Freezer Cooking is the Way to Go
Believe it or not, I honestly do not like cooking. Okay, what I don’t like is spending monotonous hours in the kitchen every day doing the same thing over and over. There are so many more things that I would rather be doing with my time; digging ditches, changing tires, etc. You get the picture. However, when I get the chance, I love to spend a few hours straight in the kitchen doing a bunch of cooking.
There are so many more things that I would rather be doing with my time; digging ditches, changing tires, etc.
–Me
I know, sounds ridiculous. But, it’s true. It just makes more sense to me. Follow me on this. If I can spend a few hours in the kitchen, freezer cooking, and end up with over 50 meals, then that is time well spent! That way, all I have to do daily is thaw and throw a meal in the oven. Problem solved!
This weekend, I took a little time off of all the butchering I’ve been doing in order to get on the freezer cooking and I thought I would give you an idea of what can be accomplished if you give this a shot.
Freezer Cooking – Planning
When I got started, I had a pretty good idea of what meals I wanted to put together. I always work with a plan, on just about anything that I do, and this was no different. I pulled the recipes that I wanted to put together and just started cooking.
I like to go through my pantries ahead of time and check for ingredients prior to deciding on recipes. I prefer to try to use up everything in the pantry before buying anything else. By doing this, we didn’t have to purchase much, just a few things here and there.
Homemade Waffles
I began my cooking day with a quadruple batch of homemade waffles with chocolate chips (a family favorite!) I love having frozen homemade waffles on hand for breakfast (or dessert for my husband) because it’s quick and easy, especially since everyone is always going in different directions at different times in the morning. I did the waffles first because it usually takes up most of my countertop and I wanted that stuff out of the way first.
Freezer Cooking – Prep Work
The next recipe I got started was a huge batch of homemade marinara because it would need to simmer for a couple of hours and that could be going in the background. Multi-tasking makes me feel like I am really accomplishing stuff!
While the marinara was simmering, I began prepping my various meats. This was super easy because, for one, I always can meat to have some on hand when I need it quickly, plus for the meat that wasn’t canned, I used my ninja foodie to get it going. (more multitasking-yea me!) I threw a few pounds of sausage in the foodie to brown while I drained a couple of jars of ground pork. I also ground up some venison that I had just recently butchered. At this point, with most of the meats ready to go, I was able to put more meals together.
Casseroles
I divided the browned sausage up for Sausage Potato Casserole and for my Breakfast Quiche. I put the casserole together first which meant peeling, cubing, and boiling potatoes, but my quiche and pot pies need those as well, so a big batch can go on the stovetop all at once! (more multitasking)
The casserole is nothing more than meat, potatoes, cream of potato soup, a little milk, cheese, and ritz crackers all layered up. Super simple but it is so yummy! Once everything is prepped, it just takes a few minutes to put together several of these casseroles all at once. So, with that out of the way, moving on…
With the ground pork that I had canned up, I began putting together my enchilada casserole. It is one of those go-to meals that we like to have with some Mexican rice and maybe chips and salsa, so it is always good to have on hand.
Chicken & Pasta
While all of the above was being put together, I put a couple of packages of chicken in the electric pressure cooker to get ready for a couple more recipes. I wanted to make up some of my homemade pot pies as well as some Chicken Broccoli Alfredo Roll Ups as well as some stuffed jumbo shells. The recipe I used, I got here and just adjusted to my liking.
The Pies
In order to make my Homemade Pot Pies, as well as the quiche, I had to first make up a bunch of my Homemade Pie Crusts. My crust is so good and honestly kind of the star of the show, but when mixed with the filling in my pot pie or quiche, it’s just perfect!
After the Pie Crusts were made, I was able to put together my Homemade Breakfast Quiche. The sausage and potatoes were already prepared earlier, so the only other ingredient that needed to be prepped was a bunch of scrambled eggs. When that was complete, it was a cinch to pull them all together because you just stir all of the ingredients together in a big bowl and then fill up the pie crusts.
I still had additional chicken leftover so I decided to add Chicken Enchilada Casserole to my lineup as well. It was super quick because I already had all the ingredients out and ready to use.
Pork, Venison and Pasta
There was one more main stop on this train. Remember the huge vat of Marinara that I started earlier? Well, it was time to use that up. I had ground up some venison and browned it in the ninja. Mixing that meat with the marinara and adding cheeses and pastas make for quick and easy meals. The ones that I had on the list were Lasagna, Lasagna Roll-ups, and Rigatoni.
The recipe that I used for the Marinara Sauce this time, I found online. I like trying different sauces and this one is pretty good. For the Lasagna, I used oven-ready lasagna noodles, as described on their packaging. I layered the lasagna noodles with a mixture of cream cheese, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, Parmesan, and mozzarella. Then of course the mixture of browned ground venison and the marinara. When I had the dishes full, I topped it all off with more mozzarella.
For the Lasagna roll-ups, I used the same noodles but boiled them first to make them pliable. Then, I laid them out, spread the cheese mixture and meat sauce over them, rolled them up, and placed them into the dish. More sauce and cheese go over the top for a great finish.
The final pasta recipe was the Rigatoni. Another super simple dish to put together. I simply boiled the rigatoni noodles, put them in the casserole dish, spooned the meat sauce over the top and then covered it with mozzarella cheese.
The last recipe that wrapped up the whole thing was 5 meat loaves that I made from the ground venison that I had left. I used the old standby recipe that I grew up with, making the meatloaf the easy way with onion soup mix. Simple!
The Final Tally
All in all, I ended up with the following:
- Quadruple Batch of Chocolate Chip Waffles
- 4 Sausage Potato Casseroles
- 5 Venison Meat Loaves
- 4 Chicken Pot Pies
- 4 Breakfast quiches
- 3 Chicken Broccoli Alfredo Stuffed Shells
- 2 Chicken Broccoli Alfredo Lasagna Roll ups
- 3 Pork Lasagnas
- 1 Pork Lasagna Roll ups
- 4 Pork Rigatonis
- 4 Enchilada Casseroles
- 7 Chicken Enchilada Casseroles
41 Meals and that doesn’t actually count the amount of meals that are in the quadruple batch of waffles!
You might be interested in another post I wrote a while back concerning this same subject, Save Time; Spend the Whole Day Cooking.
NEVER MISS ANYTHING
MORE WAYS TO CONNECT
We also, as a homesteading family, have three additional blogs that might interest you.Two Oaks Farm Talkconcerns the more technical side of homesteading. We discuss subjects like gardening, food prep, and farm building and construction with lots of tutorials!
Farm Raised Familyis basically a hub for everything under the Two Oaks Farmstead umbrella. You can learn a great deal about all parts of the farmstead there. TheFarm Raised Family blogfocuses on financial matters such as budgeting, saving, and more and on current events affecting families.
You can also have a more in depth look at all that we do by visiting ourTwo Oaks Farmstead YouTube Channeland be sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss a thing!
Farm Life and Freedomis the new podcast we are in the process of launching! It is going to be so much fun!
Two Oaks Farmsteadis the farm store… the one that holds the umbrella! Check us all out and join us, not only on our blogs andFarm Life and Freedom podcastbut come join the fun on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter… wherever you get social!
