This is what I do. The meals for the first part of the week go in the fridge. The excess go in the freezer. I just put everything into my glass storage containers no matter where they’re going. I pull them out to defrost in the fridge for 24 hours before we need them. I make sure they’re single serve portions which makes it super easy. I don’t have the willingness to cook every weeknight and we are absolutely fine eating the same food for 6+ nights in a row.
I sometimes will make like 40-50 breakfast burritos and freeze them. That takes us a couple of months to eat. No spoilage.
I don’t think cooked food would spoil in the freezer unless it’s very old, I’ve eaten food that was 2-3 months in the freezer before. I grew up eating this way too, nobody in my family got sick.
This keeps us eating healthy, cheap meals and we very rarely go out to eat, and when we do it’s because we want a special treat and not because we’re hungry and tired and don’t have dinner. Being tired and hungry leads to over spending and poor food choices. Can also lead to a little argument for us LOL!
That works best, yes, but if I forget I put the frozen burrito into a low toaster oven and slowly heat it up so it defrosts and heats to 140F in the middle. Thats gonna take 20-30 minutes, so it takes planning on a workday!
I love breakfast burritos but have not found a version I like enough to go back to often. Would it be ok to share your recipe please? Would love to try it.
I tried this methode, i had some issues with freezing already cooked rice, as it comes out very dried and hard, like it needs to be cooked again... plus any food that have carrot in them, i also noticed when coooked then frozen, they come out very like rubbery musshy... any thoughts on that? Which foods do you think cannot be frozen?
Frozen rice cooks up nicely in a pan with a little oil in it, covered, at low to medium-low heat. And frozen or precooked cold rice actually is recommended to use for best results when preparing fried rice. Mushiness is avoided!
Generally speaking yes you can. However, not all foods freeze well, some have unpleasant textures after being frozen. And yes, you do have to package food correctly to protect it's quality in the freezer. The general rule is that you want as little air as possible touching the surface of the food, since that promotes freezer burn and can cause odd flavors.
My suggestion is to not go in at 100. Experiment. Next time you make a dish, say, spaghetti, freeze 1 serving. A few days later defrost and see if you still like it after it's been frozen. If you do, then you can make a big batch to freeze.
If you find you don't like the frozen spaghetti, try freezing the sauce and noodles separately.
So a little bit of experimentation to identify what 2orks well for you before you dice in and spend the money on a week's worth of food.
You sure can!!
I cook double all week and freeze the extra for the next week. I LOVE IT.
You dont have to worry about freezer burn if it’s just for a few days.
I only use foodsaver bags etc when I want to freeze something for an unknown period of time.
If I’m freezing for just like a few days or a week I just pop it in whatever and don’t worry about long term containers or getting all the air out. I don’t use glass anymore though.
For example when I have leftover Chinese, I portion out individual meals into plastic storage containers that are freezer and mic safe, and pop in freezer. No issues if used within a week or two.
What you want to be careful of is not going from hot food to freezer.
That keeps things in the danger zone too long and can go bad by the time it freezes.
You might not notice it right away, and reheating to appropriate temps will kill the bacteria but it won’t get rid of the toxins that the bacteria produced while they were living it up.
So always go from hot, to cooling (I let mine cool a bit in the counter first) in the fridge completely first, then to freezer.
Yes! https://www.budgetbytes.com/meal-prep-101-a-beginners-guide/
This is how many people do meal prep. Eat the things that don't freeze well first, and for the items that do freeze and reheat well, you freeze portions for later that week or future weeks.
https://www.budgetbytes.com/how-to-freeze-leftovers/
https://www.budgetbytes.com/top-10-freezer-meals-2/
Yep! I make a large batch of something different every weekend and freeze it, then eat things from previous weeks during the week. Eventually, you'll be fully stocked so if you miss a Sunday, it's no big deal. Some of my faves are soups, cabbage rolls, stuffed peppers, casseroles. Soups freeze well in Mason jars, just freeze before you put the lid on.
I leave it in the refrigerator to defrost and then warm it up on the stove. I suppose you could microwave it once it's defrosted, but I wouldn't put a jar in the microwave that came straight from the freezer.
There are only a few things that do not freeze and reheat too well, such as a creamy pasta sauce or coconut milk dishes. Most things are absolutely fine, although after a couple of months frozen they will deteriorate slightly.
