30 Days of Freezer Cooking: Cooking Methods
When I first heard about freezer cooking, I was overwhelmed by the Once a Month Cooking method. Â Luckily, I found there are several different methods. Â Now, I do a combination of them. Â I preserve everything I can when it goes on sale (or I have an abundance from my garden) like Crockpot Applesauce, double & triple our favorite recipes like Chicken Enchiladas, freezer cooking for sale items (chicken dump recipes coming soon) and I do OAMC for dinner meals to fill in the gaps.
Once a Month Cooking – This method uses one big cooking session for 30 different meals. This method takes a lot of work, because you take an entire weekend to prepare 30 meals but then you also have to cook dinner each night. When most folks do Once a Month Cooking, they have lots of freezer space to use! A not-so-difficult version of OAMC is Once a Week Cooking – it's OAMC but on a smaller scale. That means it's easier to manage and keep up with, but it also means you have to do it once a week instead of once a month. For OAMC ideas, check out my Pinterest board below.
Batch cooking – This is where you are just doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling recipes as you are making them for dinner, and freezing the excess. You can do this with breakfast or lunch as well! This method is great because you don't have the hassle of extra planning, or even extra ingredients to deal with. You don't have to have a huge freezer for batch cooking, but you also don't get a ton of variety with your meals because you're making the same meal for several different dinners.
Freezer cooking – Freezer cooking is where you make things specifically to throw in the freezer. I think freezer cooking works best with casseroles and stir fry dishes. Those reheat really well, so searching for variations of these on Pinterest will help you a ton! Breakfast burritos are another favorite that we keep in the freezer.
Preserving – This method is where you freeze things so they don't go bad or because they are going out of season. Stock up on tomatoes as they're going out of season – so they're super cheap. Then can/preserve them so you can use them all year without the huge expense of out-of-season produce prices.
