6 Steps To Stuff Your Freezer With Meals On A Budget

I'm about to have a baby. I'm about to have a baby, as well as two toddlers. I'm about to have a baby, an almost 2 year old, and a 3 year old, in the fall/winter.

I'm just not into the idea of needing to cook or make big grocery runs in the coming months. So, I decided to fill up my freezers (I have 3) with ready-made meals. Last time I had a baby, I stocked up several meals by utilizing Time For Dinner which is an amazing local business where you show up and quickly assemble a set menu of freezer meals and you don't have to buy ingredients or clean up any messes. It's fantastic and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to have some easy dinners on hand. That said, there are a few downsides... For one thing, I have a deep freezer full of meat from our family's farm. It always feels weird to go and pay to make meals with chicken breasts and steak when I know I have chicken and steak in my own freezer at home. Another thing is that I pick meals based on what sounds good on the predetermined menu, versus things I know my family likes. And don't get me wrong, everything I have done there has been "fine." But the husband always makes a comment about how it isn't as good as my cooking. Which, although it sounds very complimentary to my culinary skills, might have a lot to do with the limited choices of a mass-appeal business versus me making things specific to our tastes.

So, for the first time ever, I decided to just make my own freezer meals and suck it up about the shopping and clean-up aspects. I'm so glad that I did because with a lot of organization and planning, it was pretty painless and I got TONS of meals shoved into our freezers and I didn't even have to spend much money.

After reading a ton of blog posts and recipes from Pinterest, I basically organized my process to a few easy steps that manage the costs and work and results.

 STEP ONE: Raid your pantry, freezer, and fridge.

I think this is probably one of my biggest recommendations to anyone... Dig through your refrigerator, pantry, and freezer and write down inventory of available ingredients. This sounds overwhelming but it's not, really. You don't have to write down that you have mustard or coffee creamer. Just items that make sense from the viewpoint of "could this be a major player in a meal." In my case these items could be summed up as meat, starches, frozen vegetables, beans, marinades, sauces, canned tomatoes, cream of anything soup, or seasoning mixes. Granted, I always shop the "managers specials" at my favorite grocery store for useful items so I did have quite a few things on hand like tomato sauce, dried stuffing mix, and marinades. I also buy up certain cuts of meat when it's a really good deal and throw it in the freezer. I had purchased pork butt at $0.99/lb. some time ago because that is a cut we don't get from our farm. If you are also the type that stocks up on good deals, you are probably in a great position to make the most with what you already have.

STEP TWO: Organize your recipes.

Once you have a list of what you have on hand, see what meals can be made with what you already have. If you have a couple cans of beans, a can of rotel, and some frozen chicken breasts... you can make a southwest chicken dish. If you have a box of pasta, shredded cheese, and ground beef, you can make a beef/pasta casserole. I think you get the idea. Just group your items together into recipes or recipe inspiration. In some cases you might have everything you need, and in some cases you might have the two biggest ingredients for a family favorite. But this is the best starting point.

STEP THREE: Fill in the blanks.

Now that you have a list of recipes and the on-hand ingredients organized, go through and make a shopping list for what is missing. Maybe you need frozen peas for your pot pie or ricotta cheese for your lasagna. So, now you should have one list of meals - each with bullet points for the ingredients you already have, and also a second list of the same meals - each with a bullet points list of ingredients that would need to be purchased.

STEP FOUR: Decide which meals to make first.

If you don't keep a lot of things in-house, you might have a short recipe list. If you are like most people, however, you might find that you have a surprising amount of ingredients... If you have generated 10 recipes, you might want to pare it down to start with, unless you truly have an abundance of freezer space. Start with the recipes that are missing the fewest ingredients. After that, add recipes that utilize duplicate ingredients... For example, if you have most of the ingredients for chili but need to buy beans, and you also have most of the ingredients for enchiladas but need to buy beans, those two recipes would lend themselves to shopping in bulk and therefore saving money. For me, the big "overlap" ingredients between many of my recipes were beans, tomato sauce, and cream of mushroom soup. Also, see if any of your recipes could use some swapped ingredients to help reduce the number of things you still need to buy. If you have one recipe that calls for green beans, but two other recipes that use frozen peas... Could you swap peas for the green beans? A lot of freezer meals and casseroles use cream of chicken or cream of mushroom soup... In my experience you can use these relatively interchangeably and get similar results. Lastly, I would also prioritize ingredients that are non-perishable or very long lasting... It's better to have extra cans of black beans on hand than a bunch of celery.

Overall I'd use this strategy to arrive at a list of 5-6 meals. If that means you still have 2-5 recipes on the b-team list, great! Just see what freezer space you have left after the first wave.

STEP FOUR: Comparison shop.

I go to two grocery stores regularly. A standard grocery store as well as Costco. I also review the paper's weekly grocery inserts every week in case of a crazy good price on meat or produce or something we use a lot of. For the week before I started making my freezer meals, I took my shopping list with me to both the grocery store and to Costco and took pictures of the prices on the things I needed. I looked at the inserts in case something I needed was a great price at one of my not-regular stores. If you have the time and energy, you could certainly visit some of your not-often grocery destinations as you'll get more info in person than in a limited insert. This honestly rendered some surprising results for me... For example, fresh chicken breasts happened to be on sale at my regular grocery store and were less expensive per pound than fresh or even frozen chicken breasts at Costco. Be sure to make a note if something is on sale and needs to be purchased by a certain date to get that price.

STEP FIVE: Buy supplies.

You should now have a few short grocery lists organized by destination. Use that to shop! Also buy gallon size freezer bags and/or aluminum freezer trays depending on your recipes. Pretty much if it's going to go in a slow cooker or be simmered on the stove, it can/should go in a zipper bag. If it's going to be baked in the oven, use a tray. I'd say that the 2.25 lb. size aluminum pans are good for single servings and 5 lb. sizes are good for 2-3 servings. Make sure they come with oven-safe lids/covers. Depending on how often you plan to do this, you might also consider getting a few bag holders. They're pretty inexpensive and really, really, really help the process. They just hold the bags upright and open so you can assembly-line process your recipes. I used these.

STEP SIX: Spread out your recipes and get cooking.

I targeted 4-5 recipes a week. I scheduled recipes with the most overlapping ingredients for the same days, and when possible I just made it for my family for dinner that night and made x amount extra to be frozen and stored. That way you're only cooking & cleaning up one meal, like a typical night, but benefiting by stocking your freezer.

WHAT I MADE: I'm not sharing recipes at this time as I want to make sure they turn out ok and take notes on if I need to add water or how long to cook it or if it worked better in a crock pot or on the stove top. But for anyone curious about my "results" with this, I spent about $300 and made an average of 6 portions each... Chili, Ham & Field Pea stew, Chicken Fajitas, Cajun Sausage & Shrimp with Rice, Chicken with Wine and Mushrooms, Cheesy Chicken & Stuffing, Spicy Asian Chicken & Vegetables, Pork Ribs, Cheese Stuffed Manicotti with Meat Sauce, Pulled Pork & Black Bean Enchiladas, Sour Cream & Beef Noodle Bake, and Chicken with Potatoes & Green Beans. So that's 12 different things (I still have ingredients for another 1-2 meals if I feel like making room in the freezer) for 2-3 meals each. The *hope* is that my husband can stop by the store on his way home and simply pick up a salad kit and/or dinner rolls and we can have a decent meal without me cooking or making a bunch of pots dirty. I'll let you know how it goes!