Beef Freezer Meals

Meatloaf

1 lb ground beef
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 cup breadcrumbs
salt & pepper
any other spices you want! (onion powder/flakes, parsley, garlic powder, etc.)


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  In one bowl, combine beef, egg, milk, and breadcrumbs.  Add salt, pepper, and spices.  Mix and mold into baking dish.  Bake 30-45 minutes.  Add meatloaf topping (below) and cook an additional 10 minutes.


You can just use whatever meatloaf recipe you would normally use, but this is the ratios I try to stick close to.  I get the breadcrumbs by leaving aging bread on the counter to completely dry out and then running it through the food processor.  If I were making meatloaf for the freezer, I would cover the meat in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil.  Our family of four can eat a 8x8 pan with about 3-4 cups of mixture (I never make it one pound of meat at a time, I just try to keep around 3-4 cups in each pan that I make.) with enough leftovers for one person's lunch.  


Meatloaf Topping

6 Tbsp. brown sugar

½ cup ketchup

½ tsp. nutmeg

2 tsp. dry mustard

Mix ingredients together.  Add to top of meatloaf about 10 minutes before it is finished cooking.

This is my favorite meatloaf topping.  The recipe is from Teresa Fleshman.  We always had this on top of the meatloaf we would eat at a youth group retreat in Colorado and I had to have the recipe so I could eat it more than once a year.  I cut the recipe in half when I make a 8x8 pan.  I'm guessing you'd need the whole recipe for a 9x13.  I have made extra batches of the topping in individual baggies to put in the freezer and it worked really well, but a lot of times I will just make it at some point while the meatloaf is cooking.  As with all freezer cooking, you'll have to watch the times depending on how long ago you got the meat out of the freezer.  

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Oven BBQ Beef

3 lbs. Round Steak

2 Tbsp. Oil

½ cup Chopped Onion

¾ cup Ketchup

¾ cup Water

½ cup Vinegar

1 Tbsp. Brown Sugar

1 Tbsp. Mustard

1 Tbsp. Worcestershire

½ tsp. Salt

⅛ tsp. Pepper

Cut steak into 10 equal proportions.  Brown on both sides in oil, in skillet.  Transfer to a roasting pan.  Add onions to oil in skillet and brown slightly.  Add remaining ingredients to make BBQ sauce.  Simmer 5 minutes.  Pour over steaks.  Cover and bake for 2 hours at 350 degrees.

This recipe is from my aunt Debbie, who actually got it from my Grandma Carney, but I have never know her to make it--only Debbie. When I am making this for the freezer, approximately 3 pounds of meat will be enough to fill an 8x8 pan (which again is enough for our family of four--but only sometimes there are leftovers with this meal!).  I would suggest making one and a half or two whole recipes of the sauce mixture when dividing the recipe into two pans to make sure there is plenty of liquid.  I cover in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil to put in the freezer.  When getting ready to bake, take off the plastic wrap and put the foil back on!

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Salisbury Steak

1 (10.5 oz) can condensed golden mushroom soup, undiluted (I've always used regular mushroom)

1 1/2 lbs ground beef

1/2 cup breadcrumbs

1 large egg, beaten

1/2 cup chopped onion

salt & pepper

garlic salt or garlic powder

1/3 cup water

Combine 1/4 cup soup with ground beef, breadcrumbs, egg, onion, salt, pepper, and garlic powder; mix well.  Shape into 6 patties.  Place in a shallow baking dish.  Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.  Drain off fat.  Combine remaining soup and water; pour over patties.  Bake an additional 10 minutes or until thoroughly heated.

This is another recipe where you might already have a favorite way of doing it, but hadn't thought to make extra for the freezer.  I haven't made this for a really long time.  If you are using several pounds of meat to make extras, you can make the patties however big you want and put as many as you need in each pan.  I always had to use a 9x13 pan to make them fit.  I mentioned in my first freezer meal post that when I froze the mushroom soup with water, it got lumpy and pretty gross looking as it unthawed, but the taste and texture was perfectly fine when it cooked for the 10 minutes.  

Pork Freezer Meals

Honey Baked Pork Chops

6 boneless pork chops

½ cup honey
¼ cup cider vinegar
¼ t. ground ginger
1 clove minced garlic
2 Tbsp. soy sauce

Mix honey, vinegar, ginger, garlic and soy sauce. Place uncooked pork chops and honey mixture in a freezer bag and freeze.

Directions for Serving Day: Thaw completely. Place pork chops and honey mixture in a baking dish. Bake for 350 degrees for 1 hour or until pork chops are cooked. Turn pork chops occasionally while baking.

I can't remember where I got this recipe, but it is one we really like.  We usually serve it with white rice because it has got an Asian taste to it.

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Lasagna Ravioli

My aunt Melody gave me this "recipe" and it is my preferred way to eat lasagna.  I don't have an exact recipe for this one.  It would change depending on what size of pan you used anyways.  We make ours in a 8x8 pyrex.  It feeds four of us with usually enough leftovers for Isaac's lunch.  We use browned sausage because I was raised that sausage was the meat ingredient in lasagna and spaghetti.  We've made it with cooked chicken before and you could used browned ground beef if that is your preference.

