Freezer Meal Session: 24 lbs of Chicken Part 3 (Done!)

I needed one final hour in the kitchen to finish my chicken project. The good news is this time I didn't have to handle any raw chicken parts. Whew!

 I made Sweet Asian Marinade and added it to 3 bags of boneless skinless breasts. I was originally planning 4 bags, but my 8 year old is eating like crazy these days, so I made 3 larger portions. In the past I would stretch 3 chicken breasts for 4 family members by serving it sliced like this:

Cooked Chicken is way more appetizing in pictures! ;)

I  also made up a double batch of Baked Chicken Finger Topping--this is a nutrient-rich breading for chicken that helps get a bit more fiber in my kids' diets. I store it in a freezer bag and pull out just enough to bread the chicken I need for dinner. By portioning carefully, I will have just enough for 3 meals.

The final count: 11 Meals! Only 10 are pictured here because we already ate one meal. :)

• 3 Meals of Sweet Asian Chicken Breasts (4 per meal)
• 3 Meals of Molasses Glazed Chicken Thighs (10 per meal)
• 2 Meals of filleted chicken breasts (no marinade, can be used plain or for Lemon Chicken)
• 3 Meals of tenderloin sized cuts of chicken breasts (no marinade, can be used plain or with Baked Chicken Fingers, Pumpkin Seed Crust, or Honey Mustard Chicken)
• 1 bag of Pumpkin Seed Crust (made previously)
• 1 bag of Baked Chicken Finger topping

11 meals, 2.5 hours of work over 3 days... and they all fit in the freezer!

Freezer Meal Session: 24 lbs of Chicken Part 2

I had another 45 minutes time frame today during which I wrassled with more raw chicken!

I used paper towels to remove some of the moisture from the chicken...

But I reminded myself, after messing with chicken both yesterday and today, I'll have tons of chicken prepped for future meals, no handling/cutting/drying required!

The 6 lbs of boneless skinless chicken thighs (30 total) are perfect for three 10-piece meals of Molasses Glazed Chicken Thighs--super delicious and quick on the grill! AND I know from experience that a double batch of marinade is enough for 3 meals' worth of chicken, so I doubled the recipe.

Makin' Marinade

I had all the ingredients on hand (molasses, soy sauce, olive oil, fresh lemons for lemon juice--worth it), plus garlic, salt, and pepper. I recommend distributing the garlic, salt, and pepper to the individual bags before adding the marinade.

And then mix the contents together before freezing.

I had a few extra minutes, so I prepped the large quantity of garlic that I will need for the next marinade. I decided that 20 was plenty. :)

And that was it! One more marinade, and one batch of chicken tender topping, plus a final count of meals, then I will be done! Read about it here.

Freezer Meal Session: 24 lbs of Chicken Part 1

The freezer is pretty much empty, which means that it's a great time to prep large quantities of summer meals! I decided to start with chicken, and since I didn't do any actual *cooking* I'm calling these 'Freezer Meal Prepping' Sessions instead of 'Cooking' sessions. Hooray for no sweating over a hot stove!

I picked up 24 pounds of chicken from the store the other day for $65. (Yes, chicken is expensive in my area!)

• 18 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breasts (27 total)
• 6 pounds of organic chicken thighs (30 total)

I spread the work over two days so that it would fit into my schedule.

Part 1
The first day I focused on processing the boneless skinless breasts. You can read more tips for prepping chicken breasts here.

First I opened all 3 packages and inspected all of the chicken breasts. Some are nicely shaped for grilling or filleting, others have shreds of meat hanging off. Some are HUGE--way larger than one serving size of meat. I picked out 12 nice-looking, moderate sized breasts to be marinated for grilling. Now they are ready to be marinated and frozen with Sweet Asian Chicken Marinade.

A 'Messy' Piece

I cut off the 'messy' part and suddenly this piece is a great candidate for the grill!

Next I picket out the 8 largest, thickest breasts to be cut in half horizontally (filleted). I bagged the filets between pieces of waxed paper (so I can pull them apart easily after they defrost). I can use them for Lemon Chicken or even just salt/pepper/flour them, then pan fry for a quick easy weeknight meal. 16 filets equals 2 meals' worth for our family of 4 plus some leftovers for lunches.

