Making your own frozen dinners

[Checkers]

For X-mas we received a gift certificate for a little store called Red Ribbon Gourmet (Redmond, Washington). They are frozon or entrees or sides. Anyway, the part that inspired me was that the meats had been thoroughly cooked before they added the sauces and froze them. The meats we very tender like when I boil country ribs for a long time before bbq'ing them. They go in the oven frozen and come out ready in 40 minutes. So I thought why not cook batches of meat myself and create some frozen dinners? I thought those folk that were struggling with finding time to cook dinner from scratch during the week might like this idea and I'm going to try it today. I have already been boiling batches of chicken breast, shredding it, adding an oily dressing like Italian to marinade it, then using it over multiple meals for cold salads or warm meals. And on the subject of preparing things ahead of time, does anyone else have a husband that only cuts up enough veggies for what he's eating at that moment, rather than just taking another minute and cutting up the rest of the veggies for the next meal?

[Lyssie]

Re: Making your own frozen dinners

It depends on the veggies, but I don't cut up onions any more than I'm using at the time... or lettuce heads, usually I just chop the head in half and do one half, sticking the other half back in the fridge whole... or green peppers... ok, so I guess I'm like your husband.

[not2late]

Re: Making your own frozen dinners

If you like very tender meat, then I suggest a slow cooker. Make enough for dinner and a couple extra meals. Freeze the extra meals. A slow cooker stews or braises meats very nicely (and you don't have to really stand over it, stirring and adjusting the heat while it cooks.)

Ditto with veggies. However, I would parboil veggies or even leave them raw, because the freezing and reheating might over-cook them. Many frozen veggies, you buy in bags at the supermarket are frozen raw and take 5 minutes to 'cook' in the microwave.

If you look in some mail-order catalogs, you might be able to find storage containers that have partitions in them for an entree and two sides. I see them in "dollar stores" too. That might make your tv dinner more organized. And of course, label and date the container.

[Checkers]

Re: Making your own frozen dinners

My onions seem to do really well being cut up ahead of time. If we go through it quickly the lettuce does pretty well. By the way, what veggies do you eat raw with dressing or other dip? I want to increase my raw veggie/dip repetoire for traveling and quick snacks at home. I've also heard that the raw veggie retains more of it healthfull benefits. does anyone know if this is true?

[not2late]

Re: Making your own frozen dinners

My onions seem to do really well being cut up ahead of time. If we go through it quickly the lettuce does pretty well. By the way, what veggies do you eat raw with dressing or other dip? I want to increase my raw veggie/dip repetoire for traveling and quick snacks at home. I've also heard that the raw veggie retains more of it healthfull benefits. does anyone know if this is true?

I think some veggies taste better well-cooked, like green beans and turnips, than they do raw or par-boiled. However, some veggies are tastier, when they are medium-rare.

Some veggies are too watery for long periods of travel, like sliced cucumbers and tomatoes. So, it's better to bring the whole cucumber and whole tomato and cut them when you eat them.

That brings me to the whole "cut veggies lose Vitamin C faster than whole veggies" argument---at least it was a controversy when I was a vegan/vegetarian.

The raw foods movement advocates that raw veggies/fruit are more nutritious....I can see their point to a certain point, but then cooking helps to denature the tough cell walls of vegetables, making the contents of those cells more available to us.

This link has a bit on raw foods, particularly Robert Wolke's paragraphs:
http://www.umc.pitt.edu/media/pcc030721/inthenews.html

I think if you eat a combination of raw and cooked, you'll do fine nutritionally.

[sadie147]

Re: Making your own frozen dinners

Moving this to the Food and Cooking forum.