6 freezer meals to make with friends

I made my first batch of freezer meals with my friend Kimi last fall and it was THE best idea. I’ve made freezer meals before by myself, but there’s something much more fun (and therapeutic) about doing it with a friend. Those meals came in super handy on busy weeknights, or even weekends when I didn’t feel like cooking or making a big mess in my kitchen.

Fast forward to this week, with so much uncertainty and craziness going on in our country related to the coronavirus. I can’t control any of that, but I can make sure I’ve got some yummy meals to feed my family 🙂

When we do our joint freezer meals, we both choose TWO recipes, and then buy enough ingredients to make FOUR batches of those recipes (that way we will both walk away with EIGHT freezer meals a piece). We try to do a little prep work ahead of time to save us some time when we get together. For instance, if our meals call for ground beef or shredded chicken, we will both try to have those things made ahead of time. Then, once we are together, we can assemble our meals and help each other put everything together. It makes it go so much faster! And easier!

The best advice I got about freezer meals was to think of things I saw in the freezer section – if it’s in the freezer section at the grocery store, it can likely be frozen. I often freeze large quantities of cooked meats when I find it on sale (shredded chicken and ground beef are two SUPER easy meats that you can add to so many recipes), but have full size meals are often really helpful too!

Kimi and I are both ‘good enough’ cooks, meaning we eyeball most of our recipes and never write anything down (ha!), but we did use a couple of recipes off of Pinterest as guides, and Kimi did write down her delicious meatball recipe this time!

Here are links/recipes for 6 of the meals we’ve made recently:

1. Stuffed Peppers – I used the recipe as a guide for stuffed peppers – I didn’t add any cheese to mine ( I will do that before I cook them) and I didn’t cook the meat. I did add a few extra dashes of spices, but this is a great base recipe you could tweak to your tastes. We individually wrapped each pepper in aluminum foil, then placed 4-5 wrapped peppers in a gallon freezer bag.
2. Chicken Parmesan Casserole – This was SO good! I cooked my chicken ahead of time, and then once I assembled the casserole, I DID NOT bake it. Just double wrapped it with foil, and put it in the freezer. When I defrosted and cooked it later, I boiled up a box of bowtie pasta and served it over that.
3. Freezer Chicken Enchiladas – These are SO easy to make. I followed the recipe and then added a few things in the enchiladas that I know my crew would like (black beans and corn). I did NOT add the sauce to the pan, I was afraid it would make them too soggy. So I just kept a can of enchilada sauce in my pantry and dumped it on them when I was ready to cook!
4. Freezer Tuscan Chicken Pasta – We made this one recently and haven’t defrosted it to eat it yet, but I can tell you that this sauce is OUT OF THIS WORLD good. We used shredded chicken and ended up making an additional batch of sauce just to make it creamier.

And here are two of Kimi’s recipes she used:

Kimi’s Meatballs

• 1 pound beef/pork/lamb
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 clove grated garlic
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1 egg
• 1 cup shredded parmesan
• 1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs

Mix by hand or in stand mixer. Make balls by hand (or with a cookie scoop) and place on grated cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Once finished, let cook and freeze in ziploc bags.

Zesty BBQ chicken

• 6 large chicken breasts
• 1 cup of BBQ sauce (Sweet Baby Ray’s)
• 1 cup of Italian dressing

Place chicken breasts and BBQ sauce + Italian dressing in the crockpot and cook on low for 8 hours. Once through, remove the chicken breasts and shred it, then return it to the crockpot to absorb the sauce mixture. Freeze flat in ziploc bags and then defrost and use on Hawaiian rolls.

Got some yummy freezer meals in your recipe box? I’d love to hear about them!