'Tenderloins'

Finally I cut up the 'messy' chicken breasts into 'tenderloins'. These chicken pieces tended to have tears in them or big messy pieces hanging off. Now that they are tenderloin sized, they will bake up in the oven in less than 15 minutes. I try to cut them into relatively uniform sizes. You could make them 'nugget' sized or 'kebab' sized as well. I have two coating recipes that I can use for them: Baked Chicken Tenderloins and Pumpkin Seed Crust. I divided 35 tenderloins into 3 meals of approximately 12 tenderloins each.

Once everything was bagged and labeled, I loaded it back into the fridge in a large storage container and went ahead and froze the filets and tenderloins, which I will season after defrosting.

It only took 45 minutes! Next I will make 2 marinades, a coating for the tenders, and pack everything into the freezer... read about it here.

Vegetarian Freezer Cooking: Spontaneous Session

Spontaneous freezer cooking sessions don't always work out, but I was on a roll one day recently and decided to see what I could get made, both to eat now and to stash in the freezer.

I started with a large container of cooked brown rice that I made the other day (2 cups uncooked), a bunch of kale that I needed to use up, and a bag of potatoes, which I decided to use to make a cheesy hash brown casserole.

First I boiled the water for nine medium-large potatoes, cooked them for 15 minutes, and cooked them.

Meanwhile, I shredded two blocks of cheddar cheese in the food processor and dumped it in a bowl. There was no need to clean out the processor before using it to shred a large bunch of dinosaur kale because the cheese and kale were going to end up together in a casserole anyway. :) It conveniently made exactly two cups of shredded kale (and my favorite part: it was super fast!)

One cup of kale went into a freezer bag for freezing, the other cup of kale was mixed with 4 cups of the cooked brown rice, eggs, milk, cheese, and other ingredients to make a kale brown rice casserole.

I'll use the extra kale to make a potato kale quiche!

I still had a lot of brown rice left and I noticed that right there on the other page of my cookbook was another easy brown rice casserole recipe, so I grabbed some beans, frozen corn, salsa, and more cheese, mixed it up, and plopped it in a freezer bag. (We'll see how it turns out when I defrost it and bake it!)

I returned to the potatoes, peeled the skins, grated them (easier than I thought it would be), and assembled the potato casserole. My original plan was to bake half and freeze half (to see how it would freeze), but I ended up baking the entire thing for a neighborhood happy hour. I'll definitely make it again because the neighbors inhaled the whole thing... no pictures, unfortunately!

I have two parboiled potatoes left (seemed like I had enough potatoes after I grated 7) that I stuck in the fridge, I quickly grated them and fried them with a little butter for dinner the next night, they were just as tasty as the casserole.

I also had cheese left that I used to assemble some bean and cheese quesadillas, which are always nice to have on hand for lunches, snacks, even a very simple dinner.

So in all, not a ton of items made it to the freezer: only 1 bag of shredded kale, 1 brown rice and bean casserole, and 12 Bean and Cheese Quesadillas.

But we also had the potato casserole and kale brown rice casserole along with two extra potatoes, so I consider it to be a successful session, and it took less than two hours!

You can read about another vegetarian freezer cooking session here.

Holiday Prep: Freezer Cooking

I have made a lot of progress clearing out my freezer in the past few weeks--I even found some scones that I froze back in April--still delicious!

Now that I have all of this free space, I am ready for some freezer cooking sessions to help prepare for the holiday season. My friends and I have picked some kid-free mornings throughout the month to focus on bulk food prep:

• Dec 1: Cheese Bites (80 or so; easy to mix up, tedious to roll, so we do it together while talking!) I'll try to post this recipe, very easy and good.
• Dec 6: Lasagna Sauce, and Sauce/mini meatballs for Baked Ziti. The recipes call for similar ingredients, and we'll freeze the sauce/meatballs, then defrost when it's time to assemble the dish. I'll probably serve my Baked Ziti for a family get together during the holidays.
• Dec 13th: Marinated Meats and Fish. Probably some Marinated Flank Steak and Marinated Salmon, possibly some Baked Chicken Tenders coating or other chicken marinades. Anything that will be simple to defrost and/or cook up during the busy season!

