How long can meals be kept frozen for?

[AintNobodyHereButUsChickens]

My pelvis has this lovely habit of dislocating whenever I lift something heavier than I should, and it puts me out of action for a few weeks. Being a SAHM, this is far from ideal. It means DH has to do a full days work, come home and then do absolutely everything here, the cleaning, laundry, cooking, getting all the stuff for the fires, the pets etc, he’s really struggling to keep on top of it all and I’m utterly useless.

So I was thinking about getting a tall freezer to keep in the garage (we already have a freezer out there but it’s a small one) and dedicating a few drawers to keep stocked with batch cooked meals, to take a bit of the pressure off DH when I’m incapacitated. However I don’t want to go to the trouble of doing this and then finding out everything has gone a bit funny because it’s been frozen for too long.

Also what kind of meals freeze the best?

I Batch cook loads
Soups, casseroles freeze well
Lasagne, cottage pie
I would add in frozen mash, frozen veg, frozen chopped onions/garlic/ginger/sofritto, frozen berries, frozen gyoza and frozen jacket potatoes

If they're wet, they will keep for a few months. Anything else might get freezer burn - not inedible but just not as appetising.

The stuff that freezes best tends to be stuff that is more slowly cooked like chilli, bolognese sauce, curries and casseroles with chicken thigh or lamb, lasagne, cottage pie and so on. You can also make and freeze sauces and graves and sliced or chopped roast meat and poultry so it's possible to quickly assemble something.

Does mash come out alright once it’s cooked after being frozen? My MIL had this awful habit of cooking a roast dinner in the morning, plating it all up and then when teatime rolled around you microwaved your plate of food. The mash was always gross.

I batch cook a lot. I often make batches of stuff to then put with rice or pasta - but whoever is cooking just makes the rice or pasta fresh. Lots of curries, Bolognese - that sort of thing.

I try to use them within 3 months.

I made a whole load of mash for the freezer back in December from one of those 15p bags of spuds. Had some this week and it's absolutely fine.

TBH, in my experience, as long as everything is wrapped/bagged up well, it'll last forever.

@AintNobodyHereButUsChickens I buy it frozen from the supermarket
It's just potato/butter/milk