Food Prepping - What's Working, What's Not; Advice?

ashleyjohnstonn1

I've gotten into food prepping recently and I want to talk about what meals I've prepped and what's going wrong and right.
I bought two huge packs of chicken, a huge pack of whole wheat tortillas, and big pack of eggs. With the chicken I put it in the crock pot for 6 hours and added some low sodium chicken broth, salt, and pepper. Tastes very good and falls right apart. Yum! These are the things I made:

Chicken Burritos: chicken, pinto beans, mexican blend cheese, whole wheat tortilla. This one is my favorite meal I've made by far. It's 283 cals, 28 g carbs, 10 g fat (cause of the cheese mostly), 19 g protein, and 547 g sodium using the brands I used. I froze them and I heat it for 45 seconds on each side and it turns out perfectly. Very tasty/

Chicken, Red Potato, and Asparagus Plate: I froze these in portioned out tupperware so the foods wouldn't touch. The chicken and potatoes turn out great. The potatoes were cooked in the microwave and then cut up into pieces before they were stored. The asparagus were steamed and then put into the containers, and they turn out quite mushy, which I read online that they would be. Usually I love soft, mushy asparagus but the asparagus lost their quality. Next time I will have to try a different veggie in my plate.

Breakfast Burritos: Egg, Spinach, Cheese, Whole Wheat Tortilla. These are okay, but the eggs don't taste very good. I think I am better off to make these the night before and then just store them in the fridge and heat it up for 20 seconds in the microwave rather than freezing them, and they don't take long to make.

Breakfast Sandwiches: Honey Wheat English Muffin, Egg, Spinach, 1 Slice Ham. I heated it up in the microwave wrapped up inside a napkin for a minute on each side. These are by far the worst thing I've frozen. The muffin tastes weird, eggs don't really taste like eggs, and the ham comes out burnt. I may try to cook it for less the next time I try to eat one of them. The way I heated it up today it wasn't really edible, so I only ate a little. Hopefully I can figure it out for the next 5 I have in there frozen, but I think with these I will stick to making them in the morning or the night before so it's a little more tasty.

Crock Pot Meal: I put four large boneless, skinless chicken breasts, 6 baby red potatoes, and 2 cups of carrots in a freezer bag and froze it. I then poured it in the crock pot and added 2 packets of onion base soup mix and 5 cups of water. I haven't tasted this yet, but it's in the crock pot right now and it'll be dinner tonight. Sure does smell good though! I feel I almost never go wrong with crock pot items... yum! I want to make more crock pot dinners.

So this is my experience with food prepping so far, but I honestly love it. It is so nice and convenient to know that you can come home to a fully cooked, nutritious meal and just pull it out of the freezer and put it in the microwave. The crock pot meals are even better because they are sooo good and it's not a big deal to just pour some contents into the crock pot and go in the morning and leave it cooking on low all day.

I'd like to figure out more which foods are good foods to freeze. What is your personal experience? Any advice for me?

quiltlovinlisa

Chili freezes incredibly. Enchiladas and the possibilities are endless. Rice/chicken casseroles. Lasagna, goulash, mac and cheese. Bone broth for future meals. Also, if you break it down and cook meat, portion for future meals, it makes prep time much much shorter. Pot roast with cumin, garlic, onion in the crock pot, shredded is fantastic for any sort of Mexican meal. Cubed chicken. Hamburger. I prefer that to whole meals

Honestly though, we have five kids at home so feeding seven, it's more practical for us to make that night. I don't have enough freezer room for entire meals.

ActuarialChef

Re the egg sandwiches: I make these all the time and freeze them! This is how I do it (I prefer fresh spinach if I use spinach, not sure how I'd approach freezing/cooking the spinach):

Prep work:
Cook eggs, let cool, and individually flash-freeze.
Separate english muffins and individually flash-freeze.
Individually flash-freeze sliced ham and cheese (if using).
Keep spinach fresh.

When everything is frozen: assemble into "sandwiches" and wrap in plastic, then place all the sandwiches in a ziploc bag or tupperware container. Store in the freezer until needed.