• Dec 16th: Cookie Baking Day, as well as Sweet and Spicy Pecans
• Dec 20th: Cutout Cookies! I'm thinking of baking in advance, and devoting this morning to decorating all of them. This is a huge Christmas Tradition for me, and yes, it's a lot of work! It will go faster with company.

Menu Plan Monday: September 12th, 2011

I'm hoping to mix in a little freezer cooking when I make dinner meals this week:

• Monday: Baked Chicken Tenders (Make 3x the topping and freeze 2 servings in quart-size bags) with mashed sweet potatoes (reserve 3/4 for Sweet Potato Biscuits for lunches), leftover whole wheat couscous, and steamed broccoli.

• Tuesday: Marinated Flank Steak (Make 3x marinade for 3 steaks, freeze two) with brown rice pilaf, Shallot Green Beans (recipe to come), and sliced pears.
• Wednesday: Shrimp Curry (from the freezer, adding in steamed asparagus) with leftover brown rice pilaf and salad (and if the kids won't eat it, they can eat leftovers from Monday or Tuesday!)
• Thursday: Pizza Night (with fresh fruit, carrots, and spinach leaves)
• Friday: Back to School BBQ, bringing Salt & Pepper Potatoes (it's easy and picky kids scarf it up)
• Saturday: Day Trip-out to dinner
• Sunday: Roasted Pork Tenderloin, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, and salad
• Monday: Baked Ziti, hopefully with some Eggplant Meatballs that I'm experimenting with this week (freezing half of sauce and meatballs for future Ziti), fresh fruit and salad.

By doubling or tripling a few recipes, I'll end up with 2 packages of Baked Chicken Tender Topping, 2 Marinated Flank Steaks, and the sauce and meatballs for one additional Baked Ziti all stored in the freezer even after cooking only 5 nights this week! This is on top of the Pineapple Zucchini Bread (6 mini loaves, 1 dozen muffins) and 5 large servings of Minestrone soup I added last week. I really need to look into purchasing a second freezer...

Find more meal planning ideas at orgjunkie.com!

Vegetarian Freezer Cooking Report: Using up Produce

Pictured: 2 servings Summer Squash Frittata, one 8x8 Fruit Crisp, 3 meals of Kale White Bean Soup, 3 meals of Eggplant Stew. Also pictured are 5 servings of Quinoa Vegetable Soup that I made several weeks ago.

In addition to the produce I already had, I received a vegetable box from a local delivery service, so I had even MORE produce to work with! This meant a few revisions to the freezer plan, as well as a cheat recipe--I added Kale White Bean Soup to the plan--it's non-vegetarian, but uses a large quantity of kale.

Thursday Evening (2 Thursdays ago!): quickly cut and peeled peaches for Peach Berry Crisp (filling) while dinner was cooking, added the extra ingredients, and froze it in the freezer. I place the freezer bag inside the pan that I will use to bake the crisp so that the mixture froze in the shape of the pan. I still need to make a few batches of Crisp Topping...

Friday Morning: Started making White Bean and Kale Soup in the crock pot. (If you used a replacement for the ground sausage, it would still be vegetarian... but mine includes hot Italian sausage. :)

I also whipped up the Summer Squash Frittata, topped it with tomato and basil from the garden, and ate a piece for (second) breakfast. I put several pieces in the freezer to test and see how well it freezes (not too well. It gets very watery when I go to reheat it) The rest we ate for breakfasts the next few days.

Monday: I made the Eggplant Stew and doubled the recipe to use up all of the eggplant! It was wonderful as usual, despite the fact that I quadrupled the tomato sauce rather than doubling it. Rather than add cannded diced tomatoes, I used fresh (skins and all). I also left the skin on the eggplant even though the recipe said to peel it (I never peel it). I ended up with three meals left over for the freezer.

