Curry Chicken Buns

I have long been a fan of Asian dumplings.  Unfortunately, they can be hard to find in many places across the US, which means I have to learn to make my own.  I love these curry buns, and they are one of my favorite meals.  Spicy curry chicken is wrapped in a soft, light bun and then brushed with a honey glaze, that little bit of sweetness contrasting to the spicy filling within.  They are amazing.

Italian Wedding Soup

I love this soup so much!  It's warm, delicious, hearty and comforting. I've always been a fan of Italian wedding soup, but I've found ordering it tends to be hit or miss.  Sometimes it's really good and sometimes not so much.  This is my first time making it, and I'll probably never order it again.  The homemade version was so much better than I could have ever expected and better than any version I've had in a restaurant.  I think this is due to the spinach.  When soup is held in a warmer the spinach keeps cooking and loses flavor.  At home the spinach is just barely cooked and tastes fresher. Seriously so good.  And this so easy to make when you already have the meatballs in the freezer.

This recipe calls for the frozen meatballs I wrote about in another post.

Adapted from: Smitten Kitchen

Serves: 4

7 oz cooked and frozen tiny meatballs
8 cups chicken or vegetable stock*
1 cup peeled and diced carrots
3/4 cups orzo
4 cups baby spinach

1. Bring the stock to a boil and add the frozen meatballs and carrots.
2. Once the stock is back to a simmer add the orzo.
3. When the carrots and orzo are cooked and the meatballs are heated through, add the spinach.  Cook until the spinach is just wilted.

*Better than Bouillon is a really good quality stock base that you can just mix with water to make stock.  It's super easy and convenient and available at most grocery stores.

Meatballs

I love meatballs, and these are my favorite.  Not only are they tender, flavorful and delicious, but they are versatile as well.  So far I have five different ways to serve them, but there will probably be more in the future.  The mix of meats is what makes these meatballs so delicious.  I find meatballs made only with beef to be a little dry and tough.  Adding ground pork and veal makes all the difference. I multiply this recipe by six, so I'll have plenty of meatballs for all these different applications

Difficulty: Moderate
Category: Simple Side
Column: EG & EH
Adapted from: Smitten Kitchen

Meatloaf and mashed potatoes

I would have never though of meatloaf as a budget meal until I was shopping for the ingredients to make meatloaf and found a 10 lb package of ground beef for about $20.  Considering that 10 lbs of meat will make 5 batches of meatloaf and that each meatloaf will feed my family for 2 meals with some leftover and that the cost of the other ingredients is low, that means that a meatloaf meal costs less than $3 for my entire family, not including the sides. And meatloaf sides can be inexpensive too.  I always need to have mashed potatoes with my meatloaf, which are cheap.  Add a vegetable side from whatever is on sale and you've got a whole meal.

This inexpensive beef was 80/20 (80% meat, 20% fat).  I usually go for 93/7 so I have less fat cooking out of my meat.  When buying a small amount the 93/7 is not too much more expensive than the 80/20, but when buying in bulk, the 93/7 was almost twice as much.  For that price difference I will deal with the extra fat!  I didn't want super greasy meatloaf, so I cooked my meatloaf on an oven-safe rack inside a sheet pan.  All the grease drained into the pan.

Jambalaya

I see that I haven't posted since July! Ack! As much as I'd like to say I'm going to start posting regularly from here on out, I've said that before, and I've come to realize that I'm going to need to accept that, for me, posting about freezer meals is irregular by nature.  After all, the whole reason I started to do freezer meals was because I didn't have the time and energy to make a decent meal for my family every day.  It stands to reason that I would also struggle to find the time and energy to post blog entries on a regular basis.

When life gets really busy and tiring, like it did for the past couple months, I don't add a lot to my freezer or experiment.  I depend on the meals I've already made and frozen to get me through.  This means I don't have new stuff to write. Plus as I've mentioned before, the development of freezer meal recipes can be long.  Sometimes it's a year or more between my first attempt and the final recipe.

So while I can't promise regular posting.  Hopefully these recipes can still be helpful to you as they come.  It is certainly helpful to me to have a freezer full of delicious food when life gets particularly busy.  Please be patient and keep coming back!  I have several new recipes to post.  Plus I'm going to do a Thanksgiving series!

