Help me fill my new chest freezer!

[FatCatSkinnyRat]

HI all,

Excitement of excitement, we purchased a chest freezer in the sales yesterday. I am super excited to fill it up with meals for the days I work long hours. For info we are a family of 4, two very hungry active teenage boys.

I am a pretty good cook but need some inspiration - I am off work for another 10 days and plan on making a double batch of freezable meals every night between now and then - one for that evening and another for the freezer.

So far on my list I have:

• pumpkin / beef lasagna (two different lasagnas, not in combo!)
• cottage and shepherds pie
• meatloaf from RecipeTinEats (apparently excellent)
• fish pie
• meatballs (thank you Ottolenghi thread! www.bibbyskitchenat36.com/ottolenghis-ricotta-and-oregano-meatballs/)

Does anyone prep slow cooker combinations and then freeze? This seems like a good idea to me, but never done it before.

Help me get organised while the inspiration is there! What else can I freeze? Who knew this would be so exciting.

Yes, definitely.

I keep a paper inventory like this, the circles are crossed out when used, or added when put in the freezer, no numbers to get messy.

Peas OOO
Corn O
Blueberries OOOO

I keep different sheets for different kinds of food, then super easy to see I have 6 boxes of chili, but no peas left etc

Wow so many good ideas here, thanks everyone. The freezer gets delivered tomorrow, but in the meantime I have already cooked 4 meals which are currently sitting the fridge awaiting transfer.

I've done two meatloves from this recipe (recipe serves 8, so I just made 2 small ones) - www.recipetineats.com/meatloaf-recipe/
Plus a double batch of these meatballs, which yielded 64 meatballs! Divided into three - we will have one tonight and the other two will go in the freezer. www.bibbyskitchenat36.com/ottolenghis-ricotta-and-oregano-meatballs/

Luckily I already had some freezer safe pyrex so have used those. I still have a couple left but will definitely buy some more.

Next up today will be minestrone soup frozen flat in zip lock bags individual portions aka Batch Lady!

Loving all the suggestions - still have a week off work so will be cooking like mad so keep them coming!

Don’t get too carried away cooking unless you have lots of shelf life on what you are cooking. The freezer may need to settle after transport and then be switched on for a time before putting things in. Our new larder freezer recommended 24 hours and (as I’d had a disaster with the emergency interim freezer failing to work properly and all the meat that had defrosted having to be batch cooked on an industrial scale) filling it with lots of newly cooked meals meant they didn’t all freeze properly for about 3 days afterwards.

On another note, Asda appear to have rectangular Pyrex freezer to oven dishes in their sale just now for £3.50/£5.50. I have a number already but, when I’m batch cooking and don’t have enough Pyrex, often fill a freezer bag and use one to contain the food and form a flat base that makes it easier to stack the bags after they have frozen.

Another thing handy in a chest freezer- I use carrier bags or ikea blue bags for organisation.

So an Iceland bag full of frozen veg, for example. A blue ikea bag of joints. Another for sausage and mince.

Keeping it in bags means you can haul out the bag you need to rummage through, without having to dig through everything else!

I do this too, I found the large sturdy bags from sainsbury's fitted mine, saves bags of frozen veg slipping around all over the place!

I have some red wine left over.. never knew you could freeze it.. good to know, thanks!

Just remember to remove the metal jar lid for the microwave, @halfpasteleven . Or chuck frozen ice cubes of wine straight into the casserole/sauce!