Freeze-Ahead Feature: Tips on Freezing Prepared Dishes

Both sets of our parents are coming east this summer to take care of Gren while the Pie and I are gallivanting on the west coast.  Actually, by the time you read this, my parents will already have arrived.  To make their stay a little easier, I’m trying my best to get as many meals made ahead of time as possible.  I’m also trying to get as many posts stockpiled in advance as possible, so for the next little while, most of the dishes you will see here will be ones that you can freeze and haul out later on in the summer when you’ve got too much on the go.  Note that you don’t HAVE to freeze anything if you don’t want to — these dishes are just very freezer-friendly.

As a preface to this extended feature, I want to let you in on a neat technique for freezing prepared dishes when you don’t have a lot of spare casserole dishes or oven-safe storage containers lying around.

Line your dish with aluminum foil before you fill it with whatever goodness you’ve got going on.  Make sure the foil is long enough to fold over on all sides.  You may need to use a few pieces.

Once filled, cover and freeze the dish as you normally would.

While that’s freezing, pull out another sheet of foil and use a permanent marker to write (on the foil) the name of the dish, the date you froze it, and any necessary cooking instructions.

When the dish is frozen, tip your food to remove it from the dish (so you can use the dish again).

Use your foil instruction sheet to wrap the frozen food in an extra layer of foil.  Follow that up with a layer of plastic wrap as well, for insurance purposes, if you’re feeling iffy about your wrapping job.

When you are ready to eat the food, just remove the extra wrap and the instructions and place the frozen food back in the dish in which you made it and you’re all ready to go!