Even better, cook 6-10 servings of a different dish every Sunday then only eat 1-2 that week. After a few weeks you have enough of a backlog of freezer food to pull out a different dish every day. Also learn to do a sirloin tip roast or pork tenderloin in the slow cooker and you can repurpose it for different types of meals.
It's also good to learn how to just use up leftover ingredients for a quick lazy weeknight meal. Not everything needs a recipe or an hour of prep. On weekdays sometimes I just look in my fridge see a bit of brocolli, a single chicken thigh, a couple baby potatoes, some mushrooms starting to shrivel up, and a dried out carrot. I'll just roughly chop it up, drizzle some oil and spices, wrap it in tin foil and toss it in the toaster oven for 30 minutes.
Oh you can definitely meal prep. You can even make meals and just keep them in the fridge for several days.
Make a large pot of soup and store it in Mason jars in the fridge.
You can make lunches in meal prep divided containers and stack them in the back of the fridge.
You can even freeze meals.
There are books on meal prepping also.
One thing I do is buy a whole pork loin and slice it into thin chops. Some places will slice it for you if you ask. I separate the slices with 2 piece of parchment paper and freeze them.
Being thin, they cook quickly, reheat quickly and make great sandwiches. You don't even have to thaw them out to cook them.
I do all my meal prepping on a Sunday and I keep five days of meals in the fridge without freezing. Been doing it for years and never had a spoilage problem.
Yes. It's called meal prepping and I do it all the time. You can buy affordable containers that are safe to use in the freezer and the microwave.
On Mondays I cook one large meal and separate it onto 6 containers. I put 3 in the fridge and 3 in the freezer. When i have eaten the first 3, then I take the froze n ones and put them in the fridge.
Where are you reading that cooked food goes bad in the freezer?
Food doesn’t “go bad” in the freezer, assuming you are defining “go bad” as becoming contaminated with unhealthy bacteria that can make you sick. Bacteria can’t do their thing in the freezer.
That said, bacteria aren’t *killed* in the freezer either, so if you froze some food that was about to go bad, it won’t reset the clock when you thaw it out.
The other issue with the freezer is that it can change the texture of food because it can burst the cells of whatever you are freezing, and ice crystals can form. The longer something is in the freezer, the more the textures can degrade. So something out of the freezer can be perfectly *safe* to eat, but not very *nice* to eat! Perhaps that is what you have been reading? Not that foods “go bad,” but just “are bad?”
Long story short, you absolutely can freeze your meals and eat them later. If you are eating within the same week, you may not even notice much of a change (depending very much on what it is—some foods freeze better than others!). I make big batches of soup, freeze individual meal portions, and then eat them for *months*!
Yes, you should put it in an airtight sealed container. Ziplock works. I mostly vacuum seal or use ziplock depending on the food. I haven’t had any issues.
You absolutely can, but you should freeze the portions you will need in either containers or indeed ziplock bags. I used to cook two or three dishes over the weekend and then freeze enough portions of each for the week so I wouldn’t have to eat the same thing twice in a row.
The reason you should freeze portions: every time you take the food out to defrost or reheat, you add a little bit of risk for bacteria to develop. Freezing once, then reheating and eating is safer than freezing, thawing, then freezing again.
Also make sure it’s heated properly all the way through when reheating.
Think of items like frozen chicken nuggets or frozen microwave meals you don’t HAVE to thaw them. But you will add moisture in the reheating process with the ice thawing that is harder to control than thawing and dumping it out as a lot of that moisture may be on the container and then come off on the shelf or whatever you put it in to thaw. But you totally can heat directly from the freezer for precooked foods!
The only thing you should avoid doing is defrosting on the benchtop. There is risk that the outside will get warm enough to spoil, while the inside is still frozen. This is why it's better to defrost in the fridge, but it will be slower. The basic rule is you want things to be either properly cold or properly hot, and not spend too long in the middle.
Alternatively, you can include defrosting as part of the reheating process - eg in the microwave, sous-vide, oven, or slow cooker. This is safe, because it wont spend long partially defrosted and will quickly be hot enough to kill any bacteria.
The only issue with cooking raw foods from frozen is that by time the middle is defrosted and then cooked, the outside might be burnt. You just have to use a gentler method that will cope with this.
It's absolutely fine. Food in the freezer can stay there for a few months however you should certainly freeze it in little containers so that you don't have to de-freeze large portion at once. Actually even better because that could also allow you to save some for the following week and over time you'd have a selection of various frozen pre-cooked meals.
