Batch cooking ideas please

mon1o

Hi Thanks for your replies!

I made my lasagne and it went down very well with everyone! Now im waiting for the remainder to cool so i can pop it in to freezer bags and have a quick lunch/tea for later on in the week.

Not sure which dish to tackle tomorrow. Maybe the fish pie (im presuming you can freeze fish pie?) Made a pizza and had it for lunch, it cost around 70p to make it and was so much more yummy than shop bought ones! Granted i didnt make the base by hand though.

Think i will be a OS convert by the time im done lol
Monica xx

newlywed

mon1o wrote: »

Not sure which dish to tackle tomorrow. Maybe the fish pie (im presuming you can freeze fish pie?)

The only time I won't freeze fish pie is if I've added cooked frozen prawns as you shouldn't re-freeze them

So if you use raw prawns you then cook, I think it should be okay but I always buy the ready cooked frozen prawns which means you can't put em back in the freezer

mon1o

thanks for that i dont eat prawns so will use salmon or a white fish instead. Todays job is to buy ingredients for that and also plenty freezer bags lol.

monica x

Topher

We did several experiments with batch cooking, and found it better on space and freshness to batch cook say....
Tomato sauce base (makes pizza spread, pasta base, and haf of it went forward to the following)
Bolognese base, i.e. mince fried and added to half the the tomato sauce base, (used for pasta sauce typically bolognese,)
Roasted chickens, carcasses then made into stock. (Chicken in gravy, leek, chicken in white sauce for pie crusts adding later, Chicken in white sauce for chicken gougère, - the choux pastry puffd save in a tin for ages, in a freezer for longer, some chicken reserved to add to curries)
Curry base (mainly onions) (makes chicken curry & veggie curries with chick peas)

Grated cheese, and some cheese sauce (cheese sauce with semi skimmed milk will tend to look grainy after freezing.)

Apple sauce unsweetened,
Rhubarb, lightly boiled in little water & sweetened,
Crumble mix, pastry mix, cookie dough, and if there's space, a bathc or two of Yorkshire puddings.

All of the above in foil trays, or in bags frozen individually in plastic boxes so that they stack.

We tend not to do the pizza bases and pastry crusts until needed, as they take up a lot of freezer space, and don't always have as long - freezer life.
Panasonic whips up a pizza base in 45 mins, packet pizza base mix, or white bread mix can also save time, although it's cheaper to make them from scratch.

We set aside two days to do this batch cooking. Although it doesn't take the whole of each day, it is quite a marathon.

Topher

BigMummaF

As I'm making a real attempt to empty the freezer, I shall be reading thru this little lot over the coming days for some inspiration, so TIA guys :T

Butterfly_Brain

If I do a roast I pour gravy over the left over sliced meat and freeze it, I also do double quantities of meals such as Stews, Mince (for shepherds pies, lasagne, chilli, bolognaise and meatballs) and when I make cakes I make 2 and freeze one

nesssie1702

newlywed wrote: »

The only time I won't freeze fish pie is if I've added cooked frozen prawns as you shouldn't re-freeze them

So if you use raw prawns you then cook, I think it should be okay but I always buy the ready cooked frozen prawns which means you can't put em back in the freezer

But if you've cooked the frozen prawns in your fish pie, it's perfectly safe enough to re-freeze them.

thriftlady_2

nesssie1702 wrote: »

But if you've cooked the frozen prawns in your fish pie, it's perfectly safe enough to re-freeze them.

Surely not if they were cooked before being packaged?

If they were raw in the packet and then cooked in the pie they could be frozen in the finished pie.

nesssie1702

There's no food safety issue with refreezing items that have been previously frozen - it won't cause food poisoning.

The only problem might be a quality issue, as freezing damages the cells in food and may cause lysis (bursting of the cells). So your prawns might not taste as nice, but they won't cause you problems so long as the food is reheated until its piping hot.

thriftlady_2

Hi Nessie,
I see from your profile that you are a food safety officer, so you obviously know what you are talking about.

Can I clarify something? Are you saying that is OK to freeze cooked food -eg a chicken casserole- more than once? So, if I made a chicken casserole from raw chicken, cooled and froze it, I could then reheat it, eat some of it and then put the leftovers back in the freezer?

I thought this was a big no no. My understanding is that you can freeze meat and fish once raw and once cooked.