How much and WHAT do you cook in advance? (grilled, mushrooms, frozen)

[JrzDefector]

So a couple weeks ago, I sauteed chicken with veggies, poured a balsamic sauce over them and portioned the dish into tupperware. I also shredded some chicken from the crockpot with an Asian-style sauce and made some chicken and wild rice soup. And then I did a chicken ratatouille dish with tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms and shredded chicken, covered with mozzarella.

Today, I cooked 4 lbs of bacon, some of which I put in 2 weeks worth of breakfast burritos; made 8 cups of brown rice; made a stir fry with tofu/mushrooms/cabbage in hoisin sauce and cut up 2 containers' worth of strawberries.

Right now, I've got food to last me into March, and it feels kinda great. I supplement these meals with salads and sandwiches and that's about it.

What do you generally do to prep in advance and what are your favorite things to make?

[tickyul]

ZERO meal-prep..........I like eating different foods each and every day.

[NewbieHere]

I do precook a lot of food. But we vary our foods. Like I made ribs today, three racks, can’t finish them all, I have 4-5 meals in the freezer. Paella is another dish that I made ahead and I have 4-5 meals in the freezer. Sphagetti sauce is another. Curry lamb shanks, 4-5 meals in the freezer. Beef stew is another one. So I pull one of these meals out when I’m too busy to cook. Not regular but enough so it’s nice to have.

[Mikala43]

When I worked I usually precooked dinners for about a week, and prepped lunch / breakfast stuff.

I can only eat something so many times, and then I get cranky.

[Dogmama50]

I tend to cook and freeze the components of a meal to make different things like shredded chicken, pork, meatballs, roasted veggies, they can be thrown in ramen, with pasta, make a quick soup or whatever we're in the mood for.

I always make extra rice and quinoa and freeze it portioned out, same with sauce and most soups, I don't like potatoes or noodles frozen in soup so we eat soups with those over the week. I've been on an oatmeal/banana/peanut butter muffin kick lately so I bake a couple dozen of those each week or so to eat.

Generally we have leftovers for a couple nights, in the summer it's a bunch of grilled chicken thighs and veggies and in the winter its more slow cooker soups until I get a craving for poke bowls and then it's poke, avocado and rice for a while.

[jlawrence01]

I like to prepare meals in advance in that it is generally as easy to prepare 24 portions as it is to make two portions. There are several problems that make this impractical.

First, freezer storage is somewhat limited. We have been able to get around that by freezing product in quart freezer bags over the traditional plastic containers. And that is a good thing.

However, I have to consider whether I want to allocate my small stand-up freezer to the storage of prepared meals or to the "raw materials." Since I live in a rural area where my favorite grocery stores are 30 or 120 miles away, I generally want to buy more raw materials, especially when I can get them at a cheap price ($0.39/ lb for chicken leg quarters, ground beef for $0.99/ lb, half pork loins for $1.29/ lb and free dates to name a few). Therefore, I limit the amount of portions to about eight. Besides, I don't want my wife and guests to say ... "we are having that again???"

Second, there are a lot of dishes that don't taste as good after freezing. Some dishes don't hold up as well.

Third, having a lot of pre-prepared meals involves management so that the goods get used. Noone wants chili produced two years ago. That is why we always clean out our small freezer before our summer vacations to et everything defrost and get ready for the fall when we like to stock up.

Finally, i do NOT like to go day after day without cooking. It kind of makes me feel pretty useless.

[turkeydance]

"What do you generally do to prep in advance..."
1. Buy the food.
2. Wash the food.
3. Dry the food.
"...and what are your favorite things to make?"
1. Bacon. pounds at a time. save the grease, food of the gods.
2. Beans. any kind. tastes better the second time, anyway.
3. Onions. raw, cooked, do not care. easy to prepare.

[ciceropolo]

When the post holiday sales at Aldi's have reduced price on spiral slice hams, I purchase the smallest one I can find. I then cut and dice up the whole ham into chucks suitable for omelets and pizza topping and pan fry in a little water to get the injected liquids out and then strain and place on a lightly tumeric and ground ginger powdered paper towel to absorb some of the moisture and add another flavor.


I then place in two large freezer bags and can use as needed. The lightly powdered tumeric and ginger helps keep it from becoming a frozen block. It keeps well for many omelets / pizza toppings.

[tijlover]

Just before summer one year, I made one holy mess in the kitchen (I lived alone) and I quadrupled 5 different recipes, made 2 crockpots full of food, and I froze most of it, so I didn't have to cook for 2 months, just pull plastic containers out of my stand up freezer, with 7 choices of food. I made a stock pot full of sloppy Jo mix and another stock pot full of spaghetti sauce.

Every week I make a huge salad to lasts me 5 days or more, Argentine style, everything cut up really fine, fit for a spoon.

I'm big on making quadruple batches of various dishes and freezing a lot of it. In other words, make one big, big mess and no cooking for awhile.

If I had to cook every day, I'd starve to death!

[Dogboa]

We often make large portions, one for a meal that week and the rest get frozen in meal size servings.