Filling the Freezer!

babyshoes

We freeze meals all the time - whenever I am cooking a 'saucy' meal, like bolognese, stew, soup, curry etc, I make up a load extra, and stretch it if necessary with extras like tinned tomatoes, extra veg, oats, etc and then dish the leftovers into various containers - takeaway tubs are perfect for lunch portions - these go in the fridge. Ice cream tub size will do a full meal, these go in freezer. When wanted, they come out the freezer and either sit on the side for the day to defrost, or go straight into the microwave on defrost setting until they are defrosted enough to stir. Then they get nuked on high until piping hot, which I believe is the key to leftover food safety, you need to make it hot enough to kill any nasties.

We have also got some of those foil containers (not very eco friendly but oh so handy) with stuff that needs to go in the oven rather than the microwave, like aubergine bake with feta cheese topping, and peach crumble made from a load of peaches we found at 15p per punnet! These go straight into the oven from frozen, on a low temp until warmed through, then on a medium temp until piping hot. Those I cooked until they were done but the topping wasn't very brown - that way the topping browns nicely when you are heating them up. You could do a similar thing with cauliflower cheese and other desserts.

The only thing I am bad about is remembering to lable them, and we often have a 'mystery meal', where we don't know what carbohydrate to cook (pasta, rice or cous cous) until after the meal is defrosted, as even curry can look a bit like bolognese when frozen!