Batch cooking

[LMW1990]

Hit me with your top five batch cooking recipes! Answers on a postcard please for my wild Saturday night in of sewing face masks and planning my meals!

Bolognese is the only one I do

Bolognese
Chilli con carne
Sliced Chicken, pepper, red onion in Mexican spice
Hunters chicken (except I don't freeze the bbq sauce)

Things I always make at least double of to put in the freezer...

Daal-lots of types
Katsu curry sauce
Lentil bolognaise mix (sometimes frozen as moussaka or shepherds type pie)
Sweet potato tagine
Sag aloo/pretty much any curry

I forgot chilli. I always have chilli in the freezer.

Chilli (veggie or meat)
Chicken, chorizo and chickpea stew
Jerk chicken and rice and peas
Iranian Chicken with prunes and apricots
Bolognese
Fish curry
Thai red curry

I’m looking for a good beef and ale stew recipe - mine always come out rubbish, but that would be a good batch cooking one.

(Sorry. More than five )

These are excellent! Thanks all!

I don't do whole meals, I do components:

Cheese sauce, mushroom sauce
Passata
Marinated chicken thighs
Parboiled potatoes
Soup base of veg and stock
Mash (both potato and mixed root veg)
Gravy
Meatballs
Kofta or meat skewers
Sausage roll filling
Dumplings filling

I need this thread too, I just bought a big freezer and want to start slowly filling it.
I don't make many meals, just the bog standards like bolognese, beef stew, chicken cacciatore, various veggie soups.
I like doing meal components too, including:
white sauce
tomato sauce
tomato sauce with extra veggies blended in
Stewed apple and plum in little portions (great for adding to porridge).
I aspire to also make 'dump bags' for the slow cooker but have yet to reach those heady heights

I do a pressure cooked mince with onion, celery, course grated carrots, garlic, worcestershire sauce, cayene, herbs and tomato puree.

It cooks into a very thick meat base that I freeze in small takeaway boxes.

It then works as the base to bolognese - by adding a carton of passata.

It becomes a chilli by adding a can of kidney beans, tin of tomatos and a further dash of chilli.

Cottage pie by adding peas, can of tomatos, cubed carrots and a mash top.

Or the meat element to lasagne by adding a carton of passata.

I also like to batch cook vegetable curry - I marrinade meat seperately as my youngest two have their curry with plain meat and my eldest husband and I have our meat spiced. I batch marinade the meat cook it and freeze this. Its then lovely with the veg curry or quick microwaved and served in a wrap with some lettuce and mango chutney.

I also slice wrap and freeze any leftover cake from birthdays. Its really indulgent to microwave defrost chocolate cake and have it goey with icecream on a misserable day. Much better than over indulging and eating it for eatings sake.

Dump bags are excellent, @TankGirl97. So easy. I can also recommend adding basic dumplings (flour, fat, water, appropriate herbs) to most slow cooker meals

Bolognese
Shepherds pie
Stir fry
Meatballs with sauce
Curry (sweet and sour, korma, Thai green)

Look at the batch lady on you tube
Shes excellent.

This sauce (added lentils and loads of veg) www.express.co.uk/life-style/food/1299588/pasta-bake-recipe-how-to-make-pasta-bake

Many many curries, homemade curry pastes. Rice. Can provide specific curry recipes if you'd like. Pilau rice. Also plain rice is fried with ginger lemon and Turmeric 🤤

This pasta sauce with a handful of quorn Mince www-bbcgoodfood-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/tomato-basil-sauce?amp_js_v=a3&amp_gsa=1&amp&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASDIAQE%3D#aoh=15901765091502&amp_ct=1590176515897&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbcgoodfood.com%2Frecipes%2Ftomato-basil-sauce

Sag aloo which i made wrongly so ive managed to replicate the mistake into a stoup.

Bags of sourdough slices of bread (little scraps at the end) to make into garlic bread toasties at a moments notice 🤤 (tub of garlic butter /drizzle kept in fridge). Bread toasted from frozen and drizzled, voila.

Portioned tubs of pizza tomato sauce for pizza night. Frozen pineapple slices, frozen pepperoni, mozerella for pizza.

Portioned sourdough pizza dough.

Hairy bikers chilli (we eat with spicy Mexican rice)

Sausage casserole, ill find that link in a minute, I don't want to lose this reply!

Potato bread made from leftover mashed potatoes.

Can't think what else is in there at the minute.

www.santamariaworld.com/uk/recipes/spicy-sausage-and-chorizo-casserole/

Made veggie. I sub the pepper for normal black pepper. I sub the chorizo for smoked paprika, and the chilli powder for extra hot chilli powder. Used veggie Sausages and extra veggies as always

Soups
Fruit compote, usually apple

Thank you for all your suggestions! Can anyone also suggest where the best place to buy bulk meat is?

Also recommendations for zip lock bags for the freezer and glass dishes with lids for straight to oven dishes?

Thank you!

IKEA do brilliant glass dishes with tupperware style plastic lids. Great for freezer to oven. I must buy more actually.

Lakeland do quite nice ziplock bags that can be stood up - very handy for soups etc. I use them quite a lot.

Not as environmentally friendly but I bulk cook and freeze lasagna and stews in tinfoil containers. Then they can go straight into the oven from frozen when I want to eat them.

Currently experimenting with freezing more treat stuff. So have peanut butter cookies prepared but unfrozen in individually wrapped packets in freezer currently. Am going to experiment with cinnamon buns as I believe they freeze very well immediately after baking and cooling. I have long been freezing crumbles - in larger (tin foil) portions or in le creuset ramekins as individual portions for straight to oven. I've also got into habit of preparing additional crumble and just freezing it in a bag to grab a handful or two whenever I need it.

For your pb cookies, you can make the mix into a sausage shape and freeze the sausage. Slice and cook from Frozen
Voila!