Baked Ziti

Last year I made a meatball pasta baked dish.  I haven't posted yet because I haven't quite gotten the proportions right, but it is one of my favorite freezer meals.  Due to having a baby recently I haven't had the energy this year to make it.  That many meatballs is a big project.  Instead I made this baked ziti.  It is much faster and easier but has a similar flavor profile.  I will eventually get back to my meatball casserole, but this delicious meal fills that slot for now.

Difficulty: Easy
Category: Simple Side
Recipe Column: DN

Get the recipe at Smitten Kitchen.  I pretty much make the recipe as is.  Undercook the pasta slightly and rinse it with cold water after draining to stop the cooking process.  Also I don't bother to cut up the spinach.  I just add the whole leaves to the sauce.

To freeze:
Divide the pasta into containers, bags or pans. If you do pans you can top with shredded cheese before freezing.  I use containers to save space in my freezer, so I leave the cheese off.

To serve:
Thaw the pasta in the fridge overnight.  If you haven't already, transfer the mixture to a pan and top with shredded cheese.  I use a pre-shredded Italian mix.  Cover with foil and bake at 375 degrees until heated all the way through, about 45 minutes.  Serve with salad or vegetables.

Coconut Green Curry

I have been working on this recipe for about a year and a half now.  The first time I made this it was very tasty, but I wasn't fully satisfied with the proportions of the different ingredients to each other.  I wanted to try again but still had five batches of the original in the freezer that needed to be eaten first.  When we finally did finish eating all of them it took me a while to get around to making it again.  So, here we are a year and a half later, and I am finally posting the recipe.  This is why posting here is so irregular.  The development process for freezer meal recipes is a long one.  This curry is delicious though.   I think it's worth the wait.

Difficulty: Moderate
Category: Simple Side
Recipe Column: CF

Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole

As I mentioned the last time I posted, I recently had a baby.  I'm still doing my freezer meals.  After all it's the easiest way to stay on top of feeding my family.  But since I currently have a needy, helpless and unpredictable little person to take care of those freezer meals need to be easy in every sense.  They need to be easy to put together before freezing since I have little time and energy for cooking right now.  They need to be easy to cook or reheat on the night that I'm serving the meal since the baby is most likely to be fussy right when it's time to start making dinner.  They even need to be easy to eat since I will most likely be eating the meal one handed while the other snuggles a tiny baby who doesn't want to be put down.  Oh and they need to be delicious.  Fortunately this casserole meets all of these requirements.

Adapted from: Joy Filled Eats
Difficulty: Easy
Category: Simple Side
Recipe Column: DL

Chicken Tikka Masala

My freezer meals have come in very handy lately as I just had a baby two weeks ago.  I am very fortunate to have wonderful family and friends that have helped us with meals since the baby was born, but the freezer meals came in very handy during the last months of my pregnancy when I had no energy to do anything let alone cooking.  I haven't actually cooked in months, and I've been totally coasting on my freezer meals.  This has been great for me but not so great for my blog.  I do have a few new things in the freezer that I still need to post about.  I hope to get to them soon and then start generating more freezer meals.

I have recently discovered another advantage to freezer meals besides being able to eat a delicious dinner when I don't have energy to cook.  I have three young children now and like many young children, they are not always the best about trying new things or eating their dinner.  However, young children become more open to trying foods with repeated exposure, and it turns out that having multiple batches of the same thing in my freezer means repeated exposure.  After the same meal has made enough appearances my kids will generally try it.  After more appearances and trying the food, sometimes they even like it.  Chicken Tikka Masala is the perfect example.  My daughter was initially reluctant to try it, but after several exposures she has declared it her favorite meal.  It's one of my favorites too.

Meatballs and Gravy

I think of meatballs, gravy  and mashed potatoes as basic American, comfort food.  There's nothing fancy about this dish, but it is delicious.  It is also fairly inexpensive, especially if you can find the meat on sale, and it freezes well.  It doesn't have to be served with just mashed potatoes though.  We had it with mashed cauliflower which was just as tasty.

Chicken Wraps

These are a pretty tasty summer meal.  One big advantage for this dish is that it already has a lot of vegetables cooked into it before freezing. They're easy to prepare and easy to reheat and serve.

Difficulty: Easy
Category: Simple Side
Recipe Column: AI

Get the recipe here:

Asian Lettuce Wraps

To freeze:
Cool the chicken mixture and divide between desired number of containers or bags.  Freeze.

To serve:
Thaw the chicken in the refrigerator overnight.  Reheat to 140 degrees in a frying pan.  Serve with rice and Boston butterhead lettuce leaves. 

