How I Made 11 Freezer Meals in Only 2 Hours!

I LOVE freezer meals! It is such a good feeling having a freezer stocked with meals that you know you can pull out at a moment’s notice. They are great for low-energy days, super-busy days, and days when dinner doesn’t go as planned and you need a plan B! They’re also great for unexpected company, illness, and new babies!

Which brings me to my latest freezer meal session! Baby #2 is due to arrive in about 8 weeks, so it was time to do some serious freezer cookin’!

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I’ve done freezer cooking a lot of different ways and prepared a lot of different kinds of dishes. Sometimes I do casseroles, sometimes I do pieces of meals (e.g. taco meat, spaghetti sauce, beans, etc), and sometimes I do dump & freeze meals (everything gets thrown together in a bag).

For this session I chose to do crockpot dump meals and grill packs. I chose these methods for two reasons. 1) I don’t have a lot of time right now, so I wanted a lot of meals with very little prep. 2) It’s still going to be summer when baby comes, so I knew we wouldn’t be in the mood for soups or casseroles.

Most of the time when I do a big freezer meal session I will stick to one protein. Maybe two if one of them is something simple like a crockpot roast. It just simplifies things and makes my cooking more efficient. This session I chose to do chicken.

So we headed to Costco and got a BUNCH of boneless, skinless chicken thighs (my favorite!).

Here are the recipes I used for this freezer meal session:

Slow Cooker Freezer Meals

• Sweet & Sour Pulled Chicken (Sandwiches)

  2 lbs chicken
  1/4 cup soy sauce
  1/4 rice vinegar
  1 T brown sugar
  1 T tomato paste
  1 tsp crushed garlic
  1 tsp chopped ginger

  When ready to cook:
  1. Pour contents of the bag into your slow cooker.
  2. Cover and cook on HIGH for 4 hours or LOW for 6 hours.
  3. Remove chicken and shred. Return to the slow cooker and mix with the juice.
  4. Serve on hawaiian rolls.

• Chicken Philly Cheesesteak

  3 T corn starch
  1 cup chicken broth
  2 lbs chicken, cut into strips
  1 large onion, sliced
  3 bell peppers, cut into strips
  1/2 tsp black pepper
  1 clove garlic, minced
  6 slices provolone cheese

  To freeze:
  1. Mix corn starch into chicken broth (I did this right in the bag)
  2. Place the rest of the ingredients in the bag except for the cheese.To cook:
  1. Pour contents of the bag into your slow cooker.
  2. Cook on LOW for 6 hours, or until chicken is cooked and peppers are soft.
  3. Lay the cheese over the mixture.
  4. Cook on LOW and additional 10 minutes or until cheese is melted.
  5. Serve on rolls.

  ** Note: You may not want to include the peppers to your freezer bag and add fresh peppers when you get ready to cook. Ideally, that is what I would choose to do (freezing the peppers first will change the texture), but since I was making these for right after a new baby, I wanted them to be as all-inclusive as possible!

• Ranch Chicken Tacos
  

  2 lbs chicken
  3 T olive oil
  2 T red wine vinegar
  1 taco seasoning packet
  (I make my own using this recipe from Life As Mom)
  1 dry ranch seasoning packet
  (I made my own: 1 T dried parsley, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp onion powder, 1 tsp onion flakes, 3/4 tsp dill, 1/2 tsp black pepper, and 1/2 tsp salt.)

  Mix all ingredients together in your freezer bag.

  When ready to cook:
  1. Pour contents of bag into your slow cooker.
  2. Cook on LOW for 6-8 hours.
  3. Shred chicken, return to cooker, and mix with the juices and spices.

Grill Pack Freezer Meals

• Asian Chicken Marinade
  

  3/4 cup rice vinegar
  6 T soy sauce
  4 cloves garlic, minced
  1 tsp crushed red pepper
  1/2 cup oil
  2 T sesame oil
  ~6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (the beauty of these grill packs is that you don’t have to be exact! If you find that there’s more marinade than you need, reduce the amounts, or vice versa!)

  Mix all ingredients together in a freezer bag.

• Dijon Chicken Marinade
  

  2/3 cup Dijon mustard
  2 tsp cayenne pepper (or according to your family’s taste!)
  1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  1/2 cup oil
  ~ 6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

  Mix all ingredients together in a freezer bag.

Final Results:

When cooking freezer meals, I always at least double each recipe. Since you’re already getting all the ingredients out and doing the prep work and cooking anyway, you might as well spend just a tad more time assembling two batches while you’re at it. It’s a much more time-efficient way to prepare freezer meals.

For this session, I doubled each recipe, except for the Asian Chicken Marinade, which I tripled.

Final results:
2 bags Sweet & Sour Pulled Chicken Sandwiches (all I need are the buns)
2 bags Chicken Philly Cheesesteak (all I need are the buns)
2 bags Ranch Chicken Tacos (all I need are the tortillas or shells)
2 bags Dijon Chicken, ready to grill
3 bags Asian Chicken, ready to grill
= 11 freezer meals!

There is so much more I could say about freezer meals. If you want a really good freezer meal cookbook, I highly recommend Jessica Fisher’s Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook! It’s full of real, down-to-earth recipes that your family will love, and her teaching at the start of the book completely revolutionized how I was going about preparing freezer meals!

Also, be watching for more of my freezer meal sessions! Sign up for my weekly email newsletter to make sure you don’t miss out!

Check out some of my other recipe & cooking related posts:

• 10 Simple But Delicious Ways to Prepare Asparagus
• 4 Weeks to Glorious Gardening: What To Do With All That Produce {Week 4}
• 4 Weeks to Glorious Gardening: All About Herbs {Week 3}
• How to Create a Menu Plan That Works For You!
• Why I Love Menu Planning, and Why You Should, Too!