When you want to eat one:
-If you need to microwave the whole thing: Remove all plastic wrappings. Wrap sandwich in damp (not soaking) paper towel. Heat on full power for 1-2 minutes. I usually check and flip every 30 seconds. Or you could do 50% power for 1-2 minutes, with no checking. Add spinach when sandwich is hot.
-If you can use a microwave and a toaster: Remove the english muffin & toast that separately. Heat egg and meat for 30-60 seconds, then add cheese and heat for another 10-20 seconds. Assemble sandwich (adding spinach at this point).

The second heating method is 100x better than the first, but the first plays off the directions for Jimmy Dean frozen sandwiches and the like.

Edited to add: I agree that chili freezes wonderfully. I also freeze:
black bean quesadillas (http://www.budgetbytes.com/2012/02/hearty-black-bean-quesadillas/)
black bean burgers (http://www.skinnytaste.com/2012/06/spicy-black-bean-burgers-with-chipotle.html)
turkey burgers (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/southwest-turkey-burgers-recipe.html)
lasagna (http://www.aspicyperspective.com/2012/10/homemade-lasagna-sausage.html)
stuffed shells (http://www.annies-eats.com/2009/02/27/sausage-and-spinach-stuffed-shells/)

-- all individually flash-frozen, after cooking.

ashleyjohnstonn1

ActuarialChef thank you for your amazing advice! Definitely going to take these into account - and hopefully my breakfast sandwiches turn out good next time!

I'm also going to try the other recipes you two left me with. Thanks for the great ideas you too
Love food inspiration from others!

quiltlovinlisa

Oh gosh yes, I've assembled veggie burgers and frozen them quite successfully. We freeze muffins and quick breads all the time too but that doesn't help with actual meals.

_lyndseybrooke_

I've been doing quite a bit of food prepping. I'm a creature of habit and I don't mind eating the same thing every day (except for dinner - that changes each day or couple of days if we do leftovers) if it means I don't need to buy ingredients for a bunch of different meals that I'll end up throwing away because it goes bad before I can use it. I've thrown away way too much food doing it this way. Living in a two-person household with a man that couldn't care less about "healthy food" means it's my responsibility to not waste the food I bought.

I prep breakfast, lunch, and my afternoon snack because I eat them all at work. I LOVE oatmeal and I eat it every morning. I make my own homemade oatmeal "packets" (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1224523-homemade-instant-oatmeal-packets-yum) and measure out 1/2 cup of almond milk to cook it with before I leave the house in the morning. Breakfast done! I could eat this stuff every day for the rest of my life, and I haven't even started experimenting with different toppings (other than cinnamon) yet!

Lunch changes each week. Here's what I've tried:

- A few different "snack" foods put together. A combination of banana, yogurt, light string cheese, hard-boiled eggs, etc. Tastes great, of course, but usually not enough protein to keep my satisfied for very long.

- A red beans and rice recipe that I separated into individual servings, froze, and reheated at work. Didn't like it. It was spicy and flavorless at the same time, but my biggest problem was the consistency of the brown rice after freezing - gritty mush!

- Chicken tacos - I made my own taco seasoning (a combination of paprika, cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper) and seasoned a pack of thinly cut chicken breasts. I baked it and then shredded it, and separated it into five 3 oz servings. I took a corn tortilla, 1 tbsp of fat free refried beans, 3 oz of my chicken, and 1/4 of an avocado. Very tasty and filling!

-Caesar salads with shrimp - I haven't tried this yet, but this is what I have planned for next week. I'm going to grill up 25 large shrimp, freeze half of them, and separate into 5 individual servings. In the morning, I'll put my 2 cups of romaine lettuce in a tupperware container and my shaved parmesan and fat free croutons in a separate bag. I'll combine it all at lunch time along with 2 tbsp light Caesar dressing and voila!

Snacks change weekly too. This week I'm doing a 2.6 oz pouch of chunk light tuna on a piece of bread and 1/2 of a banana (the other half is frozen and added to my daily green protein shake). I've also done tuna with multigrain crackers, which I preferred to the bread, but it had more calories and carbs.

I'm just getting started. I plan on making large batches of meat each week for my lunches. I'm all for convenience!