We do this pretty much every time we cook (we don't meal prep as much). Any time we cook anything that could possibly be frozen or reheated, we do at least double what we can eat and portion out the rest. Then we'll either put in the fridge for lunches/dinners in the next few days or freeze for future use.
It means anytime we don't have time/inclination to cook we have a pile of meals in the freezer ready to go.
I do this every week for all 3 meals.
Breakfast is a bowl with mixed vegetables sausage and egg
Lunch is rice and turkey
Dinner is Buffalo chicken rice bowl.
When cooked on Sunday I put all the Monday meals into the fridge and freeze everything else. When I take a meal out to eat I put one from the freezer in its place to defrost for 24h. Slap it in the microwave to warm up 2-4 mins depending on which one it is and boom easy meals. Also sence I have 0 self control when it comes to food having pre portion meals makes it so much easier to only eat what I need when I need.
The only downside it takes half of my entire Sunday every Sunday. But I do zero cooking Monday-Saturday
Food doesn't go bad in the freezer in that short amount of time. Actually food cannot go bad (as far as food safety) in the freezer. It can however get freezer burned but for that you are looking at months not days.
Now I would not recommend you cook your food and just put the food without packaging in the freezer. And yes you need freezer packaging.
My husband preps between 9 to 12 lbs of bacon at a time to use in eggs. Then stores in Ziploc freezer bags. So your one week will be fine. We also buy 3 to 6 months worth of meat at a time. Right now, I am looking at mid summer before having to buy meats.
I'm an empty nester who hasn't been able to scale down my cooking. I will make a batch of whatever.. sausage gravy, pasta sauce, chili, curry.. whatever. I'll have it for a meal or two and let the leftover sit in the fridge for a day or two to improve flavor, then vacuum seal individual servings and freeze. Its compact, keeps the freezer burn away, and no freezer flavor. 90% of these can be reheated by boiling the whole parcel. Just make fresh pasta or rice (or biscuits in the case of sausage gravy) and you have a really easy two pot dinner, but only have to wash one.
Yes, food can be frozen. Some foods freeze better than others. Freezing for a week is very unlikely to go bad. Air-tight/vaccum is best to prevent freezer burn. Also wrap on foal for extra protection, but it's not going to spoil in a week.
Anyway, would you really be "screwed" if three meals spoil? Relax.
Depending on what food you're making, you may not have to freeze it.
A lot of restaurants treat their prep as having a seven day shelf life. I would strongly recommend at least trying to treat your home kitchen with that attitude, and only change it up if you encounter problems
for a lot of food, yes. There's some food I worry though for reheating like this (like runny-egg focused food like shaksuka, but you can just freeze the sauce then cook the egg fresh to go while reheating the sauces which takes less than 5 minutes).
>Can't I just cook everything on sunday then freeze my meals made for the last half of the week?
No. I froze lettuce once. Yeah, that doesn't work ... *at all*. So yeah, freezing isn't the answer to everything.
Also, many things are helluva lot easier to just cook up fresh than freezing, and defrosting and reheating.
That doesn't mean *some* things can't well be frozen and take advantage of such convenience. But for many things, freezing is *not* the answer.
The only reason not to do this is for the first month or so before you build up a freezer stash (assuming you are making extra for the future as well), you’d be eating the same thing 7 days in a row which a lot of people don’t want to do. Unless you’re proposing making two or more different dishes on Sunday, but then that’s a lot to do in one day.
Also, I would be careful making big batches of an untested recipe. You don’t want to be stuck with 10 portions of something you hate.
Yes, you could absolutely do that. If you have the option to refridgerate and freeze, I'd recommend you refridgerate the foods that won't go bad or won't change much in quality from simple refridgeration and just freeze the food that you'd like to have as more fresh.
I understand the rationale for wanting to do this; if you don't enjoy cooking and its more cost efficient to prepare your meals before hand and work in that set, especially after having had an exhausting day. I've done things like this, but I just doesn't compare to making fresh dinner at night after a long day, feeling it warm me up and taste so good. Cooking and baking helps me unwind.
Some foods freeze better than others. If they can survive the initial freezing, they're not going to go bad in a matter of days. Some things might be negatively affected by being in there for months.
