Home made ready meals

daska

Another suggestion is couscous cake. Make couscous as normal, add whatever you feel like in terms of veg/flavourings, bind with beaten egg and fry in patties. These freeze and nuke well.

DSD's favorite was spinach, green pesto, cheese, pickled peppers, asparagus and olives. DS1 preferred mushrooms and ham. The world's your oyster really.

pavlovs_dog

so many fab recipe ideas, thanks all for taking the time to post.

Pooky wrote: »

By getting into a habit of replacing the "blocks" one day a month means you can spread out the prep time and keep the freezer stocked. If that makes sense?

yes it does make sense, and assuming this system works for us it will save me from being a slave to the kitchen once a month for big cooking sessions.

going to need a scary degree of organisation though :eek:

currently researching freezers so I have something to fill with all of these lovely dishes.

EmsyD

I take left over meals in a tub for work to heat in the microwave.

Things I've found to freeze and reheat well are:

Left over stirfry with noodles
Bami Goreng/Nasi Goreng
Pesto pasta with bacon and sausage bits
Sausage and bean casserole
Soup
Tuna pasta bake
Pastabakes (generally are ok can have them hot or cold with salad)
Left over roast dinner
Curry & rice
Thai curry & rice
Butterbean & chorizo stew with bread (can dig out recipe)
Mac & cheese
Scrag end of lamb and venison stew
Bolognese
Chilli con carne with tortillas (burritos)
Homemade pasties
Corned beef hash
Lemon dumplings and custard
Left over pizza
Lasagne
Pancake lasagne (uses leftover pancakes rather than pasta sheets)
Rabbit stew with cider

Phoolgrrrl

Would you defrost these dishes or microwave from frozen?

If from frozen how do you know how long to do it for, do you just keep checking it and see when it is warm enough?

zippychick

I really hope things work out ok for you.

As this has dropped down the board, I've merged it with our homemade ready meals thread

Zip

EmsyD

Phoolgrrrl wrote: »

Would you defrost these dishes or microwave from frozen?

If from frozen how do you know how long to do it for, do you just keep checking it and see when it is warm enough?

I take out of the freezer in the morning and they've usually almost defrosted by lunch. 3 mins on high and jobs'agood'un

I have done it from frozen but I tend to put a splash of water in and keep going until it's cooked all the way through and stir it...nothing worse than enjoying your lunch and you get a mouthful of frozen food!

pavlovs_dog

thought I'd come back and update. I'm normally really bad for coming across all of these fantastic ideas on the OS forums, thinking to myself 'yep, definitely going to do that' and it never happens. This time however, things are different!!

We've bought a second freezer, and as well as yellow stickered meat I've started filling it with HM ready meals. I made a big vat of bolognaise which I then turned into lasagnas and froze. I've just done another big mince batch, which I split in two. Half has become Cottage pies and the other half chilli. Been reading the 'bulking out meals' thread and the second batch of mince s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d much further than the 1st. Don't remember EVER chopping so much veg in one go

Over the weekend I'm going to do a big batch of steak and ale casserole with dumplings. Not sure what meals I'm going to cook up next week (might wait and see what YS goodies I get at the supermarket before deciding) but I'm definitely going to buy some chickens to pop in the slow cooker so I can strip the meat and freeze in meal sized portions. Can then do some soups with the stock.

Just wanted to say thanks for all the support and encouragement. It's been a lot of work but I know I'll be glad of it once term starts.

Loopylou1

Hi!

I did search and couldn't see anything...

I've got some ready meals in the freezer i need to use up - could I take them into work? we only have a fridge in the office so I get that they will start to defrost - just wondered if it would still be safe to eat?

wondercollie

I do it all the time as do most of my coworkers.

The line for the microwave can get pretty long though.

babyshoes

I sometimes do this on days when I don't have leftovers to take in, and am still here to tell the tale! If you put it in the fridge as soon as you get to work, it will still be mostly frozen at lunch time. TBH, even if it was mostly defrosted it would probably be fine as long as it was in the fridge - you heat them up to magma temperature so I'm sure very few germs could survive!