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The Five-Day Freeze Technique for Make-Ahead Meals

Posted by Adam Kuban, August 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM

Photograph from Muffet on Flickr

On Wisebread Linsey Knerl discusses her Five-Day Freeze cook-ahead technique. It's her way of cooking and freezing food for future meals without having to spend two days straight in the kitchen. So basically advocates doing a half hour to hour's worth of extra cooking while you're prepping that day's meal:

We have some amazing batch cooking (or make-ahead) tips here on Wise Bread. I’ll share those with you later in this article. What I’m aiming to discuss, however, is how to achieve the same level "cook now, eat later" zen, without the horrid hangover that occurs when you shop for an entire month’s worth of food, cook for 12 hours straight, and then collapse in a pile of sweat and tears before realizing you lost two days of your life for some frozen lasagna trays. Some people have mastered the batch-cooking technique without all the drama, but let’s be realistic: I’m a work-at-home, home-educating, mom of four little ones. I can rarely find time to sweep and scrub, much less create 30 days' worth of frozen meals on my days off. Here is how I’ve achieved basically the same results (easy meal prep on a budget) with the spare 30-minutes to an hour I have each day.

Green peppers are sprouting on plants in many parts of the country. If you plan ahead and make something that already uses them one night, you can then do the following while you're at it: dice and freeze them for later use in soups and stews, blanch them whole and freeze for stuffed pepper recipes, or slice them lengthwise and freeze them for fajitas. She's got tips for four more ingredients—hamburger, cookie dough, zucchini, and eggs. [via Lifehacker]

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Tags: how-tos, make-ahead meals, tips, Wisebread