Discovering Freezer Cooking

Last week, my youngest brother and his wife had a baby. Seeing as I had just turned in my latest book to copyedits, I decided to take a day or two off and do some freezer cooking. I’d seen it being done on cooking blogs and it seemed like the perfect present for two brand new parents.

One of the things I learned in my blog surfing and pinterest adventures was that the best way to do it is to have a plan. Ideally, a plan and a lot of coupons, since you’re buying a lot of food at once. I had some coupons, but I also had a lot of plans.

Another thing I learned is that the flavors preferred by some of the more popular freezer cooking gurus on the internet are not particularly well-matched with my own. There were a lot of recipes out there that I found really bland or otherwise not my taste at all. There’s a lot of freezer cooking out there that relies heavily on pre-packaged flavoring mixes, or, possibly worse, on no seasonings at all. I tried to avoid any recipes that seemed to go suspiciously in that direction, though I wasn’t entirely successful, and I ended up doctoring quite a few dishes to keep things tasty.

After looking at dozens of recipes and menu plans, I picked out a half dozen that I thought were in line with what I wanted to do and made up my shopping list.

These are my supplies:

And here’s what I ended up cooking:

• 6 dozen sausage handpies/empanadas/homemade hot pockets
• 4 batches of my family recipe spaghetti sauce
• 2 batches of taco soup chili (details below)
• 4 chicken teriyaki dinners
• 6 pounds of barbecued pulled pork
• 3 chicken enchilada pies
• 1 chicken noodle soup

I also have a bunch of leftovers so I think I’m going to make a couple of freezer baked ziti and a macaroni and cheese or two this week.

ANYWAY, details.

Teriyaki Chicken: I haven’t tasted the teriyaki yet (I kept one for myself and gave three to my brother), but I’ll update my post when I do about how it turned out. I doctored the recipe I found a bit by adding extra chicken, a few shakes of Asian ginger spice blend and some chili sauce and tamarind after I ran out of teriyaki sauce. This is a crock pot recipe, which means you assemble the items, raw, in a plastic bag and freeze. Later, you defrost it overnight, cook in a crockpot the next day to serve over rice.

Spaghetti Sauce: This is the usual recipe, I just made a ton of it. I started by browning seven pounds of ground beef with onions and garlic, then took out about 2 lbs. of it to make the taco soup chili (more on that below). The rest I mixed with several cans of tomato sauce (maybe about 100 oz worth?), one can of crushed tomatoes, a big pile of basil, a big pile of oregano, and a healthy shake of crushed red pepper, then I simmered for about 5 hours while I did everything else. It’s hard to give measurements for this one since it’s the special of the house and I just eyeball everything. Next time, I’ll make measurements for you. The most important element is using SWEET basil.Then I just put it in freezer bags in the freezer. To cook: defrost in microwave, serve over boiled pasta.

Taco Soup Chili: This was my big “oops” moment but I pulled out of complete disaster, so there’s that. I should have known that any soup recipe that calls for “one taco seasoning packet and one ranch dressing packet” was not going to appeal to me. Soon after assembling all the ingredients and setting the soup to simmer I tasted it and was like “oh, this is going to be a TERRIBLE chili.” So I decided to try and make it a halfway decent chili instead and doctored it up to be more like my “pantry chili” that I make every week or so all winter long. I’m not including a recipe here because the recipe I tried was not good and I don’t know what I ended up doing to it in the end. To cook: defrost in microwave.

Enchilada pies: recipe here. I didn’t keep any of these but they LOOK really good and I tasted the filling so I think those should turn out really well. I’d love to do more for me sometime. That was actually one of the recipes I doctored a lot since I couldn’t find some of the ingredients (Philadelphia Brand Santa Fe Cooking Creme, which I gather is a sort of southwest-flavored softened cream cheese) and thought the end result needed more spice, so after substituting regular softened cream cheese, I added some rally great green tomatillo salsa my aunt always sends us from Texas (but I bet you could use any salsa or hot sauce in there for a kick). Then I covered the entire top with a thick layer of cheese. To cook you bake in the oven.

Barbecued Pulled Pork: I’ve been making this recipe for years but this time, short on time, I skipped the part where I rubbed the pork all over with a laboriously concocted Caribbean jerk spice rub. And you know what? I don’t miss it at all. So here’s the recipe for this bad boy: take one 5 lb (or whatever) boneless pork shoulder. Stick it in the crock pot. Pour a can of cola or rootbeer over the top (not diet or otherwise sugar-free). Cook on low for about 10 hours or until it can be shredded with a fork. Shred it with a fork. Take out all the gross fatty/gristly bits. Pour the barbecue sauce of choice over it and mix, adding more sauce as you think necessary and maybe a few ladlefuls of the juice from the crock pot if you think the whole mixture needs to be a bit wetter. Serve on rolls. Freezes great. Makes a ton. (For those who don’t eat pork I’ve done this with beef too and it works but not quite as well.)

Chicken Noodle Soup: Um, I made this for my own family with left over chicken bits from the enchilada pies. I just added some chicken stock and sliced carrots and celery, dill and salt (to taste) and cooked egg noodles. I always cook my egg noodles separately to keep the broth from going cloudy.

Sausage handpies/empanadas/what-have-you: I saved this for last because they are AWESOME. More labor intensive than the other recipes on my list, but holy cow, they are so good I don’t know why I haven’t made them before and I will certainly be making them very often from now on. I made over six dozen of these but I think only about four dozen made it up to my brother once Sailor Boy got his mitts on them. Best of all, they freeze great AND can be made using vegetarian sausage, which is what I did. The recipe was here and I made it exactly as written (except with vegetarian sausage substitute), and I doubled it. The whole “division of dough” thing was a little confusing as written on the recipe. I ended up being able to make maybe 8-10 hand pies per roll of crescent-roll dough, and what I did is basically use the divisions that come in the dough, flattening more than pillsbury does to make the pieces of dough larger, and then I pinched off any extra and combined it all together at the end of every roll. Highly recommend this recipe. I just mixed up the ingredients and then put on a TV show and started hand pie-ing it out. I’ll probably do this once a month now. They are great for breakfasts, lunches, snacks — just wonderful, all round.

So that was my first experiment in freezer cooking. I’m eager to try more. If you have any favorite tips or recipes or stories of your own to share, I’m all ears!