Need to start making meals I can freeze in preparation of DC3's arrival!

[McKayz]

Please can you give me recipes that I can freeze, are easy to cook and taste fab. I was planning on just doing spag bol, chilli and maybe curries but I'd like some variety please.

It needs to feed 1 adult and 2 children. Not fussy at all except don't like lamb and DS1 doesn't do spicy really. DH is away with work and will miss the birth so I need things that I can do easily please.

Also can I use mince etc that has been frozen? I got some shopping the other day and mince, chicken went into the freezer. So can I defrost it, cook it in a chilli and then re freeze it or not?

Thank you very much!

It's fine to defrost mince, cook it, then refreeze it. So lasagne, chilli, keema, spag bol all work well. If you have fresh mince, you could make meatballs, freeze them on baking trays, then tip them into bags so you can just add them to sauce, then serve with rice or pasta.

How about something fishy? Fish pie, perhaps?

And have some easy to cook stuff in the freezer as well - sausages, pizzas, filled pasta etc - they can all be cooked from frozen.

Lasagne, sheperds pie, chicken curry, fish pie, chicken pie (sensing a pie theme here...),soups for lunches.

Yes it's fine to re-freeze meat as long as you have cooked it.

that your DH will miss the birth.

Yes you can freeze uncooked meat cook it and freeze the cooked meat. What you can't do is freeze uncooked meat, defrost it then refreeze the uncooked meat or refreeze cooked meat twice. Will try to think of some food you can cook ...

Yes you can defrost, cook and freeze :)

Mince is great obviously. If you do a fairly generic bol sauce type you can then add beans for chili, spaghetti for bol and mash for cottage pie.

I like stuff that can have a variety of carbs added to it so you can bulk cook the meat and then have a variety of meals so a chicken stew can be made into a pie or eaten with pasta, rice or potatoes. A white sauce with fish/prawns is great with mash as a fish pie or stirred through spaghetti. Don't forget to pop a few packs of sausages in the freezer too for an easy meal.

I hadn't thought about meatballs, the boys love meatballs and would eat them everyday

Didn't think of lasagne either, can I make it and freeze it or just the meat sauce and then put it together when we are going to eat it?

Here's an easy one - tuna fish rice. Cook some rice and sweetcorn. Meanwhile fry some onions add tinned tuna and a chicken stock cube. Mix all together. Eat with mango sauce (or ketchup). You can add other veg eg peas, peppers and vary as you see fit. It freezes well.

You can make it all and freeze it like this. I use fresh lasagne sheets rather than dried, I don't know if that would make a difference.

You can assemble the whole lasagne, freeze it, then cook it from frozen or defrosted.

Soups are good too, especially if you have some of that partbaked or nice bread in the freezer to eat with it. Smoked haddock chowder is a favourite here, as is Mexican tortilla soup.

I often stew fruit as well, then I have easy puddings available too, as I can defrost it, then pop on a pastry lid or some crumble mix. Makes people feel special if you put them in individual ramekins, for some reason.

At risk of sounding very MN, do you have a slow cooker? I used one a lot when my DDs were little, as I could chuck stuff in when I had a few minutes and the food wouldn't spoil if we didn't eat as planned or had to eat in shifts.

I sense I am going to spend all weekend cooking

Yes we have got a slow cooker. I was hoping to use that too.

slow cookers are ace, can't cook with baby in sling due to hot stove but can chop and throw in slow cooker without burning baby.