Wife and I like batch cooking meals so we can have something quick on an evening without resorting to microwave dinners. At the moment most of the things we go for are beef based:
- Cottage pie filling
- Steak pie filling
- Chili Con Carne
- Bolagnase
- Thai Green Curry
- Chicken Caserole
I'm thinking we should be a bit healthier and/or more adventurous so I thought I'd solicit your views on here - anyone got any reccomendations on things to try that freeze well?
(or just any other time saving ways to make nice home cooked meals)
Thanks!
Soups
Fish pie.
Chicken based home made curry,
I make batches of tomato based pasta sauce so just cook meat/veg of choice and boil pasta. When you need
Your right though.. quite a lot of our batch cooked stuff is beef..! Lasagne, meatballs got the afore mentioned pasta sauce, spag Bol (well without the spag!!)
(Roasted vegetable) lasagne
Just done a lamb tagine in the slow cooker with enough to put 2 meals in the freezer.
There's staples you can do a lot with, the likes of slow cooked lamb shanks can be easily made into something good and North African, as can pulled pork, pretty cheap too.
Roasted and mashed squash can be frozen and mixed with some nice roquefort and pasta easily.
Tomato pasta sauces are a freezer favourite in our house, as is a simple bechamel.
But my freezer favourite is pizza, the faffing in the dough, so I make loads of them, cook them and slice, they reheat really well.
Hard to beat a good omelette for a speedy mid week night supper. Top with whatever you like. About as little faff as it gets.
Edit: Nevermind, I missed the freezer and batch cooking part.
Soups
Beat me to it.
Flesh out a Rogan Josh with a few handfuls of red lentils - really adds some good texture and bulk as well as helping reduce the meat content.
Edit - maybe just make a big old batch of Dhal as well?
I generally just cook for myself.
But I make 6 portions of every meal I cook. Freeze 5 for dinners/lunch
For something different, try burritos. Mix up some veg.meat with seasoning, beans, rice, salsa etc
Eat some, make the others into wraps once it's cooled. Maybe fix them with snapped in half toothpicks. Wrap in clingfilm and put in freezer.
Take it out in the morning and good to go for lunch. Easy to microwave at work
Thanks all, good suggestions so far, I need to get experimenting! I also make an onion gravy I do with sausage and mash, this reminds me I need to try freezing that. The suggestions of fish pie and soup have got me wondering if I could freeze a Cullen skink... (perhaps not super healthy!)
IME anything sauce based is fine, but anything solid (cottage pie, lasagne) is best frozen before its been in the oven, then taken out in the morning to defrost before cooking.
Pretty much everything gets frozen in our house!