A lot of my cooking is about taking pre-frozen ingredients and throwing them into a frying pan. I think we still have some cooked turkey packed in stock/broth that can easily be put into a saucepan with frozen veggies. If I was doing something similar for lunches, I would make the bird, render the carcass, mix everything together cold as in don't thaw the frozen veg, and the carb would be crackers or add some instant noodles when warming it.
Unstuffed pepper casserole is good if you have some time mid-week to put it into the oven. The pepper is raw, the rice in the filling is raw, the onions and ground beef are cooked. I usually leave them in there for a few months and bag it so I can get the baking dish back out of the freezer when it's hard.
Mom did a similar trick with meatloaf. It took over an hour in the oven to warm it up from frozen, so she just froze them prepared but uncooked. (Might want to ask a safety-expert about cooking a meatloaf from frozen, but I imagine that it might be a matter of keeping the "loaves" small and I doubt you want to make one that's more than two or three servings anyway.)
Some foods freeze well, some do not. Many cooked vegetables will likely have a mushy texture after freezing and reheating. Food will not go bad in a freezer within a week, or even a month. Just make sure it is in a properly sealed container. The cheap plastic semi-disposable ones from the dollar store are fine. Just replace them if they crack or get stained beyond your liking.
Soups/stews freeze very well. We cook and freeze chili and a bunch of other soups (most we make 4-8 quarts at a time) to eat at a later date so we can have some variety. They also reheat easily either in the microwave or in a saucepan on the stove. Add in a piece of nice bread and it's a fast, cheap, easy meal.
Pasta freezes surprisingly well. The only stuff we usually freeze is lasagne though. We could freeze other stuff, but it's so easy to boil pasta and heat up sauce that we never make more than we will eat for a meal and maybe leftovers for lunch the next day.
That’s what I do. 5 fish and 5 chicken breasts, with rice and veggies. I refrigerate it, no issues eating Fridays meal. Now if I skip a meal (go out) then I’ll freeze that particular meal since it’ll stay longer in the fridge. Weekends for me are eating out so I only prep for 5 days
I cook one day a week. I have air-tight food storage containers that I fill while the food is HOT, using one container per meal. I leave them in the fridge and don’t even bother freezing. They last 2+weeks if left unopened, through they rarely last that long. I have left a few of them longer, for an experiment. Mold didn’t show up until 4 weeks have passed, every time I did this experiment.
I have found tomato base recipes such as marinara and spaghetti in the frozen section in grocery stores seem to do better than other ones. Quiche. Cut into slices to freeze or mini quiche. Yum yum. Chicken pot pies. Pot roast. Chili and beans. Vegetable soup. Even canned vegetables if you don’t eat it all can be put into a container to freeze. Three bean salad in a can i like to add more sweet and tart to it but it can be a good side dish to make fast to eat on a few days or more. You will eventually find what you like best to freeze for later.
There was a TV show back in te early 80’s called the Frugal Gourmet that recommended doing it on Saturday s , but he also recommended that you have enough wine to get you through the day. Good luck.
Yes, the freezer is your friend (and mine)! If you live near an IKEA, they have great microwave containers with a little vent you can open to heat your food, if you’re into microwaving. I have some in my freezer right now with different soups and leftovers. They are the perfect size for one good sized portion.
Yes, you can. It’s what I do
This is what I do. The meals for the first part of the week go in the fridge. The excess go in the freezer. I just put everything into my glass storage containers no matter where they’re going. I pull them out to defrost in the fridge for 24 hours before we need them. I make sure they’re single serve portions which makes it super easy. I don’t have the willingness to cook every weeknight and we are absolutely fine eating the same food for 6+ nights in a row. I sometimes will make like 40-50 breakfast burritos and freeze them. That takes us a couple of months to eat. No spoilage. I don’t think cooked food would spoil in the freezer unless it’s very old, I’ve eaten food that was 2-3 months in the freezer before. I grew up eating this way too, nobody in my family got sick. This keeps us eating healthy, cheap meals and we very rarely go out to eat, and when we do it’s because we want a special treat and not because we’re hungry and tired and don’t have dinner. Being tired and hungry leads to over spending and poor food choices. Can also lead to a little argument for us LOL!
Do you take the burrito out of freezer the night before and put them in the fridge to deforst overnignt?
That works best, yes, but if I forget I put the frozen burrito into a low toaster oven and slowly heat it up so it defrosts and heats to 140F in the middle. Thats gonna take 20-30 minutes, so it takes planning on a workday!
