Come and tell me your top 10 cook-and-freeze meals - if you don't, you are condemning my family to a future of fish fingers and waffles!!!

[Greensleeves]

We just seem to have less time these days, and I am finding that I don't actually want to come in from a long day's work and start chopping bloody vegetables

I love cooking and am pretty good at it, and so is dh, and we all have very wide taste, no veggie-refusenik kids etc

So what are your top 10 freeze-for-later dishes/ Joking aside, I do cook from fresh a lot and I like doing it, but there are increasingly frequently times when dh and I just look at each other and say "fuck it, there are some fishcakes in the freezer"

I've cooked and frozen things like soups, lasagne, burgers, veggie burgers, falafels, apple pies, strudel, steak pies

but would love some inspiration and some more exciting and tempting ideas!

Curry
Bolognaise sauce
Lemon Chicken - re heat in pan rather than microwave or sauce stays jellylike. May need extra water.
Pizza dough
Dhal
Beef and ale stew in the unlikely event there is any left over
Homemede burgers - once cooked ( no horse in these ones )
turkey parcels ( sausage meat stuffing, turkey steak rolled around and then bacon) freeze fine if cooked then just heat up in oven again.

Thanks sparklyknickers :D

Turkey parcels sound amazing. I'm imaging mash, peas and gravy with them

Or imagining....

Oh all of these sound lovely, my top 10 are

Mexican bean hotpot
Spag Bol/chilli/meatballs
Curry
Beany cottage pie
Stew
Home made fish cakes
Pie whether that's chicken ham beef fish ect
Any left over meat like the odd meatball or hotdog so one day I can make a mix up pasta bake
BBQ chicken
Enchiladas

If its to do with bei g tired when getting in from work like me I freeze stuff in baking trays so that morning I pull the whole dish/tray out to stick in fridge and then when I come home it can go straight in the oven and it's only that one thing plus plates to wash up.

Lurking.

does anyone know where you can get big versions of those metal takeaway trays? Sainsburys only had little ones, which are OK for a pasta sauce but not really a whole meal.

this thread is great, thanks so much everyone!

Beef with guiness. Fry up beef and onions - then throw a spoonful of flour in the pan and mix round. Add a load of mushrooms and some carrots. Pour in a can of guiness and top up with water and a small amount of OJ. Add salt and pepper to taste and a beef stock cube. Simmer for at least 30 mins with lid off so it thickens up. Perfect with mash. Freezes brilliantly.

That turkey parcel recipe sounds fab - how high do you cook that? Do u tie them up?

Greensleeves - honestly the pound stores are where u need to be for these kind of containers.

I'm about to make a double batch of shakshuka (google ottolenghi shakshuka for the recipe) - will freeze in 2-person portions for me and DH and then we can just defrost, warm in a pan, crack an egg on top and eat with crusty bread.

I always do at least double quantities of the following:
Chilli con carne
Bolognaise sauce (can then be either served with spaghetti or made into lasagne
Beef in Beer *
Moussaka
Chicken casserole *
Paprika Pork *
Goulash *
Pork and Pineapple *
The sauce for Chinese Chicken
Shepherd's Pie

The items marked with an asterisk are all done in the slow cooker, so that makes life even easier!

Have you any Asian supermarkets by you? I've seen massive trays in the one by me.

You could use those disposable baking trays and pop into a freezer bag or cover tightly with foil and label.

Realise these are both v similar but I cook in huge batches and don't always serve in the same week, eg serve one, eat one.

Moroccan Chicken

Lamb Shank Tagine - I spin this out with a tin of chickpeas per 2x shanks and take it off the bone once cooked to serve twice as many.

Some other great suggestions on this thread. Also regularly do shep pie, bolog & variations to eat one freeze one. Tin boxes from asda are quite cheap.

Greensleeves, I haven't looked but the trays sound like the sort of thing someone will be doing on eBay

Julia love the sound of the slow cooked pulled pork.

Like others, I use the slow cooker regularly. I also buy the ready chopped onions as that seems to be the bit of preparation I find least appealing.

yesterday we had a slow cooker chicken casserole with cous cous. Cous cous only takes a few minutes and some boiling water.

Beef stew
Dhal
Spicy chickpeas (Madhur Jaffrey recipe)
Curries of all kinds, in fact
Chilli (meat or bean)
Pizza dough and tomato sauce - you can freeze the dough in portion-size balls which makes life easier
Sausage casserole (sausage, red onion and apple is my favourite)

I made loads of mulled red cabbage for Christmas (recipe on the Good Food website) and that froze brilliantly. Not a meal in itself but a nice addition to a roast or something like sausage and mash.

ooh I want jammiecats chicken and chorizo stew! I almost always have some chickpea and chorizo stew (waitrose recipe) in the freezer. ATM I have coconut curry with chicken meatballs (the sauce only took about 10mins to make though), cod and chorizo fishcakes, cowboy bean bake (from mn recipes). cider gravy and sausages.

Minted lamb casserole
Thai chicken curry
Bolognaise
Fish pie
Meatballs
Any type of stew.

Beef and ale, doubled up, to add a quick pastry top to when cooking.

My new favourite one is this. 3 year old claims it is her fave too.
www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1548/mild-chilli-and-bean-pasta-bake

The other few i do have been mentioned already.

.

Prettyprudence please could you tell us more about the coconut curry ?! Yum!

LauraPashley i googled a coconut curry sauce recipe and modified it to what I had:
Fry a chopped onion (and some peppers too if you have them lying about) and maybe some garlic
Add tin of cocunut milk
1 tbsp curry powder (I didn't have any so just chucked in all the curry spices I had in the cupboard)
Stir in a tbsp or two of lime juice at the very end.

I also chucked in some yogurt and coconut meat to stretch it out. I think it would be nice with some mange tout (sp?), baby sweetcorn etc.... chucked in too.

Never, ever, ever, put anything warm in the freezer.

Leave it to cool COMPLETELY before freezing.