Batch cooking ideas please

attentionseeker1

Hi all!

Hope someone can help with this- I am finding my OS budgeting is getting rather thrown off track by being too exhausted to cook after work and reaching for a takeaway instead of cooking the food that is already in the house!

What are everyone's favourite HM 'ready meals' that can be taken out of the freezer in the morning and ready fairly quickly in the eve?

My two staples are the obvious chilli con carne and bolognese so all I have to do is boil some pasta/rice to go with it, however man cannot live on mince alone....!

(There are 2 of us, one with big appetite and we eat anything, particularly spiced things...)

Olliebeak

We've just had Scouse (similar to Irish Stew) that was originally made about a month ago . Defrosted and then warmed through in the microwave. Always tastes better when left and warmed up again - IF there's any left-over .

crawley_girl

Cauliflower/ broccoli cheese - although the sauce it does sometimes go a bit runny once defrosted but ok when zapped

Fish pie

mash potato can be cooked and frozen

potato wedges can be made and frozen

curry

ChapelGirl

If you have a decent-sized freezer you could try setting aside a day one weekend to do a batch cook-up. I used to do this a while ago as an elderly relative was getting too poor-sighted to be able to cook for herself and her husband, so I used to take round meals which could be defrosted and reheated in the oven.

I bought heavy foil dishes and cardboard lids, lke you get in the takeaway. Often the dishes could be washed and re-used, but I always used new lids.

If you cook up lots at once you make the best use of the gas or electric for the oven. If you do 3 or 4 recipes at the same time it might seem like a lot of ingedients to buy etc. but your preparation time will be slightly quicker as if 2 of the recipes call for chopped onion you can do both lots at the same time.

I did roasting tins full of lasagne, moussaka, shepherd's pie, maccaroni cheese etc. and when it was cold I cut it into portions which fitted into the foil trays. One foil dish would easily feed 2 old people, but if you have big appetites you might need to do some extra veg. on the side, or you could fill the trays less full and put one portion in each.

You could also do big pots of green Thai turkey thigh curry or various flavours of spaghetti sauce, or chicken casserole, beef in red wine, pork in cider, rogan josh etc.

Lakeland do some square plastic boxes in 3 height sizes which are good for freezing stews, sauces and stocks because they can be stacked on top of each other and don't waste freezer space. You can write on them with a permanent marker pen (e.g. CD labelling pen), and it will wash off, but won't wipe off in the freezer accidentally. All stews look and smell the same once they are frozen!

jackieglasgow

My very very favourite "ready meal" takes about ten minutes and is simply boiled spaghetti, we buy wholemeal, fried in olive oil, garlic, chilli and salt and pepper to taste. It is yum yum and I tend to cover it in parmesan too for good effect.

Very quick, tasty, relatively healthy, especially if you use wholemeal, and filling.
Don't know if that's what you had in mind, but it's my best quick ready meal. (Sometimes I will slice and fry off some sausage through it, too.)


OOPs meant to post in laziest tasties recipe thread, feel free to move it, if you like, BGs

Bongedone

Chicken tikka masala or any HM curry.

ChocClare

Look at the ready meals in Tesco's and see what you fancy.

One of our favourites is chicken breast, topped with a slice of mozzarella and cheddar, and wrapped in bacon. Freeze in a foil dish, defrost and cook. If you've frozen some mash another time or some potato wedges, those are ready to cook with it.

Similarly, you could freeze chicken with stuffing balls and chipolatas for a "mini roast".

I also get bored with mince-based dishes and find that, actually, the things you're paying ott prices for are pretty easy to assemble yourself. Similarly, I just bunged two lamb shanks in the slow cooker overnight the other day and froze it when it was cooked - now it just needs to be heated through for when my DH is at home to help me eat it.

I also freeze mum's ubiquitous - this is basically the chicken left over from the roast, fried off with some leeks and chopped bacon, plus some mushrooms if I have them. I then sprinkle this with flour, stir through and add milk to make a "white" sauce. Add cheese to the sauce and season if necessary. If you stir cooked pasta into this you will probably have enough to make one pasta bake for your supper tonight and freeze another for another time. If you let it cook until the sauce is quite thick, you can use it to stuff pancakes - top with grated cheese and freeze, then defrost and serve with fresh vegetables.

Leftover ham and cabbage can be combined with softened onion and stirred into mashed potatoes to make colcannon cakes (you'll need a bit of flour as well) - these freeze well too.

If you're really pressed for time, then you can eat from your storecupboard rather than your freezer. Pasta is the obvious contender for this. Put your spaghetti on to boil and fry off some bacon bits (eg Lidl or Aldi - or chop some bacon, it doesn't take that long :rolleyes:) in a frying pan. Pour over a carton of passata, a spoonful of mixed herbs and a good spoonful of sugar. Let the passata reduce in the frying pan on a reasonable heat until it is really thick. This should not take longer than your pasta takes to boil. Stir some grated cheese into the sauce and use to top the spaghetti. Or grate a courgette over cooked spaghetti and add a knob of butter and some grated cheese. Or chop some ham, chuck in a pan and "toast", then add a crushed clove of garlic, a spoonful of tomato puree (or even ketchup) and some fromage frais or creme fraiche. Stir in some cheese and you're done.

You can make the last one into a slightly more up-market dinner by rolling up slices of ham and pouring over creme fraiche into which you've crushed a clove of garlic and added a spoonful of tomato puree. Top with cheese and grill.

Super-pressed for time? Toast a muffin per person, fry one slice of bacon and one egg per person. You can also add grilled tomatoes or mushrooms for the grown-ups. Squirt muffins with ketchup and assemble. My kids thought I was the best mother ever when we had these for supper last week!

Having read this through, I promise I don't work for the bacon and cheese marketing boards of Great Britain - it's just that they're fast answers to quick suppers! :rotfl:

Paulie'sGirl

Hi,

Like ChapelGirl I make my own ready meals in foil takeaway containers and the plastic ones. I tend to make them uncooked and freeze them that way.

So I layer uncooked pasta and sauce(s) in both sizes of foil container (we find a "rice" one a generous one person portion, and a "main" one enough for two with salad / garlic bread) and freeze.

I put savoury mince in them topped with cooled mash and freeze

I parboil potatoes and layer with gammon and top up with mustardy ham stock for Alnwick stew (this may work for hotpot too?)

I use the plastic containers for beef stew, chicken and bacon casserole, tuscan bean casserole, chilli con carne, various curries, soup, extra cheese sauce etc

We're gearing up to make and ship HM ready meals to his mum and dad as they're becoming increasingly infirm and starting to not want the meals on wheels they get. I'm all for it, I think ours will be more to their taste and possibly fresher.

PGxx

greenbee

I freeze lots of ratatouille, and have this with pasta, rice or couscous. I also freeze soft goats cheese, which goes very well with the ratatouille - and both of them are manageable if you forget to defrost in advance!

I'm also a huge fan of chicken stock with noodles and spinach/pak choi/broccoli. Again, you can defrost the stock on the stove, so it really is a last minute meal and takes at most 15 minutes (and you can happily leave the stock to defrost while you get on with other things).

Mind you... today I had left over tomato soup (cold... I have an attack of CBA) and the remains of a pack of smoked salmon trimmings.

So I think I need to make sure I have something sensible tomorrow night!

Butterfly_Brain

I use plastic containers and I have basic recipes that can be turned into anything such as
Mince with onions and carrots for shepherds pie or pasties or a pie or a savoury crumble, Or a Tomato based one for lasagne, chilli or bolognaise
This way you have a basic meal that you can just add anything you want but the base is there.
I also do stews - again you could make into pies etc if you want to.