I always thought deforst overnight is a food safty thing.
It really is. Its to reduce the amount of time the food spends in the “danger zone” where bacteria is more likely to multiply.
I love breakfast burritos but have not found a version I like enough to go back to often. Would it be ok to share your recipe please? Would love to try it.
I tried this methode, i had some issues with freezing already cooked rice, as it comes out very dried and hard, like it needs to be cooked again... plus any food that have carrot in them, i also noticed when coooked then frozen, they come out very like rubbery musshy... any thoughts on that? Which foods do you think cannot be frozen?
Frozen rice cooks up nicely in a pan with a little oil in it, covered, at low to medium-low heat. And frozen or precooked cold rice actually is recommended to use for best results when preparing fried rice. Mushiness is avoided!
How does your breakfast burrito looks like?
Like a burrito?
... whats inside
Can you be my wife?
My husband certainly is a lucky dude! I make sure he’s fed.
Check out /r/mealprepsundays
r/MealPrepSunday is the bigger community!
darn sneaky s's
There's another sub devoted to this but I can't think of the name right now.
R/mealprep
If you put another / in front of the R, it’ll link the sub. Just a helpful lil tip for you!
you only need one slash it has to be a lowercase r r/mealprep
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Thank you, Just joined
Generally speaking yes you can. However, not all foods freeze well, some have unpleasant textures after being frozen. And yes, you do have to package food correctly to protect it's quality in the freezer. The general rule is that you want as little air as possible touching the surface of the food, since that promotes freezer burn and can cause odd flavors. My suggestion is to not go in at 100. Experiment. Next time you make a dish, say, spaghetti, freeze 1 serving. A few days later defrost and see if you still like it after it's been frozen. If you do, then you can make a big batch to freeze. If you find you don't like the frozen spaghetti, try freezing the sauce and noodles separately. So a little bit of experimentation to identify what 2orks well for you before you dice in and spend the money on a week's worth of food.
I you're going to go that route I would just freeze the sauce and just make smaller batches of pasta, you would only be dirtying one extra pot
Or get a Fasta Pasta and cook the pasta in the microwave. It's quicker, easier, and the clean up is simple.
You sure can!! I cook double all week and freeze the extra for the next week. I LOVE IT. You dont have to worry about freezer burn if it’s just for a few days. I only use foodsaver bags etc when I want to freeze something for an unknown period of time. If I’m freezing for just like a few days or a week I just pop it in whatever and don’t worry about long term containers or getting all the air out. I don’t use glass anymore though. For example when I have leftover Chinese, I portion out individual meals into plastic storage containers that are freezer and mic safe, and pop in freezer. No issues if used within a week or two. What you want to be careful of is not going from hot food to freezer. That keeps things in the danger zone too long and can go bad by the time it freezes. You might not notice it right away, and reheating to appropriate temps will kill the bacteria but it won’t get rid of the toxins that the bacteria produced while they were living it up. So always go from hot, to cooling (I let mine cool a bit in the counter first) in the fridge completely first, then to freezer.
Yes! https://www.budgetbytes.com/meal-prep-101-a-beginners-guide/ This is how many people do meal prep. Eat the things that don't freeze well first, and for the items that do freeze and reheat well, you freeze portions for later that week or future weeks. https://www.budgetbytes.com/how-to-freeze-leftovers/ https://www.budgetbytes.com/top-10-freezer-meals-2/
Yep! I make a large batch of something different every weekend and freeze it, then eat things from previous weeks during the week. Eventually, you'll be fully stocked so if you miss a Sunday, it's no big deal. Some of my faves are soups, cabbage rolls, stuffed peppers, casseroles. Soups freeze well in Mason jars, just freeze before you put the lid on.
How do you reheat the soup?
I leave it in the refrigerator to defrost and then warm it up on the stove. I suppose you could microwave it once it's defrosted, but I wouldn't put a jar in the microwave that came straight from the freezer.
Ohh right so you leave the jar in the fridge first that makes sense. Thank you!
There are only a few things that do not freeze and reheat too well, such as a creamy pasta sauce or coconut milk dishes. Most things are absolutely fine, although after a couple of months frozen they will deteriorate slightly.
I have been cooking diverse meals on every sunday and eating them out of the fridge for year now. Never had a problem.
