Make-Ahead Fresh Freezer Meals Kids Will Love
As a food blogger, I get more questions from busy parents about how to get meals on the table night after night than anything else. My number one suggestion is a weekly meal plan. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy – I have written more meal plans down on a napkin than I care to admit. The second thing I suggest is utilizing your freezer.
Doing all the chopping and prepping together in a couple of hours can save you so much time, money, and sanity!
I’ve been freezer cooking for years. I started when I was a working mom and realized that I wasn’t going to be able to keep up with cooking for my family in the same capacity I had as a stay at home mom. After a week or two of fast food and feeling yucky, I discovered freezer cooking and would spend a couple of hours every weekend prepping a weeks worth of meals.
These meals are not pre-cooked but frozen raw so everything tastes fresh and not like you are eating leftovers. That would get old FAST!
Freezer Meals How-To
You place the contents of each recipe in a gallon freezer bag, label and date it and add cooking instructions. Lay them flat in freezer to make it easier for stacking. When you’re ready, take them out of the freezer and place in the fridge the day before you plan on cooking them, then just follow the cooking instructions.
Doing all the chopping and prepping together in a couple of hours can save you so much time, money, and your sanity!
Freezer Meals PRO-TIP
One mistake I made in the beginning, was finding all new recipes to prepare, and then making 4 batches of them. This wasn’t a good idea, because it was new-to-us recipes and some of them didn’t end up being our favorites, so I was stuck with a bunch of meals in my freezer that we weren’t crazy about.
Over time I learned which meals we LOVED and was able to make double and triple batches of those recipes which saved us so much money and time in the long run.
The Recipes
Today I am sharing some of our old favorite freezer meals and some new ones that have become favorites. As with any recipe you find, feel free to adjust these according to your family’s preferences.  Just click the orange recipe titles to get each recipe. Happy (Freezer) Cooking!
Slow Cooker Chicken Enchiladas Soup
Slow Cooker Honey Sriracha BBQ ChickenÂ
Crock Pot Cilantro-Lime Chicken
Catalina-Cranberry ‘Dump’ Chicken
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This post was originally published in 2014 and has been updated.Â
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