Black Bean Salad

As I have been posting recipes to this blog I have noticed that we really like black beans and avocados.  Already I have a few recipes with featuring these two ingredients in different configurations and there's probably more to come.  Black beans and avocados are both tasty and nutritious.  Plus beans are a cheap source of protein, so we'll probably keep finding different ways to eat this delicious combination.

Black bean salad is the latest of these recipes.  It's really easy to put this in a crockpot and let it simmer away while you work on your other freezer meals.  It's nice to have a low maintenance dish in the rotation as making freezer meals can be a big process.

Lentil Joes

I realize that just seeing the the word "lentil" is going to turn some people off, and that would be a shame.  Admittedly, this dish is not a hit with everyone I have ever served it to, but I think it is delicious and the majority of people I have made it for have enjoyed it too.

I even featured a sample of this in a class I taught about inexpensive protein sources.  Over a year later I ran into a lady who had attended the class.  She brought up the class and the lentil joes enthusiastically and said she had been making them regularly ever since even though she had been skeptical initially.  So, I heartily recommend giving these a try even if you're not sure about them.  They freeze great and are very inexpensive at about $0.80 a serving.

Chicken Wings Two Ways

I felt a little silly making these as a freezer meal.  Both of these sauces are very easy to make, so tossing them with some wings and baking makes a pretty easy meal.  Why bother to freeze something that is so simple in the first place?  There are two reasons I decided to make this a freezer meal.  The first was to take advantage of sales my grocery store has on chicken wings.  I figured I could buy a bunch when they're on sale, prepare and freeze them and then have chicken wings regularly for less than the normal cost.  The second reason is that I figured no matter how simple these are to throw together it's easier still to simply empty a bag onto a pan and throw it in the oven.

I am so glad I decided to freeze these.  Yes, they are very simple, but that means a large batch is easy to make.  I underestimated how nice it would be to just put these in the oven for dinner with no gathering of ingredients or measuring anything.  I didn't have to wash anything except the pan that I cooked them in.  It turns out that something super simple still makes a great freezer meal.  It's easy to prep, which is nice when I have other more time consuming dishes to make and freeze, and it's easy, breezy for a delicious weeknight meal.  I highly recommend these.

Butter Chicken (Murgh Makhani)

Occasionally someone asks me what my favorite thing to cook is and I generally tell them Indian food.  The process of making Indian food is very enjoyable as it requires a lot of ingredients with various and amazing smells.  Generally you start by cooking aromatics like onions, garlic, peppers and fresh ginger.  Then you add spices like cumin, garam masala, cinnamon, chili powder, tumeric, and on and on.  Each stage of the process introduces new aromas and they continue to change as the aromatics and the spices continue to cook.  Finally you add the ingredients that make up the bulk of sauce and simmer.  The scent continues to change.  All together it makes for a wonderful sensory experience.  Plus at the end I have delicious Indian food to eat, and that always makes me happy.

Unfortunately, making Indian food is a time consuming and labor intensive process.  All of those aromatics have to be peeled and minced.  The many spices must be found in the cupboard and measured.  Often the meat requires a marinade.  Plus the cooking process if generally fairly long.   Generally when I make Indian food I have had to set aside an entire afternoon to work on it.  It was a happy day when I realized that some of my favorite Indian dishes would freeze very well.

Sausage Potatoes

This is another recipe that I was making long before I started doing once a month cooking and was delighted to discover freezes well. They make a convenient addition to a once a month cooking plan when you have a lot of work to do because they don't require much in the way of equipment.  They don't need to be cooled either, which is helpful.   Plus they're super cheap.

I usually post my recipes as a single batch so you can multiply them to meet your needs.  However, this one is a quadruple batch due to the small amounts of tomato paste and mustard.  You can change the multiple for this recipe in row 4  of column D, run the macro and it will give you a scaled list of ingredients to follow in the 'Current Recipes' tab if you don't want to make 4 batches.

They're not much to look at, but they are very tasty.

Chicken Milanese

When I started getting into freezer cooking I first looked to dishes that I already made regularly and enjoyed to see if they might freeze well.  This chicken dish has long been a favorite of mine. Obviously the salad will not freeze well but the chicken can be breaded and frozen.  The salad is so easy to throw together that having the chicken prepped makes this a very easy meal indeed.  Plus this chicken could go very well with any number of salads.

Update: I've come up with other ways to use fried, breaded chicken cutlets.  Check them out!