Well, I finally have a freezer being delivered. Tomorrow! I haven't had a freezer since we moved in January and we left our very old freezer behind. That means I have been cooking just about every day for a few months now. In some ways it has been nice. I got to make some things that I haven't for a while because they don't freeze well, but I am ready to get back to my freezer meals again. I have missed having meals ready to go or simplified and it is way harder to stay on top of keeping the kitchen clean when dinner needs to be made every day.
I am preparing to fill up my brand new freezer next week, and I hope to blog about the entire process as I go to give my readers an idea of what freezer cooking entails for me. I say for me because I also plan to talk about various methods of freezer cooking, so you may get a better idea of what might work for YOU. I have talked to a number of people who tried freezer cooking and said it didn't work out. Often they followed a blog and ended up not liking the meals or finding it to be too much work or too expensive. In order to be successful people need to find the method that works best for them. What that method is may change over time. It certainly has for me, so today I am going to cover how much food to make and how much time to spend doing once-a-month-cooking.
There's several styles to freezer cooking and they are:
Doubling an Occasional Dinner
This is definitely the easiest way to do freezer meals. It is simply doubling (or tripling) whatever you happen to be making for dinner anyway and freezing the leftover. Many people do this, and this is what I did before I started doing once-a-month-cooking. There's no commitment or regularity, but you still have freezer meals for busy days. Popular candidates for this type of cooking are: lasagna, enchiladas and other casseroles, particularly pasta casseroles, as well as soups, pasta sauces and marinaded meats.
Pros
- easy
- doesn't require a large investment of either time or money
- allows you try freezer cooking without committing to it
- stocks your freezer with foods you already like to eat
- doesn't require a lot of freezer space
Cons
- you still have to cook and clean regularly
- freezer meals may not be particularly useful as last minute meals
- meals tend to get pushed to the back of the freezer and forgotten
Making a lot of small meals
When I first started looking into freezer meals this is the method I saw written about everywhere. The gist is that you make 16 or so single batches of meals, eat them for a month and then do it again the next month. Many bloggers who do this claim they were able to make so many meals in either just one day or just one hour or whatever. I am a doubtful sometimes of the time estimates they claim. I have never done this method because it made more sense to me to make large batches instead of singular batches of food. For many recipes, doubling, tripling or quadrupling them does not take much more time than making the single batch.
Pros
- smaller financial investment at the beginning
- smaller time commitment (making the batch larger doesn't increase the time by much but it does increase and this adds up if you're making a lot)
- have a variety of foods that will last the entire month
- if you end up not liking something you only have one batch of it
Cons
- you have to start fresh every month
- there is no holdover from month to month if you don't have time to cook right on schedule
- inefficient use of time if you are planning on making the same meals regularly
- requires a large freezer
Making lots of large meals
This is what I do. I looked at those once-a-month-cooking plans that included just one batch of each meal and thought it made more sense to make large batches and portion them out. So I choose about 16 recipes and make double, triple or quadruple batches of them. I'm not going to lie to you. It's a lot of time and energy to cook this way, but it is worth it to me. It takes me about a week to make all of this food, but I have gone without cooking for three months afterwards and still had food in the freezer. Plus, it allows me to regularly have foods that I really enjoy but are too much work to make on a regular basis, like pulled pork, green vegetable tart, potstickers, saag paneer, blintzes and more.
Generally how my week of freezer cooking goes is I go shopping on the weekend so my husband can stay home with the kids. Then on Monday and Tuesday I do two long days of cooking. On Wednesday I take a break to rest and catch up on other stuff that has fallen by the wayside while I've been cooking. Then I take half a day on Thrusday and Friday to finish up odds and ends. It's important to note that while it takes this long for me, it may not for you. As I said I like to freezer cook because I like to be able to make some of the more time consuming dishes that I enjoy. However, if you stick to easier meals and don't pick any big projects like I do then you could probably finish in way less time. This is why everyone needs to make freezer cooking their own.
Pros
- you can go months at a time without cooking
- efficient use of time by making large batches
- save money by buying in bulk
- give you plenty of time to do freezer cooking again instead of being on a schedule
Cons
- large initial investment of both money and time
- requires a large freezer
- if you end up not liking something you still have multiple batches of it in the freezer
Make 2 to 3 large batches once a month
As I said above I take a week to cook a ton of food. Often I will not cook again for 2 to 3 months, but when I do I don't do the full week again. After the 2 to 3 months the freezer isn't empty, but it is getting lower and lacking in variety. So I will take one day and make 2 to 3 large batches of food and freeze them to keep the freezer going and add variety. Ideally I would do this every month so the freezer never gets low. In reality I have trouble finding the time and desire to cook when I have plenty of food in the freezer. I end up doing one week of cooking in the fall to stock up for winter and one day in spring to do the same for summer, adding meals intermittently in between. This method could also be a way to gradually build a freezer stash if you want more than doubling the occasional meal but less than full on once-a-month-cooking.
Pros
- smaller time and money commitment
- more freezer food than doubling meals
- lots of variety
- efficient use of time and money by making large batches
Cons
- need to start with a freezer full of meals if you want to be able to eat from it regularly
- need to do it regularly to keep the freezer going
Making 1 large batch a week
As I said I usually favor 2 weeks of cooking a year with smaller cooking interspersed throughout. However when my third baby was born I didn't have the time or energy to cook for an entire week at a time. I did have a freezer full of meals though, so I made it a goal to add to my freezer once a week to keep it from getting low. One day a week I would make 1 large batch of something, divide it up and freeze it. This worked well in that I was able to keep my freezer full, and we always had easy meals to eat. I did feel like I spent a lot of time cleaning though. One of the things I like about freezer cooking is that I don't have to do much cleaning to keep the kitchen clean. That seems to be the main area I fall behind. It worked well for me in the year following having a baby, but it's not one that I would do again. Once again though, this depends on the person. This may be the perfect freezer cooking scenario for you. This would also be a good way to gradually build up a freezer stash.
Pros
- smaller time and money commitment
- more freezer food than doubling meals
- lots of variety
- efficient use of time and money by making large batches
Cons
- need to start with a freezer full of meals if you want to be able to eat from it regularly
- need to do it regularly to keep the freezer going
- still feels like a lot of cooking and cleaning
So there you are, a variety of methods to do freezer cooking. Hopefully this can help you work out the way that works best for you.
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