Nutritionally good meals for the Freezer?

lipidicman

All meat and sauce stuff freezes OK (sweet&sour, chilli etc) I am not sure how the pasta will be though.

Lillibet_2

Chicken pasta bake, tuna pasta bake, potato bakes all freeze well in my experience. So do stews & casserols. Pies, both pastry & mash topped, are good too. Personally I like to cook all in advance & freeze cooked, then defrost & just heat through when required but I know some posters freeze uncooked or re-heat from frozen, I think it is just a matter of being sensible & personal preference. If you make dishes with veg mixed in you have a ready-meal all in one go & don't need to worry about cooking veggies/accompaniments seperately:D


HTH

apprentice_tycoon

A general rule of thumb is if Birds Eye/Findus/Iceland make it and freeze it then you can too

Curry_Queen

rchddap1 wrote:

At the moment my freezer is full of meat portions. I haven't had time to do any cooking.

Mine's the same too at the moment ... the only cooked stuff in there are a couple of portions of chilli, a couple of various soup and 2 chicken breasts. Got tons of raw mince, stewing beef, chicken portions, joints and fish though but it's just finding the motivation to cook it all, not to mention needing extra freezer space for cooked dishes and remembering to get it out to thaw beforehand :rolleyes:

I can see us living on pasta and salads all week at this rate

lipidicman

apprentice_tycoon wrote:

A general rule of thumb is if Birds Eye/Findus/Iceland make it and freeze it then you can too

Yes but they can 'fast freeze' with very cold temperatures. This process prevents the ice crystals being large enough to disrupt the structure of the food

from : http://www.foodproductdesign.com/archive/1994/1194PE.html
'[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]One of the desired effects of freezing is that water is made unavailable for the growth of microorganisms by being in the form of ice. With the exception of water and fat, very little happens to the components of food as it is frozen. When water freezes, however, it expands by 9% in volume while forming ice crystals that vary in size depending on the rate of freezing (i.e., slow freezing gives large crystals, fast freezing smaller crystals). In products such as ice cream, lactose also may tend to crystallize out of solution. If such crystals are too large, they may damage the structure of cell walls which, upon thawing, causes juice loss, nutrient loss and unacceptable appearance.'[/font]

Iona_Penny

Most meals will freeze succesfully but (and this is just my own observations) things with smaller 'bits' freeze better for longer ie spag.bog sauce and shep. pie better than chicken casserole. The other thing I always do is refrigerate for several hours before freezing so you are adding chilled things rather than at RT. I also think home cooked food probably has a shorter frrezer life than bought stuff due to the 'frosting'.
Interested to hear what others think

crazyhazy

Thanks, have got a few ideas now, just need to get cooking and fill my freezer! here's what I've got so far -

Spag Bol
Burgers
Cottage Pie
Pasta Bake
Curry
Casseroles
Chicken Fajitas
Sausage casserole

That should keep me going for a while!

raeble

Cooked rice is another thing I've started to freeze. I notice that you can buy it frozen these days.

r.mac_2

Iona, I think you are right. They don't last as long in the freezer as 'bought' foods do. However, I'm not sure that this has to do with temperature etc, rather that there are no, or certainly significantly less, aditives and preservatives in home made food.

crazyhazy, I am in the same situation and am plannng a big cook over the weekend. I get paid tomorrow (yippee :beer:) and so will take a trip to the supermarket. I freeze a mixture of cooked meals and uncooked meat portions. For example I might buy two pounds of mince, make one pound into dishes and the other just seperate into portions - so that I can make something from scratch if I don't fancy another portion of what's already in the freezer.

I usually have chilli concarne, spag bol, tomato sauce (tinned toms with onion and pepper), mince and chicken breasts in the freezer. I am looking to experiment more this time as I am finding I crave more 'summery' dishes at this time of year.

HTH

MATH

Pasta dishes can freeze well but do have a tendency to go a bit stodgey when reheated. To get around this make the sauce runnier than when making fresh or add more sauce than normal. Also if possible rinse the pasta under cold water to cool before adding to the sauce so that it doesn't absorb the suace before freezing. HTH

Edit: Forgot to say that it is better to undercook the pasta becaus eit will soften still further when defrosting and re-heating