10 Freezer Meals

Next week I go back for my final year of school! WOOHOO!!! Whenever school starts my work and school schedules end up taking over my life! Brad also already has a super crazy busy schedule with the business, bishopric and his teaching schedule starting again in September. 

We are so grateful and happy to be involved in so many cool things but we definitely feel the effects of such crazy schedules mostly when it comes to our meals! We usually get home and then realize we haven't even thought about what we are going to eat! In preparation for this crazy time Brad and I have put together a monthly menu with three meals each week that we are going to try to prepare, in between we plan to use our freezer meals and leftovers!

I did a lot of research before shopping and preparing these meals and I learned a few very important things!

• Don't try to tackle 40+ freezer meals your first time. Try 5-10 meals first, when you feel like your recipes were successful, then try to take on more!

• Try to find recipes that use a lot of similar ingredients, it cuts down your budget to be able to buy in bulk and it's a little less confusing and time consuming.

• That being said, make sure you try recipes you and your family will actually want to eat, it will save you no time if no one wants to eat the finished product!

• From what I have read it works much better to just take the extra couple of minutes to make the pasta or rice fresh when you prepare the meal, (lasagna excluded) most cooked pasta just ends up mushy after it has been frozen.

• If you freeze the meals laying down first, once they are frozen you can line them up in your freezer like books on a bookshelf.

Now that you have heard my rant on freezer meals, here are the recipes I used! I doubled each of the recipes so each one made two freezer meals.

DISCLAIMER: I have used all of the recipes before but never in a freezer meal, according to my research all the ingredients should unthaw and cook just fine but I will post an update after we try a couple of them.

UPDATE: We have now officially tried all of these recipes, our favorite was the beef stroganoff, no changes need to be made to that one. We also really liked the bbq chicken but we recommend just doing the chicken and cooking veggies or potatoes on the side. The beef stew is really great as well but the peppers tend to get a little mushy after being frozen and cooked so I would recommend just leaving those out. The man pleasing chicken was definitely MAN pleasing, Brad liked it a lot more than me, just not my taste. And the orange chicken was good but just missing soothing that I couldn't put my finger on! Good luck!

Freezer Meal Recipes

BBQ Chicken

2 Cups Potatoes

2 Cups Red & Green Peppers

1 Cup Carrots

2 Cups Onion

2 T Flour

1.5 lbs Chicken

2 Cloves Garlic,

Salt, Pepper, Seasonings

Thaw, dump bag plus BBQ sauce into crock pot and cook on low 6-8 hours

Orange Chicken

2 Cups Carrots

2 Cups Bell Peppers

1 lb Cubed Chicken

3 Cloves Garlic

Salt, Pepper, Seasonings

8 oz Orange Juice Concentrate

Thaw, cook on low in crock pot for 4-6 hours, serve on rice

Man Pleasing Chicken

2 Cups Red & Green Bell Peppers

1 Cup Carrots

2 Cups Onion

2 T Flour

2 lbs Chicken Thighs

2 Cloves Garlic

Salt, Pepper, Seasonings

Thaw, add bag + 3/4 cup of Dijon Mustard, 1/4 cup Maple Syrup, and 1 T Apple Cider Vinegar into a glass dish, cover with tinfoil and cook at 450 until done. Serve w/ Rice or Pasta.

Beef Stroganoff

3 lb Chuck Roast, cubed

1 Yellow Onion

1 Green Pepper

1 T Worcestershire Sauce

1 1/2 Beef Broth

1 T Ketchup

1/3 C Flour

6-7 T Apple Juice or Water

1/2 C Sour Cream

Salt, Pepper, Garlic, Seasonings

Thaw, cook for 7-9 hours on low or 4-5 hours on high, Stir in sour cream right before serving, serve over pasta, rice or potatoes.

Beef Stew

3 lbs steak or roast, cubed

4 C Red Potatoes

2 Envelopes Beef Stew Mix

1 Envelope onion soup mix

2 8oz Cans Tomato Sauce

2 T Brown Sugar

2 C Carrots

1 C Onions

1 C Peppers

Beef Bouillon

Salt, Pepper, Seasoning

Thaw, add water cook on low 6-8 hours, season to taste.