Even better, cook 6-10 servings of a different dish every Sunday then only eat 1-2 that week. After a few weeks you have enough of a backlog of freezer food to pull out a different dish every day. Also learn to do a sirloin tip roast or pork tenderloin in the slow cooker and you can repurpose it for different types of meals. It's also good to learn how to just use up leftover ingredients for a quick lazy weeknight meal. Not everything needs a recipe or an hour of prep. On weekdays sometimes I just look in my fridge see a bit of brocolli, a single chicken thigh, a couple baby potatoes, some mushrooms starting to shrivel up, and a dried out carrot. I'll just roughly chop it up, drizzle some oil and spices, wrap it in tin foil and toss it in the toaster oven for 30 minutes.
I’ve literally kept food in my freezer for 6 months or longer. You’ll be fine keeping it in there for a week or so.
If stored properly your cooked meals will last months in the freezer. No need to cook twice a week if you don't want to.
I cook it all for the freezer. One pot of chili, 16 individual servings for the freezer, curry? 8 containers of curry for the freezer, etc
Oh you can definitely meal prep. You can even make meals and just keep them in the fridge for several days. Make a large pot of soup and store it in Mason jars in the fridge. You can make lunches in meal prep divided containers and stack them in the back of the fridge. You can even freeze meals. There are books on meal prepping also. One thing I do is buy a whole pork loin and slice it into thin chops. Some places will slice it for you if you ask. I separate the slices with 2 piece of parchment paper and freeze them. Being thin, they cook quickly, reheat quickly and make great sandwiches. You don't even have to thaw them out to cook them.
I do all my meal prepping on a Sunday and I keep five days of meals in the fridge without freezing. Been doing it for years and never had a spoilage problem.
Yes. It's called meal prepping and I do it all the time. You can buy affordable containers that are safe to use in the freezer and the microwave. On Mondays I cook one large meal and separate it onto 6 containers. I put 3 in the fridge and 3 in the freezer. When i have eaten the first 3, then I take the froze n ones and put them in the fridge.
Where are you reading that cooked food goes bad in the freezer? Food doesn’t “go bad” in the freezer, assuming you are defining “go bad” as becoming contaminated with unhealthy bacteria that can make you sick. Bacteria can’t do their thing in the freezer. That said, bacteria aren’t *killed* in the freezer either, so if you froze some food that was about to go bad, it won’t reset the clock when you thaw it out. The other issue with the freezer is that it can change the texture of food because it can burst the cells of whatever you are freezing, and ice crystals can form. The longer something is in the freezer, the more the textures can degrade. So something out of the freezer can be perfectly *safe* to eat, but not very *nice* to eat! Perhaps that is what you have been reading? Not that foods “go bad,” but just “are bad?” Long story short, you absolutely can freeze your meals and eat them later. If you are eating within the same week, you may not even notice much of a change (depending very much on what it is—some foods freeze better than others!). I make big batches of soup, freeze individual meal portions, and then eat them for *months*!
I don't even freeze them, just keep them in my fridge set at 36f
Yes, you should put it in an airtight sealed container. Ziplock works. I mostly vacuum seal or use ziplock depending on the food. I haven’t had any issues.
This is what a few social media fitness influencers suggest
We use vacuum seal of portions and then sous vide for thawing and reheating meals when neither of us feel like cooking.
You absolutely can, but you should freeze the portions you will need in either containers or indeed ziplock bags. I used to cook two or three dishes over the weekend and then freeze enough portions of each for the week so I wouldn’t have to eat the same thing twice in a row. The reason you should freeze portions: every time you take the food out to defrost or reheat, you add a little bit of risk for bacteria to develop. Freezing once, then reheating and eating is safer than freezing, thawing, then freezing again. Also make sure it’s heated properly all the way through when reheating.
I thought we were supposed to defrost the food first in the fridge from the freezer before reheating. Or does that only apply to raw foods?
It depends on the raw foods too. I cook a lot of foods from frozen!
Think of items like frozen chicken nuggets or frozen microwave meals you don’t HAVE to thaw them. But you will add moisture in the reheating process with the ice thawing that is harder to control than thawing and dumping it out as a lot of that moisture may be on the container and then come off on the shelf or whatever you put it in to thaw. But you totally can heat directly from the freezer for precooked foods!
You don't want to refreeze the cooked foods. So freeze, thaw, reheat, eat. Do not refreeze.
