34 crock pot meals in 1 day

valk_scot

When I used to work long erratic shifts I would spend part of a Saturday morning prepping meat and veg, put both top and bottom oven on and cook three casseroles at a time. I would do this twice over a day, three hours each...chilli, meatballs in sauce, bolognaise, beef in beer, curry etc etc, make 8 portions of each then freeze the lot down in double portions for the coming month. I'd usually do a couple of stovetop recipes as well like daal and tomato sauce. One Saturday morning of work meant I barely had to cook for the rest of the month apart from some quick cook pasta and salad, or rice.

Yes I did use the food processer for chopping onions, slicing carrots and such, if you're making 48 portions of things that all require onions it's much quicker to run eveything through a food processer. So I'd prep up a few bags of soup veg mix or whatever for the freezer on the side.

I didn't have a slow cooker back then but even now I barely use mine, the food all tastes overboiled to me and the meat turns out pappy. Batch cooking in the oven gives much better flavours imho and it's an economical way to use an oven, it only has to be on at Gas mk 3 anyway for casseroles. There's nothing new about this way to cook either, it's been around as long as freezers. A pressure cooker would be quicker on an individual recipe basis but I don't think it would save time in the long run as you can bung a casserole in the oven and go and do something else, a pressure cooker needs half an eye kept on it.

Anyhow, just saying. You con't need a slow cooker to do this sort of thing, your oven and hob can be just as time saving.

camNolliesMUMMY

I don't assemble the meals.
However I have all meats in separate bags....1bag for each chicken breast as sometimes I only need one.
Veggies are diced and the same veg in another bag is chopped, as I hate wasting it.
So big bags of carrots, spring onions, onions to go in casseroles are chopped up, mushrooms, peppers, chillis...I am yet to make up some chips.
I have sauces already frozen and anything that's left over from cooking are frozen also.

Each morning I check my menu board and get the items needed out the freezer and quickly measure my other ingredients like spices etc into a bowl.
When I want I can either chuck in sc frozen or cook on the hob.
Had no problems chucking frozen in the sc if m in a rush but its on low for a min of 8 hrs.

NikkeiPositivity

Hi all,

Nice to see this has inspired people. I'm two months into a new job and although I'm contracted to work 37.5 hrs a week its working out at atleast 43 and then more come month end so I'm pretty knackered, add to that my second job that I work on a Sunday and I'm struggling a little bit. I'm thinking if I do this it's going to be a huge help even if it's not to go in the slow cooker, just having all the prep and meals ready to cook will make a huge difference! I'm thinking up some recipes as we speak.

Someone in this thread mentioned dehydrated versions of these meals. I've read some of dehydrator thread but I'm not quite sure I understand what the dehydrator is capable of and what I could do with it, could anyone give me more advice?

Pitlanepiglet

I like the concept of this but I'm not sure why you would bother freezing say tins of tomatoes or tins of beans when they would live happily in the cupboard to be added at the time of cooking - I know it saves prep time but it adds to what is in the freezer which all has a cost in terms of space whereas I view tins in the cupboard as cost free (in storage terms).

Some nice ideas though and a bit of a nudge to get more organised.