Batch cooking for the freezer

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  • 31st July 2021 at 3:47 pm #556241

    Following on from another thread I would like to start a discussion about dishes that freeze well for batch cooking.

    I’m making a lot of courgette soup at the moment for example. When tomatoes are plentiful I’ll be making tomato sauce to add to various dishes over the winter.

    Fish pie and shepherd’s pies are great stanbys for busy days when all you need to do is heat them up and serve with a few veg.

    What do you make?

    31st July 2021 at 4:50 pm #556244

    Never usually batch freeze.

    Why do you do it PT? Do you grow your own veg ?If so then it would seem logical to freeze in batches. Is the idea to save money or time or both maybe ?

    31st July 2021 at 4:53 pm #556245

    No room in our freezers to batch freeze.  They’re all full. :good: :good:

    31st July 2021 at 5:45 pm #556247

    I had a friend many years ago when I was working at Butlins in pwllheli whi lived in the highrise flats in highgate in brummingham (16th floor). When visiting him and his lady friend one weekend we wentdown to the local market in the bullring (I think it was called) at the very end of the day and he bought something like 8 bags full of veg for maybe a couple of quid tops as it would get chucked otherwise and then back at the flat blanched it and bagged it all up in the freezer. He said that there was a good months veg there. Very economic in so many ways, I was very impressed :-)

    31st July 2021 at 7:19 pm #556252

    I often make a dish for four or six then ,after one meal freeze the rest..saves loads of time.

    i make soups , parmentier de canard, curries, cakes, fish pie, stews etc etc.

    31st July 2021 at 8:55 pm #556265

    Elisabeth ‘batch cooks’ all the time for the freezer.

    5 Steak and kidney pies, 5 chicken and ham pies (all family sized) Lasagne, Shepherd’s pie, you name it, she cooks it. Always an ‘instant meal’ that is home-cooked when she is too busy. All the veggies from the garden either frozen or sterilised in ‘pots’, tomatoes turned in to sauces and frozen.

    A day’s baking creates a month of ‘ready home cooked meals’ when we are busy.

    31st July 2021 at 9:47 pm #556276

    @ Pete James

    Pete, you are right, it saves time and money.

    Before Covid the OH and I often had different timetables during the week, so sometimes neither of us were at home to cook. It was great to be able to pull a good quality home-cooked meal out of the freezer.

    We also have a large veg garden so we freeze a lot of produce.

    I also have some  issues with gluten and chemical additives, so there is very little option other than to make everything yourself.

    31st July 2021 at 9:57 pm #556279

    Yeah, gluten and cereals suck for me too !!

    31st July 2021 at 10:27 pm #556282

    Yeah, gluten and cereals suck for me too !!

    That’s a strange comment for a quaffer of ale to make, Jamie!

    I don’t batch cook, at least not deliberately. From time to time I get carried away and make far too much of something, but Mme Danny seems to be able to polish it off in one sitting.

    31st July 2021 at 10:42 pm #556284

    Ha ha Danny. You rae not wrong. This is why I tend to drink the darker ales rather than the lighter ones as the darker beers often replace more of the cereals with other ingredients and bloat me less. If I drink a lager, my belly can swell upto a nine months pregnant look within thirty seconds,but darker beers do not affect me as badly. There are some organic gluten free beers from belgium that pass much better again called Brunehaut. I love their amber ale which is available in some leclercs shops in their bio section :-)

    31st July 2021 at 11:35 pm #556289

    That’s interesting Jamie, I always thought that darker beers contained more barley and paler ales more hops. I wonder where I got that idea from. :-)

    Anonymous
    1st August 2021 at 10:07 am #556305

    I don’t go out to deliberately batch cook as such but there are some dishes that    seem impossible to make a small quantity of or if you’re going to go to the effort if cooking you might as well make a load of for the freezer. Things like casseroles, stews, chilli, fish pie, shepherds pie, curries, pasta sauces.

    It’s so nice sometimes after a busy day gardening or whatever to just be able to eat a nice home cooked defrosted meal that you haven’t been bent over the stove cooking, smelling and tasting just beforehand. A bit like going out to a restaurant. The home cooks night off and the food seems to taste all the more delicious for it.

     

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