Frozen cheese ravioli

Browned sausage

Spaghetti sauce

Shredded mozzarella cheese

I put a thin layer of spaghetti sauce in the bottom of my pan and then line it with frozen raviolis.  Put on as much meat as you think looks good.  Cover in spaghetti sauce.  I usually try to put a spoonful on each ravioli.  Repeat with ravioli, meat, and sauce and then cover in mozzarella cheese.  Cook at 350.  The time will vary depending on if you're cooking one you just assembled or how long it has been since you pulled it out of the freezer.  I usually cover it aluminum foil and start checking it after about 30 minutes.  Sometime in there I will take the foil off so it can brown up the cheese better.

Freezer Meals: My Introduction

I made a Facebook post last week about making four meatloaves and a cheesy hashbrown casserole to put in the freezer for later use.  I had a couple people ask me about what meals I made for the freezer, so I thought I would just put them on my blog so that I could share the recipes with them and anyone else who wondered but didn't ask and for myself to have a list of all the meals I've made all together in one place.  Freezer meals are something I really love but have gotten out of the habit of making lately.  I want to get back into the habit, especially before November when we will have our new addition here and spending a lot of time in the kitchen will be the last thing I want to (am able to?) do!

My first freezer meal trick is one we have been sticking with and it's just like second nature to us now.  We brown ground beef and sausage 5-10 lbs at a time in a large electric skillet, fill quart sized freezer bags, and put the meat into the freezer.  We don't do any seasoning to the meat, just cook it as is.  Ground beef is used for tacos, taco soup, chili, goulash, sloppy joes (We make ours with just meat and Cookie's BBQ sauce.  No Manwich in this house!), and any random recipe I find on the internet.  Browned sausage is used for spaghetti, biscuits and gravy, breakfast burritos, ravioli lasagna (more on it later!) and again random recipes found on the internet.  Along the same lines, we will cook a crockpot full of boneless skinless chicken breast in water and shred to put in the freezer for meals needing precooked chicken like chicken casserole, enchiladas, and chicken alfredo.  (You could also cook a whole chicken, but boneless skinless chicken breasts are so much easier!)  I'm not going to post my recipes for any of those meals (except ravioli lasagna) so if you want one of them, let me know.

My second freezer trick is buying glass baking dishes.  I found a website (Shop World Kitchen) when they were clearancing their purple pyrex 8x8 and 3-quart 9x13 dishes.  They have a buy 3, get 1 free deal, but I have no clue how that compares to a local brick & mortar store.  You can search garage sales or just slowly stock up on them.  I've never had one explode like you might have heard stories of, even with taking a pan straight from the freezer to the oven.  You could buy disposable aluminum pans, but over time, the glass ones will pay for themselves and it's more "green." Along the same lines, you probably need a deep freeze if you don't have one.  Ours was one of our first purchases after we bought our house.  I couldn't live without it and can't believe we did for the first year of our marriage in our small upstairs apartment.  You need freezer "ziploc" bags not just regular storage ones.  There is a difference and you will be able to tell after your regular storage bags rip out in the freezer.  We have always used ziploc brand because we were buying them in bulk at Sam's Club cheaper than off brand at other stores, so I can't tell you if I'd recommend other brands.  I haven't gone "green" in this area yet.

My third freezer trick is cooking extra when you are making your meals.  Some people do a month's worth of freezer cooking by taking an entire day and dedicating it to freezer meal preparation.  Not me.  Like I mentioned before.  I wanted to make meatloaf for supper.  We had just bought a bunch of ground beef.  I mixed up 8 lbs of ground beef with lots of eggs, breadcrumbs (made from bread that was going stale so we set it out on a plate and ran it through the food processor), and whatever spices I threw in... I wasn't using a recipe!  I divided it up between my pans.  I'm a bit OCD, so I had to measure it all out to put the same amount in each of the 8x8 pans (I think it was 4 cups) and then the rest went into a 9x13.  One bigger mess on one night gave us the four freezer meatloaves and supper for that night.  I did the same thing with the two hashbrown casseroles I made that night.  It's not much harder to make extra and the cleanup only has to happen once!  One word of advice, though.  If you are making a recipe for the first time, only make enough for one meal.  I once had to throw away a chicken pot pie after it sat in our freezer for a long time because the first one we made was completely disgusting and we couldn't bring ourselves around to eat it a second time.  Don't be afraid to look at the meals you are already making and love and ask yourself if any or part of it could be made ahead of time and frozen for later use and try freezing a meal's worth to see.  And then share your recipe with me!  Also, don't forget to freeze your cookie dough!  We almost always make a double batch of chocolate chip cookies and freeze all of it in balls but the 10 or so cookies that we make at that time.  We mostly only freeze chocolate chip cookie dough and monster cookie dough so try out your favorite recipes!

I've heard that you shouldn't freeze dairy products like sour cream and cream of "whatever" soups, but I have never had a problem in the recipes that I've made.  I did have a salisbury steak recipe that I froze cream of mushroom soup and water in a ziploc baggie to add to the steaks after they cooked for awhile.  The soup came out of its freeze pretty lumpy but the taste and texture was completely fine when it was cooked for the 10 minutes the recipe required.

So, with all of this said, I'll start making posts with recipes that we freeze, as I find the time because this post got really long!