Batch cooking for baby coming

[Poppetshop]

I’m going to start batch cooking soon for baby arriving.

Firstly, what batch cooking essentials do I need, ie what am I best storing the food in?

Secondly, please give me ideas of what to batch cook. We aren’t fussy and are both meat eaters. We will be doing the usual bolognese, chilli, lasagne etc but don’t want too many beef mincey things, would like some variety.

Also, any batch cooking top tips would be gratefully received

I started batch cooking by working out which of our favourite recipes could be frozen, and batch cooking them.

If you're planning on doing dozens in one day, look up the batch lady for advice.

We tend to cook 12 adult portions instead of 3. So we worked out what size of box would be the right volume and also fit well in the freezer.

Once the four meals are frozen I remove them from the boxes, wrap them in foil or cling film, and label them. And vitality, write them on a list so you know what you have available in the freezer!

Others freeze into bags. I just find them harder to wash.

Our frozen meals include tagines, chilli, stews, soups, bread (dough), pasta sauce, curry, smoothies, breakfast muffins, pease pudding, pâtés, hummus, pie fillings, pastry (dough), veggie lasagnes, and so on.

Key is:
Pick recipes you like
Be realistic about how many different recipes you can juggle at once without it being stressful!
Label and list

I make and freeze; chicken/mushroom/leek pies, tagines, dhal, chilli, lasagne etc but made with turkey or chicken mince, fish cakes, sausage casserole, liver/bacon/onion casserole and lots of curries.
Ikea freezer bags come in loads of sizes are supper strong and reusable.
Hope this helps, good luck.

Also, with my first baby I saved all of the batch cooked frozen meals until post partum - and in fact we were given meals for the first month.

I then realised that - for me - the last few weeks of pregnancy are harder than the first several weeks of having a newborn, so with subsequent babies I've started eating the meals earlier!

Also, we loved meals we could pop in the slow cooker - all the lovely smells of home cooking without the need for precise timing.

I sometimes buy a pack of tinfoil trays with lids in various sizes and make lasagnes, cannelloni, shepherd's pies etc in the foil, cool them and put then straight into the freezer. You can write directly on the cardboard lids so no guessing what the orange cube is. 😅

Alongside the usual mince options, I made sauces and frozen them in individual freezer bags - tomato and cheese. Just made it even easier for those "CBA" meal times as I just reheated them from frozen.

Not food prep as such, but we had the steam fresh veg packets in the freezer and bags of fruit chopped and frozen to make a smoothie out of (the breast feeding sweats were a big thing for me!)

I make a nice chicken and chorizo stew. No recipe as such but I'm sure Google has some. Basically chicken thighs, chorizo in pound coin-size slices, onions, garlic and veg (peppers, courgette, mushrooms), tin tomatoes, tomato puree, bit of chicken stock, chickpeas. I sometimes put potatoes in it, or have it with crusty bread.

Curry freezes well.

Make a batch of cheese sauce and freeze in batches so you can boil up macaroni for mac and cheese.

Soup is a complete meal in my house. Make a few batches of different soups.

I use old takeaway containers. Depending on the size one tub will hold 2 portions. Get a sharpie to write the contents on the lid. It wipes off fairly easily after.

I batch cooked and frozen some good base ingredients for later cooking as well as full meals.

For example, cooked the alcohol off red wine, made up curry sauce base, pasta sauce base etc.

Frozen sliced veg are your friend here - peppers, onions, mushrooms, Mediterranean veg mix, casserole veg. Very easy to make slow cooker meals by bunging in whole packets.

Thank you, these all sound delicious! I will look up the batch lady, I’ve never heard of her and have clearly been living under a rock!

I went all out. I did a dinner spreadsheet. Including things like fancy dinners (M&S something) take away and pizzas. I did it for 4 weeks. So I did my ideal meal plan without having curry or pasta two nights in a row. And then counted it up and worked out how much to make.

It was a thing of beauty. OF BEAUTY. Colour coded. Just lovely. But I'd do a bit of batch cooking anyway so I just needed to make sure I had all that sorted.

