Your freezer is your friend when meal planning for easy cooking.
Growing up, the freezer at my house was a frozen graveyard. Meats and treats alike were shoved into the icy box, sitting there until they were covered in freezer burn so badly the food was hardly recognizable. For many years as an adult, I overcorrected with the exact opposite habit. I avoided freezing food other than ice cream and the occasional emergency personal sized frozen pizza.
That worked for me until the pandemic, when I, like so many others around the world, did one last food shopping in preparation to not leave my house for what could have been months. At that point, I had no choice but to partner with my freezer.
Since March of 2020, I have developed several strategies to use my freezer strategically and it has indeed become my friend. Now that I have a healthy relationship with my freezer, I use it to assist in freezer friendly meal prepping in order to save time, money, and food. Now I know: the freezer is not something to be feared! You just need a plan on how and why you put food into the freezer, and most importantly, when you plan to take that food back out to use. Now when food goes into my freezer as part of my meal planning, it is typically for one of the following three reasons, and there is a plan for when that food will come out and be used at a (not so distant) later date.
Freezer strategy #1: Freeze fresh fruit, vegetables, and meat
Save money and reduce waste by freezing fresh fruit and vegetables either when they are in season or when you have leftovers you aren’t going to use in another meal that week. I often have extra onions and peppers, for example, that I can dice up and freeze so they are ready to go for omelets or stir fry at a later date. The same goes for any vegetables that you can typically get in the frozen food section of your grocery store: broccoli, carrots, squash, beans, corn, etc. For the fruits, I am a big fan of freezing berries when they are in season to use year round in smoothies or overnight oats. Both of those make great freezer meals for breakfast.
The other way to use your freezer for fresh food is portioning raw meats to freeze to use later. This can help you save money by buying in bulk at a lower per pound cost. It is important to take the step to portion out these larger purchases into smaller quantities so it is easy to take them out later to defrost and use in a meal. Be sure to store in freezer quality bags and squeeze out all the air for the best results. Label and date your food and keep it in one area of the freezer so you can quickly inventory it later when planning next week’s meals.
Freezer strategy #2: Freeze meal components
I use this strategy to both save money, time and to enhance the quality of my future meals. I almost always have homemade sauce in my freezer, portioned out into servings of sauce and 1-2 cup packages of broth. I use the sauce when I don’t feel like cooking and I can make a quick pot of pasta and be done. I’ll also use it to make other meals that need sauce, such as lasagna with meat sauce or penne ala vodka. As good as some jarred sauces are, nothing compares to homemade tomato sauce.
Chicken stock and cooked chicken are other meal components I keep in my freezer to help in other meals. Stock is great to cook and flavor rice instead of water and to make quick soups. Cooked chicken can be used to make chicken soup, tacos or stir fry without the fuss of cooking fresh chicken every time. I love to cook a full chicken at the beginning of the month to save the meat for later and use the bones for stock.
More recently I’ve discovered freezing pesto, both in cup sizes for pasta and in ice cube trays as a seasoning. I am also interested in freezing fresh herbs like basil or parsley in oil. I also have been saving my veggie scraps to make and freeze vegetable broth for some truly vegetarian recipes like butternut squash and other smooth vegetable soups.
Freezer strategy #3: Freeze complete meals
The third strategy includes preparing full meals, either cooked to be later reheated, or prepped ahead and frozen to be cooked at a later day. Fully cooked meals like lasagna, soups, chili, or single portions of meals like chicken, potatoes, and vegetables (think homemade TV dinners but homemade, healthy freezer meals!) are all great things to have ready to take out and reheat for a no effort meal at a later date.
The other make ahead method is to combine freezer friendly meals uncooked that can later be taken out of the freezer and placed directly into an oven or slow cooker. This technique is great for full meals like casseroles and soups that you can prep ahead all in one bag and cook later.
Final tips on freezer friendly meal planning
The key with all of these strategies is to do them with purpose. Have a plan, or at least an idea of when you are going to take the food back out of the freezer and use them within the next couple months. Most people don’t need to prep that far in advance, and the more short term planning with your freezer you can do, the less of a risk there is of wasting your efforts with food too far frozen to be eaten later.
There are always a lot of questions about how long food stays good in the freezer. I know people will say foods can stay a lot longer than what is recommended by federal food safety agencies, and I certainly have taken something out of the freezer that is past those recommendations but doesn’t look like it has built up freezer burn or extra ice around it. However, I have come to develop the habit of leaving foods in the freezer for as short as possible through the use of a freezer inventory and a meal planning habit. The extra effort is worth it in order not to waste food and to achieve a higher quality, aka tastier meal.
