I watch Top Chef. A LOT. I watch it while I eat my lunch, and my dinner (it makes the food taste better for some reason)..
In epsiode 7, Season 3, they were given the challenge of creating their own frozen dinner – some chose meatballs, some did rigatoni, others did penne, etc etc.
And it just dawned on me: if they could do it, why couldn’t we?
All it would take is cooking up a MASS amount of stuff at once (we’re talking a ton of meatballs at once, and doing all the pasta at once), individually freezing all the different components over night, and making sure that the sauce in particular is frozen on a flat cookie sheet, and then chopped up and broken into pieces to be sprinkled throughout the entire frozen meal package so that it doesn’t chunk here and there with splotches of sauce.
If you were to put the pasta and the sauce and meat all together and then freeze it, you’re going to get delicious baby food – the pasta will soak up the sauce and meat juices over night and turn into mush.
I think I’ll try that once I get home, and cook up a bunch of chicken at once, cube it, and do the same thing with the sauce, and pasta, and create my own IQF (Individually Quick Frozen), frozen meal.
It’d probably save on time such as not having to re-cook a dish over and over again each meal, and money (instead of buying the real frozen foods in the grocery store). I could just throw it into a pan and literally heat it up for 6-10 minutes, and have a great homecooked meal, ready to go.
It’s something to consider. 🙂
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
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This is commonly known as “Once a Month Cooking”– you can google all kinds of recipes etc. You can cook more frequently of course.. but I love making lasagna, meatloaf etc in those miniature loaf pans of tin foil, so you get single serving meals (and aren’t stuck eating lasagna with your husband for a solid week.) I also buy ground beef or chicken on sale and cook it and freeze it in quart-sized bags… taco meat, enchilada filling, fajita meat etc.
That show maks me RIDICULOUSLY hungry. That’s why I watch it before I eat, and while I eat, and it makes food taste that much better….
They have the recipes? I’m going to download/save them for later. I especially love the oyster dishes they make.. and I ADORE Brian Malarkey’s seafood sausage idea…
I know! I watch Top Chef religiously. Did you see they have the recipe for Trey and CJ’s dish at Bravo.com? I’m going to try making it this week. Doesn’t that show make you so hungry, though? I have to make sure I have dinner ready at the start and Glam Boy and I sit on the couch and watch and eat simultaneously. I tried a few weeks without food, but that didn’t happen and then I ended up eating all kinds of bad munchies. I love that show! I look forward to hearing how your experiment goes.