Freezer frugality

mooomin

Good Afternoon OS-ers!

I am trying to think about how best to save my grocery budget this month as I had to pay £120 to my dentist this afternoon and most of this will have to come from the grocery budget :rotfl:until the insurance comes through for it.

I am lucky enough to have a freezer with quite a lot of goodies in it, including:

• Lamb chops (8 of) Free from parents
• Lump of venison Free from parents
• Mince
• Chicken breasts
• Casserole beef Whoopsied
• Pork belly (stuffed) Whoopsied to 99p!

I go back to work on Wednesday and I want to spend a good portion of tomorrow batch cooking so that I have lots of lovely ready meals in the freezer. I am going to make chilli in the slow cooker with the mince and if I have a second packet of mince I am going to do bolognaise sauce too.

The trouble is that I have a lot of those little plastic tubs, but they are rarely filled to the brim and take up a lot of space that I could be filling with yet more bargains! If I put sauces in freezer bags will they not leak everywhere?

Also, what should I cook with the chicken breasts that I can put back in the freezer as a ready meal idea? Just to (hopefully) help, I'm not a great cook, but can follow a recipe well enough, and I don't eat curries.

All help appreciated!

f_f

rach

you can certainly put sauces in decent freezer bags, or put the bag into the plastic tub til they're frozen then pop out, hence saving space, if you see what I mean!

You could cook the chicken in mexican spices or something. Tbh i find chicken breasts easy to use even if you've not much time in a stir fry or something!

flutterbyuk25

I use freezer bags to store chilli sauces etc. The slightly thicker ones are best. I tend to lay the bag in a box/cup whilst filling it up, once food is cold I then put it in another bag if using thinner freezer bags, and put in freezer.

x

Trinny

Sounds a little obvious really but HTH

What do you have in the plastic tubs - are there sauces which could be used with the chicken/ lamb/ mince.

For the chicken - what about chicken pie or chicken casserole - with some of the frozen sauces you have.

Same really with the beef

I would start with what you have already in the freezer - and use this as an opportunity to empty some of them out.

Incidentally

I save apple pulp, tomato sauce etc in bags - choose the tougher ones designed for freezing - i tie a knot in the top rather than using freezer ties, not had a leak yet

Trin

Katzen

I second the idea of putting stuff in bags &using the boxes to hold them up til they've frozen. I do that with cheap freezer bags &it works fine. They do seem to leak a bit when defrosting so pop them back in the boxes as they thaw.
With the chicken why not make a pie filling-chicken &veg or mushroom? Can then be frozen &put under pastry later. Or, someone posted a slow-cooker recipe for Carribean chicken, think it was on the 'what's in my slow-cooker' post from yesterday

PollyFlinders_3

I'm never organised enough to get things out early enough to defrost so
I freeze sauces direct into plastic tubs, then decant them all into plastic bags when they are fully frozen/I've run out of space. Has the added advantage that I can put them back into plastic boxes to defrost in the microwave.