Monday 4 February 2013

Homemade ready meals.

Something that I'm going to try and use a bit more to my advantage over the next few weeks are homemade ready meals. I'm going to make more than needed and freeze the leftovers, therefore creating homemade ready meals. 

I'm hoping that it'll make life easier in the long run, even if it's slightly more effort in the first place. 

Tonight we had spanish chicken bake, which was leftovers from a previous night. I made enough for four portions, and froze two of them. When it's been frozen, it doesn't look particularly good....:


But, once heated through it tastes pretty good! 


It's a Hairy Dieters recipe, which can be found here and it's really straight forward and healthy. 

Do you do your own "ready" meals? How do you set it up? How long can things be frozen for?

2 comments:

  1. Your meal looks delicious, I think once you get into the habit of making more than you need and freezing the rest you won't look back.

    I like to spend a whole day just cooking and freezing meals which we will eat over the coming month. At the moment we have things like Chilli, Lasagne, Goulash,Sausage Casserole, Beef Casserole, Chicken Curry portions of rice, Meat Pies a Quiche and a big bag of Ikea meatballs which are ready cooked and brilliant for popping into pasta and sauce. It means that the rest of the month is simple and I just need to prepare the sides.

    If you find a months worth too daunting then try 2 weeks and see how you go.

    Karen

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  2. I'm trying to get back into the habit. Just have a small freezer on top of the fridge and it seemed to be full of stuff but without any actual meals in there. And because it was full I couldn't just freeze extra portions of stuff. I cleared it out completely before going away in December and have been trying to get back to putting extra portions in there, as well as remembering to actually use them. At the moment I have three portion of a rustic turkey orange pot and two of a spicy carrot and lentil soup, both of which were new recipes to me and which I will definitely be making again, as well as a couple of portions of leek and potato soup. I tend to only cook at the weekend so at the moment I'm making two different things, which then last me for the week with one or two portions left over for the freezer. Which means that for weeks which are unexpectedly hectic I have plenty on hand. And I can just choose in the morning what I want to eat in the evening and take it out before going to work.

    I'm not terribly fussy when it comes to how long things will keep well for. My aim is to use things up before the hit the six months in the freezer mark. I do have a Good Housekeeping book that I refer to for recommended freezing times sometimes but that's usually if there's a particular fruit or veg that I want to try freezing rather than my 'ready meals'.

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