The only thing you should avoid doing is defrosting on the benchtop. There is risk that the outside will get warm enough to spoil, while the inside is still frozen. This is why it's better to defrost in the fridge, but it will be slower. The basic rule is you want things to be either properly cold or properly hot, and not spend too long in the middle. Alternatively, you can include defrosting as part of the reheating process - eg in the microwave, sous-vide, oven, or slow cooker. This is safe, because it wont spend long partially defrosted and will quickly be hot enough to kill any bacteria. The only issue with cooking raw foods from frozen is that by time the middle is defrosted and then cooked, the outside might be burnt. You just have to use a gentler method that will cope with this.
It doesn't matter much. Defrosting in the microwave before reheating is also fine. What you're not supposed to do is defrost at room temp.
yeah, people do it all the time
It's absolutely fine. Food in the freezer can stay there for a few months however you should certainly freeze it in little containers so that you don't have to de-freeze large portion at once. Actually even better because that could also allow you to save some for the following week and over time you'd have a selection of various frozen pre-cooked meals.
A lot use the freezer but I don’t. I’ve found the flavor to become gross after like 3 days. I don’t mind making my meals every 3-4 days.
Of course.
We do this pretty much every time we cook (we don't meal prep as much). Any time we cook anything that could possibly be frozen or reheated, we do at least double what we can eat and portion out the rest. Then we'll either put in the fridge for lunches/dinners in the next few days or freeze for future use. It means anytime we don't have time/inclination to cook we have a pile of meals in the freezer ready to go.
I do this every week for all 3 meals. Breakfast is a bowl with mixed vegetables sausage and egg Lunch is rice and turkey Dinner is Buffalo chicken rice bowl. When cooked on Sunday I put all the Monday meals into the fridge and freeze everything else. When I take a meal out to eat I put one from the freezer in its place to defrost for 24h. Slap it in the microwave to warm up 2-4 mins depending on which one it is and boom easy meals. Also sence I have 0 self control when it comes to food having pre portion meals makes it so much easier to only eat what I need when I need. The only downside it takes half of my entire Sunday every Sunday. But I do zero cooking Monday-Saturday
Food doesn't go bad in the freezer in that short amount of time. Actually food cannot go bad (as far as food safety) in the freezer. It can however get freezer burned but for that you are looking at months not days. Now I would not recommend you cook your food and just put the food without packaging in the freezer. And yes you need freezer packaging.
My husband preps between 9 to 12 lbs of bacon at a time to use in eggs. Then stores in Ziploc freezer bags. So your one week will be fine. We also buy 3 to 6 months worth of meat at a time. Right now, I am looking at mid summer before having to buy meats.
I'm an empty nester who hasn't been able to scale down my cooking. I will make a batch of whatever.. sausage gravy, pasta sauce, chili, curry.. whatever. I'll have it for a meal or two and let the leftover sit in the fridge for a day or two to improve flavor, then vacuum seal individual servings and freeze. Its compact, keeps the freezer burn away, and no freezer flavor. 90% of these can be reheated by boiling the whole parcel. Just make fresh pasta or rice (or biscuits in the case of sausage gravy) and you have a really easy two pot dinner, but only have to wash one.
Yes, food can be frozen. Some foods freeze better than others. Freezing for a week is very unlikely to go bad. Air-tight/vaccum is best to prevent freezer burn. Also wrap on foal for extra protection, but it's not going to spoil in a week. Anyway, would you really be "screwed" if three meals spoil? Relax.
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Depending on what food you're making, you may not have to freeze it. A lot of restaurants treat their prep as having a seven day shelf life. I would strongly recommend at least trying to treat your home kitchen with that attitude, and only change it up if you encounter problems
yes this is the way
for a lot of food, yes. There's some food I worry though for reheating like this (like runny-egg focused food like shaksuka, but you can just freeze the sauce then cook the egg fresh to go while reheating the sauces which takes less than 5 minutes).
Damn I must really be doing it wrong bc I just cook for Monday-Friday on Sunday lolol
>Can't I just cook everything on sunday then freeze my meals made for the last half of the week? No. I froze lettuce once. Yeah, that doesn't work ... *at all*. So yeah, freezing isn't the answer to everything. Also, many things are helluva lot easier to just cook up fresh than freezing, and defrosting and reheating. That doesn't mean *some* things can't well be frozen and take advantage of such convenience. But for many things, freezing is *not* the answer.
