How to Freezer Cook

There are many different ways to approach freezer cooking. I think I have done them all. I have done it slowly over time making triple batches of our evening dinner and freezing the extras. I have done it based on the meat I am using such as assembling several dishes that call for cooked chicken. I have also done the crazy all day event and stocked my freezer all at once. I wouldn't recommend this one. You are exhausted by the end of the day, and it is so much work to do all the shopping and cooking for that many recipes.

After doing this for years and considering the limited time I have available to devote to a freezer cooking session, I generally choose three or four recipes based on how easy they would be to work on at the same time rather than considering ingredients. For a normal session I might choose tamale soup, chimichangas, and lasagna. I always try to make one crockpot meal because it's so easy. This is what my cooking session would look like:

• Saturday morning I review my recipes, decide on my quantities, and make my shopping list. After doing the shopping, I leave everything for my cooking session on the counter that doesn't need to be refrigerated. There is no reason to put it away, only to pull it out again.
• Saturday afternoon I grate all the cheese I will need in the food processor. I also chop the vegies such as onions for my recipes.
• Sunday morning I put everything in the crockpot for Cafe Rio Chicken. The chicken is done when we get home from church. For lunch we have salads with the shredded chicken on top. I put the rest in the fridge to use Monday when I assemble the chimichangas.
• Monday morning I make sure my dishwasher and garbage are empty and start cooking. I put everything in the crockpot for tamale soup. It cooks all day so I don't need to worry about it for hours.
• I make the sauce for the lasagna. While it simmers I start the chimichangas. After my sauce has simmered for about 30-45 minutes, I take it off the stove to allow it to cool. To do this quickly, take several water bottles and thoroughly clean the outside. Fill 3/4 full and freeze. Place the water bottles in the sauce. They will quickly cool it, just make sure your lids are on tight. Wash your bottles and refreeze for next time. While the sauce is cooling I finish the chimichangas.
• Once the chimichangas are wrapped and in the freezer, I go back to my lasagna. Generally I make mine in 8x8 pans because it takes us forever to eat a 9x13. I just break the noodles to fit my pan when I assemble it. Place your pans in the freezer.
• When my tamale soup is ready, I use the same strategy to cool it as the lasagna sauce. Ladle it into quart or gallon Ziploc bags and freeze flat.

After this particular day of cooking I will have about 100 chimichangas wrapped in bundles of 6 each, 6 8x8 pans of lasagna, and about 8 quart bags of tamale soup. It makes a busy day, but the recipes I chose allow me quite a bit of flexibility as well to take care of kids.