Ideas for meals to freeze that are easy to make and reheat?
It doesn’t look like I will go into labor today, so I’m going to stock the freezer full of meals that we can reheat over the next several weeks. Casseroles are easy to make, but take forever to cook once they are frozen (unless one of us remembers to defrost it first). Any ideas? I was thinking about precooking taco meat, spaghetti sauce with meat and noodles in a ziplock bag, that kind of stuff. I need easy to make and fast, quick and healthy to reheat. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
I just made a big lasagna and casseroles.
Yes you are right they take forever to cook once frozen,
so what I did was cooked them, cut them up into portions for my husband and I and froze those, so we can just microwave the already cooked containers.
Hope that helps a little and goooood luck hopefully its any day for you now
hehe……… VEggie soup…………Beef stews…cassroles…lasgna…Google some mo.re
Lasagna I always make a huge batch and freeze individual slices in a zip lock storage freezer container.
Spaghetti sauce and get some frozen cheese ravioli, I also make large pots of soups and freeze those.
I think I might be a freezer maniac.
Theres only the two of us right now and with grocery prices right now it saves us money in the long run and its easy to just pull it out and defrost it.
Before I read your details, I was going to suggest pre-cooking hamburger meat. You can freeze it plain or add the taco seasonings, spaghetti sauce, etc. and freeze it that way. I would not add the noodles to the meat for the spaghetti-it does not take long to prepare the noodles anyway. With pre-cooked burger, you could quickly prepare a variety of meals. Another suggestion if you add the seasonings to the meat before freezing would be chili.
Any stew or soup will work. Cook the meat now and freeze, then later just worry about doing the rice. Soups freeze very well.
If you want to get more complicated, and have a vaccum sealer, you can go as far as grilling steaks and chicken, burgers, etc. and freezing them already cooked. If vaccum sealed, they will taste as good defrosted and warmed as they do fresh.
Something that is not pre-cooked but quick that I like to do is to get boneless/skinless chicken breasts and wrap each one individually in aluminum foil pouches. You can customize each pouch with the veggies, spices, etc. that the eater likes. It takes about 15 minutes to prep, and then toss it in the oven for an hour and it is ready. Cleanup is easy, as well.
Congratulations on your impending arrival!
chicken noodle soup, chili, spagetti (like you mentioned), vegetable soup, Taco meat is a great idea