New Freezer

kat360

For valentines day my lovely oh bought me a 300 litre chest freezer!! Now I would be very grateful for any ideas on how to fill it, as with 3 young children I am limited to when I can go shopping (no woopsies for me )

What would you guy fill it with?

Thanks

ska_lover

Batch cooking...

I am a very boring foodie, with not many meals in my rotation...but I always have at least one premade lasagne which I have previously made

good_advice

I hope you have not put it in an outside shed. They can turn themselfs off if to cold.

Pitlanepiglet

We live fairly remotely and shop infrequently (mainly because I hate shopping!). Our freezers are full of:

Frozen veg - peas, green beans, casserole veg, baby carrots, spinach - avoids having to shop for veg regularly

Frozen chips & hash browns -useful for quick meals (you could make and freeze these if you were keener than I am).

Meat - we bulk buy meat from Costco and split it down into usable packs in the freezer. I also buy supermarket joints when they are significantly reduced so I'll buy three or four legs of lamb when they are down to £6 per kg or simlar, ditto pork, chicken and beef and then stash them in the freezer until needed.

Home made ready meals - spag bol, lasagne, stew, chilli etc. etc. I freeze these in freezer bags (other than lasagne) and then take them out to defrost. These will either be leftovers as I'll always cook at least double what we need or sometimes I'll batch cook just for the freezer.

Lunches - similar to the ready meals, I freeze lunches for me to take to work and microwave, so spag bol including the pasta, chilli & rice, pasta bake, sausage pasta - these are usually leftovers from our main meals but I do also cook up a big patch of these to freeze.

Desserts - we don't have much but there is usually ice-cream and some of those strudle bars in the freeezer for a treat. I also sometimes freeze stewed apples from the tree but usually I dehydrate the apples to avoid filling the freezer. I also buy the big bags of frozen berries or tropical fruit that Costco sell.

Edited to add: Bread - we keep a few emergency loaves as whilst we usually make our own bread sometimes we forget or run out quicker than we'd thought.

maman

kat360 wrote: »

For valentines day my lovely oh bought me a 300 litre chest freezer!! Now I would be very grateful for any ideas on how to fill it, as with 3 young children I am limited to when I can go shopping (no woopsies for me )

What would you guy fill it with?

Thanks

Just to get started, I'd advise you to make a special effort to visit some shops especially to buy for your new freezer. Pitlanepiglet has given good advice about frozen eg which is often cheaper, more nutritious and less wasteful than fresh. If you have a Farmfoods you can visit then lots of their veg is on 3 bags for £2 at the moment. I'm a huge fan of their frozen leeks and peppers but all the basic stuff is fine too. I've tried quite a bit of their meat and fish and that's good. if you can get to Aldi (or Lidl), I'd recommend buying a few of their gammon joints, FR chickens and gammon steaks. Keep some stand-by pizzas/fish fingers/frankfurters if the children like that sort of thing. Most of the supermarkets do 3 for £10 packs of meat which you can mix and match. I'd have some bread (and milk) for emergencies but not too much unless it's reduced. Also cheese if you ever see it at a good price. Then I'd get batch cooking especially bolognese, chilli and curry.

Magpie.

Mine usually contains bread, couple of pizzas and things like nuggets and fish fingers for the little one. A few home made ready meals like spag bol, chilli, stews, frozen veg and if I see meat on offer I grab those too

Pitlanepiglet

Frozen leeks and peppers are a good idea - I should have said, we keep quite a lot of dehydrated veg so the veg that we cook with is usually dehydrated (leeks, peppers, mushrooms) so I don't keep those in the freezer.

Frozen onions are useful - I haven't done any for ages but I used to buy a batch of onions and blitz them in the food processor before freezing - much cheaper than buying them frozen.

Pink.

If my husband bought me a freezer for valentines day I think he'd probably end up in it.......only joking :rotfl:

I would start batch cooking so that you have lots of homemade ready meals available. As has been said buy lots of frozen veg that you can incorporate into meals and search the shops when you can manage it for bargains/reduced food that can be frozen.

These threads have more ideas that will be useful to you:

OS help to fill my chest freezer please?

Cooking for the Freezer..

A Freezer to Fill

Bought a new chest freezer - Give me good ways to fill it!

I'll add your thread to one of those links later.

Pink

Pitlanepiglet

Oh another thought....the dangers of mystery meat.

When you put something in the freezer, you will be absolutely convinced that you will know what it is in the future. Except you won't. You will find yourself with a layer of "stuff" that you have no idea what it is! Label EVERYTHING, preferably more than once, with a sharpie pen and a stick on label no matter that you're just putting it in for a few days and you are sure you'll remember what it is. You'll thank me for it in the end.....:rotfl:

psso

kat360 wrote: »

For valentines day my lovely oh bought me a 300 litre chest freezer!!

Had to laugh when I read this.
My late husband bought me a deep fat fryer for Christmas one year. Sensible, practical chaps. Who needs expensive red roses when a freezer will be more useful ?.

(There was a lovely pair of earrings to match my engagement ring inside the fryer though)

kat360

Thank you all for your help. Pink. my mom said exactly the same thing, she thinks I'm slightly weird for being so excited at a freezer.

Pitlanepiglet thanks for all the brilliant advice, will buy a sharpie and some labels because "mystery meat" doesn't sound too nice :rotfl: