal with glee when you discover the treasures lurking in your 'vault' (ie, your freezer). For two or three nights that week, coast. Or if meat just seems across-the-board expensive in the weekly circulars, rely on the sale-purchased and deliciously-cooked meals you already have on hand. But don't sweat the fact you don't have the full 30 meals tucked away.
And finally...
Replenish, Replenish, Replenish! At the very least, make a couple of double-batch recipes, or one triple batch one every week or two. Alternate protein source each time you do it so you don't end up with sixty-seven chicken meals. Keep updating your freezer meal inventory and aim to restock when the stash is low.
Happy cooking!
*Lizzie's Home re-hash
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