 I also made and served Sesame Baby Bok Choy with leftover Baked Chicken Tenders--not cooking for the freezer, but fitting in with my need to use up produce.

Now it's a new week and I just need to use up this by Friday:

Today's Harvest

Ack!

Vegetarian Freezer Cooking: Coping with Summer Garden Excess

We are swimming in produce, so I think I will need to do a quick session of vegetarian freezer cooking this week!

I have a bunch of eggplant(s?) from my grandparents' garden which will go well with a zucchini from my garden in an Eggplant Stew over Couscous recipe, which is basically ratatouille. I'll make and freeze the stew, then make fresh couscous as needed. I'll also freeze 3/4 cup portions to eat for breakfast.

My grandparents also gave me a ginormous zucchini which I'll make into a Summer Squash Frittata, which I'll freeze in indidividual servings (makes 8) for quick breakfasts. I haven't tried to freeze a frittata before, so this is an experiment!

I also have a bunch of peaches that I'm not going to be able to eat in time, so I think I'll make up the fruit filling for my favorite Peach Blueberry Crisp--recipe to come. I'll also make up multiple batches of Crisp Topping--one for this fruit, and several more for Future Fruit.

Lastly I need to make a point to cure some Lavender Sugar so that I have enough to make a big batch of Lemon Lavender Cookies--a recipe from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family. I'll post about that recipe soon, too.

Menu Plan Monday, May 2nd

I have to say I am loving life since I have so many wonderful dinner options waiting for me in the freezer each day! The photo above shows all of the items I had prepped in the freezer when I finished my most recent Freezer Cooking Day. I've been slowly working through the older items as well as trying the new recipes my friend and I put together from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family. I'm a visual person, so I find it helpful to look at this photo to remind myself what our options are from week to week.

I even put together a last minute menu for a Book Club meeting yesterday!

The Plan for this week:

• Monday: Sesame Soy Sirloin (from the freezer) with salad and brown rice pilaf
• Tuesday: Soy Glazed Salmon with Sweet Potato Black Bean Salsa
• Wednesday: Whole wheat pasta with Trader Joe's Turkey meatballs and sauce, steamed veggies, and bread
• Thursday: Mustard Oregano Pork Chops (from the freezer), salt and pepper potatoes, steamed broccoli
• Friday: Pizza Night (Carry-out)
• Saturday: Leftovers
• Sunday: Out to Dinner (Have an empowering Mother's Day!)
• Monday: Cashew Chicken Stir Fry (from the freezer) with brown rice

 Find more meal planning inspiration at orgjunkie.com!

Freezer Cooking Day Results 4-12-11

I'm pleased to report that our frreezer cooking day endeavor was a success. This photo shows just half of the meals we prepared yesterday, as my friend took her half home to her own freezer.

Here's the list of prepared food that I ended up with (Most of these recipes are from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family):

• Molasses Glazed Chicken Thighs (2 meals, 1.5 lbs each)
• Cashew Chicken Stir Fry (3 meals, 2 lbs each)
• Sweet Asian Chicken (3 meals, 2 lbs each: 2 meals of whole breasts for grilling, 1 meal of chunks for kebabs)
• Mustard Oregano Pork Chops (this recipe made 12 chops, we each took 6, I will probably make them for 1 meal)
• Turkish Pork Loin Chops with Bacon (6 chops, which I will probably use as 3 meals because they are quite large)
• Shrimp Curry (2 meals)
• Sesame Sirloin (2 meals)
• Roasted Chicken-some carved, some shredded (2 meals)

 If I'm doing my math correctly, I have EIGHTEEN meals from about 6 hours of work--2.5 hours preparation, 3.5 hours for the actual freezer cooking event. Cutting and bagging all of the meat in advance was a huge time-saver and kept us very organized. I did mine right when I brought it home from the store, and it took up less space in the fridge than when it was in the (leaky) store packages.

 

Even more exciting is that my friend decided to package her meat in smaller one-pound portions, so in cases where I ended up with 3 two-pound meals, she ended up with 6 one-pound meals! (Her kids don't eat as much as mine do. I also make more because my husband loves to take leftovers to work the next day.)

