Freezer Food

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When our girls were on the way, we invested in a small chest freezer, expecting that there would be many days ahead that we would lack the time and/or energy to really cook—we have often said that was the best $100 we ever spent! It was really nice to have that extra freezer space so we could double a few recipes before our babies were born, freeze the leftovers, and have some home-cooked food ready to reheat when we needed it.

 

What started as a twin parenting survival practice has become a habit that we still enjoy today. Soups, casseroles, lasagna, stuffed shells, enchiladas, and the like are among my favorite meals to double and save for later—it doesn’t take that much more effort to cook more, and they are things that reheat easily without losing their original deliciousness.

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• Freeze soups in single-serving containers for faster thawing and re-heating. It also makes it easy to heat up as few or as many servings as you choose.

• If you’re going to heat up several soup servings, place frozen soup in a crock pot on low in the morning, and you’ll have hot soup in time for dinner.

• If you want to assemble a casserole and freeze the whole thing before cooking, line your casserole dish with aluminum foil. Once it hardens in the freezer, you can pop it out of the casserole dish (so you don’t have your dish held hostage in the freezer), and wrap the frozen casserole in extra foil. When you’re ready to cook it, remove the extra foil, and pop it back into the original casserole dish to thaw and cook.

• If you want to go ultra-easy on clean-up, freeze casseroles in disposable aluminum pans.

• I also like to freeze cooked casseroles in single servings, wrapped in foil, and placed in a large zip-top baggie. That way, I can easily heat up as few or as many servings as I choose.

• Label everything with contents and date. We like to keep a notepad on top of the deep freezer so we know what’s hidden in there before we dig.