Freezer Food - come and add to my list!

[PavlovtheCat]

I am trying to get together a good list of food to cook for our freezer and am a bit stuck for interesting things to cook. I want whole meals, as much as possible of the meal to be frozen, in a bit to free up some of our time cooking from scratch and cleaning the kitchen, which has become a bit Groundhog Day.

So, we have to start

lasagne
Curry
rice
chapatti
dhal
individual chicken pies
mash - can be served with pies, or with sausages or wotnot.
spaghetti bolognaise (can you freeze pasta? probably no point eh?
Fish pie
individual fruit crumbles for pudding

Please add! DH and the kids eat red meat, I don't, but eat fish and chicken.

Aubergine parmigiana is always popular at home

oh yes! I lime that...freezes ok? microwave heat up or best in the oven? oven is ok, just so I know how to reheat it.

(although, until this week we have no microwave, I keep putting it off!)

Lime? not sure where that came from ! I meant like

Chilli?
How about making some flavoured butters and freezing them (chilli and coriander, garlic and lemon etc) to have with fish?
Fish cakes?
Soup

oh yes fish cakes are good! DH loves home made fish cakes! Soup, yep soup is good for lunch.

and I like the idea of freezing some nice butter. That is a really good idea. Butter will freeze ok though? Might also do the same type of thing for sauces to have with chicken.

butter freezes well - As you are an MNer I am assuming that you have plenty of real butter and keep it in a special butter dish

just mush with herbs, roll into a sausage shape and freeze. Cut off slices of it when you need it to flavour something.

Yes - freeze in a cylinder shape wrapped with cling film and diameter about 50p sized so you can cut slices off.

jareth I do its a clear glass butter dish with a cow on the bottom

I knew it! heh..

I freeze tomato sauce. Make a huge batch, freeze in small portions then easy to create pizza, lasage/other pasta dishes with minimal effort.

Recently froze white cheese sauce and that worked too.

Also any sort of stew seems to work well.

BTW have you discovered frozen chopped garlic? It is FANTASTIC, saves one of the horrible, fiddley jobs you want to avoid, is cheaper than fresh and doesn't go off!

I have a selection of Butters, i cut them into discs before freezing so they are at hand when ever.

My favourite is finley chopped Anchovies, Garlic, Chili and Parsley. It is so good melted over the Christmas Cabbage or Sprouts and you can't taste the Anchovy it just gives it real body and depth.

You can also do Lemon and Coriander, Rosemary and Garlic which are good, i like to melt one over a Steak or Chicken Breast or Fish fillet.

Shepherds pie?
Moussaka?

Oh and I have an ice cream maker so always have piles of home-made, super yum ice cream in freezer

jareth I cannot beleive that people do not have butter dishes. What do you do with the butter without a butter dish?

titsalina ooooooh DH is loving the sound of the chilli and anchovy ones, they are his fave flavours!

flowery yes I considered freezing cheese sauce, and that is the kind of thing that creates a lot of mess (for me!) to cook, so would be lots easier to do it in advance.

oh yes the normal shepherds/cottage pie.

I find oven is best. In fact we cook the aubergines, then layer it all up and freeze without baking - then pop in the oven when we want to eat it.

For the DC I do batches of chicken strips in breadcrumbs and pork meatballs ready to feed them quickly.

chicken strips and breadcrumbs sound good.

Anything else?

I do meatballs too and then you can use them as burgers too. Give them a squash.

Macaroni and cheese I freeze all the time and with the spag bol I find it's better if you mix the pasta and sauce together before freezing.

Chicken Kievs
Fish pie

Oh I am all OVER this thread. I'm trying to persuade a friend to take my daughter and hers out for an afternoon so I can fill her freezer. I think she thinks I'm joking.

Ok, here are things I always cook double of so I can freeze:

Coq au vin
Boeuf bourginon (bonus - you cook both of these very similarly, so you can chop the bacon and rinse the mushrooms and onions for both at the same time)
Mulligatawny soup (you roll the chicken in seasoned flour and brown, then simmer with onion/garlic/spices for an hour - then freeze, and all you have to do after that is reheat, add rice and simmer 15 minutes, add lemon juice and cream)
Most soups. I have potato and leek, broccoli, etc. but i only have a small freezer so I only cook the base:
A lot of what I do is chop and simmer vegies combinations in stock, the freeze. Then I can, eg, defrost a potato/cauli mix, and either mash with cream and butter for a sheperd's pie, or add water, crispy bacon and stock for a soup, or add a bit of cream and some steamed rocket and put a steak or fish on top. Really useful timesaver.

Love this thread! I need all the ideas I can get.

Just a small tip, you can freeze fresh herbs when you buy them then just take some out for soups etc and it defrosts instantly as you add it.

I do semolina gnocchi too. Could do polenta cakes as well I guess but haven't done it yet.

Stuffing (of various kinds).

Can you bake then freeze potato wedges if so how? (not made them before)

Brilliant thread. I'm back to work soon too and we're having a new kitchen put in overlapping with my rtw so .

I'm keen on cutting out stages of cooking as far as possible so if people could add those sorts of ideas it would be really helpful - I was thinking

Browned mince with onion
chopped onion and mushrooms
cooked chicken in various bases - with garlic/ lemon etc
various blanched veggies
breadcrumbs

More suggestions would be brilliant!