 

In addition, I am using my carcass and neck from the roasted chicken to make Chicken Bone Soup today, and I also saved the juices and deglazed the roasting pan, so I will have a nice supply of chicken stock on hand.

 

And yes! Everything fits nicely into my freezer... along with all the other freezer meals I've been putting up here and there...

Freezer Cooking: Tips for Meat

Today I spent some time prepping the meat we are planning to use for tomorrow's freezer cooking day. I wish I could take credit for this bright idea! My friend suggested that we cut the meat and separate it into freezer cooking bags in advance. What you see here is approximately 15 pounds of chicken (my share) and 6 pounds of sirloin (which we are splitting in half). Tomorrow we'll add marinade to these cuts of meat and they will be ready to go in the freezer.

Some additional tips for cutting up large quantities of boneless skinless chicken breasts:

• Open the packages and look at all the breasts before starting to cut. I prefer to reserve the smaller, neater breasts for the recipes that call for a whole breast to reduce portion size. To reduce size even further, I'll cut off the tenderloin. Identify the small breasts and bag them for the appropriate recipe.
• Cut some of the chicken for the same recipe in different ways. For instance, after I reserved the smallest breasts whole, I cut some of the larger breasts into large chunks to make kebabs. Sometime I also cut chicken breasts into tenderloin/strip-size pieces, depending on the recipe and where I plan to cook it (grill or oven). Another cut is to slice the breast in half horizontally to make thin, flat pieces, which are good for broiling or stove-top cooking. Marinating these different 'cuts' of chicken in the same marinade is easy, and you will end up with more variety when serving the meats for dinner.

• 

  This 'messy' double breast is at least ten ounces, and has little pieces hanging off the underside all over. Best to cut it up!

• Save the largest, 'messiest' pieces for cutting into bite size pieces for stir-fry. Somehow my packages of chicken always contain at least one piece that is either falling apart or has shreds of meat hanging off in every direction. These pieces would be tough to grill, slice, or chunk into even-size pieces, so they work best as bite-size pieces for a stir-fry.

I bagged everything up and stored it all together in a large plastic container. Now I just need to dice some onion and grate some fresh ginger to finish preparing for the big day.

Freezer Cooking Day: Meat Marinades

Freezer Cooking January Inventory

My friend and I are planning a big, exciting freezer cooking session for tomorrow, using a number of recipes from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family. Our focus is on marinated meats, and we expect to assemble 16-18 meals apiece. This supply will keep us grilling for the next two months!

We decided to focus on meat so that we could make bulk purchases and do a lot of meat processing all at once. If we eat 2-3 of these meals per week, they'll last for 6-8 weeks, and we can focus on preparing side dishes and fresh vegetables. I'll most likely focus more on vegetarian meals for other nights of the week, and perhaps do some vegetarian freezer cooking when the freezer starts to clear out a bit.

Here are the recipes we've selected:

• Molasses Glazed Chicken Thighs (2 meals per family)
• Cashew Chicken Stir Fry (3 meals per family)
• Sweet Asian Chicken (3 meals per family)
• Mustard Oregano Pork Chops (1-2 meals per family)
• Turkish Pork Loin Chops with Bacon (1-2 meals per family)
• Shrimp Curry (2 meals per family)
• Sesame Sirloin (2-3 meals per family)
• Roasted Chicken-some carved, some shredded (1-2 meals per family)

Here is our game plan:

1. Roast Chickens (2 in one pan, one per family) (Carve and shred after cooling.)
2. Make sauce for Shrimp Curry--allow to cool before assembling with cooked frozen shrimp.
3. Prepare 3 marinades for the three chicken recipes. Because of advance prep work, all that is left to do is pour/measure the mixtures over the chicken, which is already bagged. Freeze.
4. Prep marinade for Mustard Oregano Pork recipe. Bag and freeze.
5. Wrap bacon around boneless chops for Turkish Pork Loin Chops. Prep marinade. Bag and freeze.
6. Prep marinade for Sesame Sirloin, which is already bagged. Freeze.
7. Assemble Shrimp Curry.
8. Carve roasted chickens as desired, then shred remaining meat. Bag and refrigerate/freeze for future use, or serve some for dinner.
9. Reserve chicken carcasses and vegetable trimming from recipes to make Bone Soup (if there is any room left in the freezer!) This will be done after the freezer cooking session.

