Happy Monday friends! We are cleaning up after a busy festival weekend. Everyone is super tired in my house. On days like these it is great to have a quick and easy meal on hand. With school back in session and fall sports starting, it is very hard to keep up with everything. Preparing meals ahead of time is so helpful!
That is exactly why I have been recently working on stocking my freezer. I usually like to double recipes and put one into the freezer, but this time I decided to prepare {8} meals at once. This is great for a weekend project. In fact, you should try it this holiday weekend! Here are some of the things that helped me and might work well for you too!
The meals that I chose are all using ground beef. We will rotate other dinner options with chicken and pork and meatless, but for this large batch cooking, it just made sense to use only one meat.
I began with 10 lbs of hamburger and was able to prepare 8 freezer meals. In one day! Hooray!!! Most of the ingredients in my meals were easy to find and regular pantry staples.
These Amazon pans are the perfect size! They might be a touch too small for a big lasagna, but typical weeknight dinners fit perfectly. Buying them in bulk like this works well as they are perfect for potlucks and delivering food to friends.
The frozen casseroles should be thawed before cooking. But who is organized enough to remember to get them out of the freezer ahead of time?! Just bake your casserole with the foil lid on for an extra 30 minutes straight from the freezer.
Check out the recipes I used:
Pioneer Woman All Purpose Meatballs– (3 meals) These are great because they become so many dishes. I have used these for spaghetti and meatballs, sweedish meatballs, and sweet and sour meatballs. To make the prep of these even easier, I like to bake in the oven on a cookie sheet instead of browning on the stove top.
Pioneer Woman Lasagna Roll Ups– (3 meals) This recipe was doubled in order to make 3 generous meals for my family of 6. These are a great alternative to a big lasagna. You may freeze them in whatever quantity you like. They can be frozen in smaller pans if you are cooking for just 1 or 2!
Taco Rice Casserole– (2 meals) I wanted another dish that included rice and this one was a hit. It was not too spicy for the kids and included veggies!
Total= 8 freezer meals
Getting out the large electric skillet was a big help in browning the hamburger. This was all the meat needed for the meals excluding the beef for the meatballs.
Pack up the meatballs into freezer safe bags and place in freezer. Make more than 8 meals by separating them into smaller quantities. Each of these bags contained 25 meatballs. They are fully cooked after you bake them. Smply pull them out any night or toss them into the crockpot in the morning with sauce for meatball subs!
I also whipped up some zucchini muffins….and I was tired! It was a big day but will pay off this soccer season!
If you could share additional tips and tricks with us, that would be great! My next project will be chicken recipes! It would be awesome to hear your favorite freezer meal recipes and ways that you save time in the evenings!
Happy Cooking!
-Kelly