I recommend cooking things you like to eat in single serving boxes which are suitable for microwave- so much easier when juggling the baby. Also good to make them high in iron as blood loss is normal when giving birth . I’m convinced this helped me recover quicker always eating it with an orange juice to help absorption.

the tin foil trays made it much easier you write what it is on the lid.
i got 2 sizes
double portion ones (for dinners together)
single portions (lunches mostly for me)

pasta bakes
soba noodles with hoisin beef
Thick stews
Pulled chicken satay
Thai green curry
beef bourginon

With pulled protein I’d add frozen veg / rice / pasta/ sweet potato / whatever into the foil container too so it was a complete meal.

tip: under cook the pasta by a minute or two so when you reheat it’s cooked not mushy.

we decided food the day before. Took it out to defrost then it just needed 3-5 min in microwave

we also got a plastic tub and made a big snack box
oat cakes, trail mix and bars, wasabi peas, crisps biscuits nakd bars which was great at night or mid afternoon

get yourself a good water sports bottle too. You’ll need it esp if breast feeding

I did this. People said 'just let your husband cook!' But my cooking is more flavoursome than his (his is perfectly fine, but I'm better at cooking) and I wanted to eat some of my favourite meals while incapacitated/feeding baby all day.

I made things like:
Beef stew
Chicken casserole
Red Thai chicken curry
Chicken rogan josh
Batch of homemade pesto
3 x lasagnes (so that made 6 meals as we had half for lunch the next day)
Vegetable curry (could chuck prawns in or something if you wanted after reheating)

I used a mix of Tupperware and those disposable foil trays you can buy. My top tip would be to make sure your portion sizes are accurate when you're dishing up in your foil dishes etc. A few times I hadn't been generous enough and wished I'd had a slightly bigger meal. Also, I recommend cooking vegetables into the dishes, so that you don't even have to bother doing any veg or sides beyond maybe some rice or whatever.

get yourself a good water sports bottle too. You’ll need it esp if breast feeding

Get five! We dotted them around the house so that we were always able to swig some when we remembered. My husband refilled them every night.

We had a little routine of what you needed to do before leaving the other person with the baby - snacks, water, remote etc all in range and have been to the loo etc. Changing mat set up ready for next change.

I also recommend getting a few tins of fruit in, plus frozen fruit. You need a lot of fibre in the early days post-birth, I ate a tin of fruit a day on top of other meals and snacks.

When my DD was due to give birth I went down to stay at her home to be there for caring for her DS. I cooked her 2 x fish pie, shepherd's pie, Bolognese, 2 x lasagne, 2 X quiche, a beef stew, several different soups leak and potato, winter root vegetables and red lentils and tomato. I also bought chicken breasts and made DGS some nice chicken nuggets and apple pie and raspberry and rhubarb crumble x 2.

I freeze things like curry, bolognese, chilli, stew etc in freezer bags.

Put a couple of portions (or however many portions you need in your family for one dinner) in the bag, squeeze the air out and seal it. Then lay it flat and press the food as thin as you can, so it spreads across the whole surface of the bag.

freeze the bag as flat as you can. It takes up so little space compared to containers. You can then stack many of these flat ‘envelopes’ on top of each other. Obviously it won’t work for things like lasagne though!

The Ice Kitchen cookbook is fantastic for freezer food/batch cooking ideas. Before my baby was born I did smoothie bags, variety of curries, bolognese, chilli, ready to cook pizza bases (made from scratch) and a few slow cooker things like pulled pork, chicken casserole etc. They were a god send as my partner can’t cook.

Whatever you cook I'd recommend getting glass storage boxes in different sizes - the longest lived ones have a kind of snap on plastic lid.

Takeaway boxes get freezer burn, plastic bags are annoying to defrost. Glass you can stick in oven, air fryer or microwave and last and last.

Good luck with the baby, the first six months are the worst so you can't cook too many meals now!

Adding to many previous post, batch cooking was the most important thing I did but I would also recommend buying loads of bags of plain microwave rice and getting a ton of snacks in. Especially if you're breastfeeding, you'll be absolutely ravenous in the early days. ----