Can we do all of this in the three hours and live to tell about it?

Freezer Cooking Plans: Snow Day

We're experiencing Inclement Weather later today (hooray!), so I thought it would be a good time to get some freezer cooking done and out of the way. It will also be a good time to inventory the freezer and, er, clean up the results of some messes that my kids inform me were 'Science Experiments.'

Lovely.

 I'm looking forward to making some dishes from this weeks meal plan as well as a few bonus items if I have time.

The Plan:

• Baked Ziti with Mini Meatballs
• White Bean and Kale Soup
• Bean and Cheese Quesadillas
• Savory Ham and Swiss Scones (new recipe)
• Bouchons au thon (mini size)
• Chocolate Chip Cookies

 Hopefully I remembered to buy everything I needed from the store...

Freezer Cooking Experiment: Spinach

When cleaning out the refrigerators at the beach house last weekend, my SILs and I found a large quantity of fresh baby spinach leaves on the brink of expiration, and I 'inherited' them. I decided to do a Freezer Cooking experiment on them, because there is no way my husband and I would eat 20+ ounces of fresh spinach before it all went bad.

I wilted the spinach in a large saute pan with about 1.5 Tablespoons of butter. We ate some with the salmon we were having for dinner, and I froze the rest in two packages after straining out most of the liquid.

My plan is to defrost one of the packages for dinner later this week to see how it holds up to being frozen. (I'm thinking it should be fine since you can buy frozen spinach at the grocery store...)

If it holds up, I will have a new rescue strategy for spinach!

Freezer Cooking Day: Pre-Party Version

We've just returned from vacation with some extra food, we are hosting a birthday party this weekend, and the freezer is looking empty. It's a good time to get some Freezer Cooking done!

The goals:

• I brought home a large amount of fresh baby spinach leftover from our beach trip that I need to use ASAP before it goes bad.
• I need to prepare for my son's birthday party to be held this Saturday.
• I have a large quantity of chicken bones/carcasses to be made into Bone Soup
• It would be nice (in addition to the necessities listed above) to marinate some meats and prepare some food for future meals, as August will be a busy month for us!

The Plan:

• A Wilted Spinach Freezer Cooking Experiment
• Mini Hamburgers (mix ingredients, form patties, and freeze raw--bake on day of party)
• Bean and Cheese Quesadillas (assemble and freeze for party)
• Bone Soup- Make and freeze
• Marinated Flank Steak
• Marinated Chicken
• Chicken Prep Experiment
• ETA: Basil Pesto (using fresh basil from our garden!)

I may add to this list as I figure out what else would make sense to make. Find more freezer cooking plan inspiration here!

Freezer Cooking Day June 21st

After productive shopping at both the grocery store and the famer's market, I've decided to hold my own personal Freezer Cooking Day to get some meats and other good things prepped and stored in the freezer/fridge/pantry. Here is my list of tasks:

• slice and freeze mini whole wheat bagels
• marinate flank steak
• marinate chicken: molasses glazed chicken thighs
• roast and mash sweet potatoes to freeze for sweet potato biscuits
• multi-grain pancake mix (store in pantry)
• Basil Pesto (for a friend)
• hard-boiled eggs (my 3 yo daughter cracked an egg the other day, looking for a hard boiled one to peel and eat!)
• potato-kale quiche (ambitious)
• Cut cantalope, cucumbers, and bell peppers for snacking
• bean and cheese quesadillas (if I have enough cheese)

I'm pretty confident that the freezer items will fit in the fridge. It helps that I have a NEW refrigerator, just delivered last week. I opted for a top freezer so that I can easily lay soft items flat to freeze, and also freeze items on cookie sheets. So far it is a huge improvement over my past freezer!