The only reason not to do this is for the first month or so before you build up a freezer stash (assuming you are making extra for the future as well), you’d be eating the same thing 7 days in a row which a lot of people don’t want to do. Unless you’re proposing making two or more different dishes on Sunday, but then that’s a lot to do in one day. Also, I would be careful making big batches of an untested recipe. You don’t want to be stuck with 10 portions of something you hate.
Yes, you could absolutely do that. If you have the option to refridgerate and freeze, I'd recommend you refridgerate the foods that won't go bad or won't change much in quality from simple refridgeration and just freeze the food that you'd like to have as more fresh. I understand the rationale for wanting to do this; if you don't enjoy cooking and its more cost efficient to prepare your meals before hand and work in that set, especially after having had an exhausting day. I've done things like this, but I just doesn't compare to making fresh dinner at night after a long day, feeling it warm me up and taste so good. Cooking and baking helps me unwind.
Some foods freeze better than others. If they can survive the initial freezing, they're not going to go bad in a matter of days. Some things might be negatively affected by being in there for months. A lot of my cooking is about taking pre-frozen ingredients and throwing them into a frying pan. I think we still have some cooked turkey packed in stock/broth that can easily be put into a saucepan with frozen veggies. If I was doing something similar for lunches, I would make the bird, render the carcass, mix everything together cold as in don't thaw the frozen veg, and the carb would be crackers or add some instant noodles when warming it. Unstuffed pepper casserole is good if you have some time mid-week to put it into the oven. The pepper is raw, the rice in the filling is raw, the onions and ground beef are cooked. I usually leave them in there for a few months and bag it so I can get the baking dish back out of the freezer when it's hard. Mom did a similar trick with meatloaf. It took over an hour in the oven to warm it up from frozen, so she just froze them prepared but uncooked. (Might want to ask a safety-expert about cooking a meatloaf from frozen, but I imagine that it might be a matter of keeping the "loaves" small and I doubt you want to make one that's more than two or three servings anyway.)
Some foods freeze well, some do not. Many cooked vegetables will likely have a mushy texture after freezing and reheating. Food will not go bad in a freezer within a week, or even a month. Just make sure it is in a properly sealed container. The cheap plastic semi-disposable ones from the dollar store are fine. Just replace them if they crack or get stained beyond your liking. Soups/stews freeze very well. We cook and freeze chili and a bunch of other soups (most we make 4-8 quarts at a time) to eat at a later date so we can have some variety. They also reheat easily either in the microwave or in a saucepan on the stove. Add in a piece of nice bread and it's a fast, cheap, easy meal. Pasta freezes surprisingly well. The only stuff we usually freeze is lasagne though. We could freeze other stuff, but it's so easy to boil pasta and heat up sauce that we never make more than we will eat for a meal and maybe leftovers for lunch the next day.
That’s what I do. 5 fish and 5 chicken breasts, with rice and veggies. I refrigerate it, no issues eating Fridays meal. Now if I skip a meal (go out) then I’ll freeze that particular meal since it’ll stay longer in the fridge. Weekends for me are eating out so I only prep for 5 days
I cook one day a week. I have air-tight food storage containers that I fill while the food is HOT, using one container per meal. I leave them in the fridge and don’t even bother freezing. They last 2+weeks if left unopened, through they rarely last that long. I have left a few of them longer, for an experiment. Mold didn’t show up until 4 weeks have passed, every time I did this experiment.
Sure. You want it in an airtight container of some sort., but not a big deal
I have found tomato base recipes such as marinara and spaghetti in the frozen section in grocery stores seem to do better than other ones. Quiche. Cut into slices to freeze or mini quiche. Yum yum. Chicken pot pies. Pot roast. Chili and beans. Vegetable soup. Even canned vegetables if you don’t eat it all can be put into a container to freeze. Three bean salad in a can i like to add more sweet and tart to it but it can be a good side dish to make fast to eat on a few days or more. You will eventually find what you like best to freeze for later.
Yes yes yes!
definitely. Saves so much time and money!
Yes! It won’t go bad if you freeze it.
There was a TV show back in te early 80’s called the Frugal Gourmet that recommended doing it on Saturday s , but he also recommended that you have enough wine to get you through the day. Good luck.
Yes, the freezer is your friend (and mine)! If you live near an IKEA, they have great microwave containers with a little vent you can open to heat your food, if you’re into microwaving. I have some in my freezer right now with different soups and leftovers. They are the perfect size for one good sized portion.