How to Plan Your Freezer Meal Prep

Want to fill the freezer with homemade meals? Follow this step-by-step method to plan your next freezer meal prep session for easy freezing and the best freezer meal recipes.

this …

You’ve been down the frozen food aisle and it’s a little underwhelming. Yet, you know the value of having a quick and easy dinner prepped and ready in the freezer.

But did you know that you can make your own healthy freezer meals? Yep. True story.

I’ve officially been doing freezer meal prep for two decades now. Please don’t click away because you think I’m an old lady and no longer one of the hip chicks.

You can trust me on the freezer cooking front. I’ve written a best-selling Make Ahead and Freeze cookbook that has gone on to a second edition and a third as a smaller repackaged edition. I know what I’m talking about.

Cooking to freeze wasn’t “new” when I first heard about it in the 90s. And it’s not new now, but, the practice of cooking to freeze has changed with the times. 

We’ve got a whole new world of flavor profiles to choose from, a wide range of kitchen gadgets to work with, and a huge realm of technology to make the process quicker and easier. 

In short, like fine wine, freezer meal prep has improved with age.

Why Freezer Meal Prep?

Freezer meal prep is a way that you can prepare for the coming weeks by making your own homemade convenience foods and stashing them in the freezer. You can prep a meal or part of a meal, thaw and reheat, adding fresh elements so that dinner is ready in minutes!

It’s like DIY convenience food on the cheap!

• Don’t feel like cooking?  Let everyone choose his favorite homemade soup from the freezer.
• Have unexpected company? Grab a few quarts of homemade marinara sauce and prepare a pasta feed for a crowd.
• Looking for something quick to eat on the run? Pull some freezer burritos or freezer sandwiches from the stash and go on your merry way.

Not only will freezer meal prep enable you to enjoy great food, but it will also save you money as you avoid high priced takeout and benefit from bulk buying. 

Whether you’re focusing on Breakfast on the Go or Easy Freezer Meals to serve at busy dinnertimes, planning a freezer meal prep session can save you a lot of time, money, and heartache. You’ll have no need for take-out, and you can do it with your own favorite freezer friendly recipes!

If you’re new to freezer cooking, or “bulk cooking” as it is sometimes called, rest assured that it is not difficult. You can add to your freezer stash in as little time as it takes to double tonight’s dinner.

How to Plan Your Freezer Meal Prep

Decide how much time you have to cook.

There are three basic approaches to freezer meal prep. The best one for you is dependent on how much time you have to cook.

1. Double dinner – this is the quickest and easiest way to fill your freezer with frozen meals and meal components.

Simply make a double batch of dinner and freeze half. Do this several times a week and you’ll quickly build a stash of freezer meals to serve on busy nights when you don’t have time to cook.

2. Do a power cooking session – A power hour focuses on a main protein or meal type where you can easily batch tasks, make good use of bulk shopping, and produce many of a kind, such as these:

• ground beef or turkey: meatballs, meatloaf, hamburger patties, and taco meat
• chicken breast: cooked chicken for casseroles, grilled chicken strips for salads, and marinated chicken to cook upon serving
• soups: chop all the mirepoix at the same time and set your slow cooker, instant pot, and stock pots to simmering a number of different freezer soups at one time.

3. Plan a larger freezer meal prep session – This is where you prepare 2-3 batches of 3-5 different meals. A large freezer prep session may take from several hours to a day of cooking, but the rewards are huge – several weeks of meals ready at one time.

How you plan your freezer meal prep will depend on what type of meal prep you choose to do. If you just have 30 minutes to cook each day, then doubling dinner is the way to go. If your schedule is more flexible, then choose the longer cooking session.

You can do your planning on a piece of paper, but I’ve designed planning pages that make it easy.

Find the planner here and download it right away! Use the coupon code freezegce at checkout to get it free.

So, once you’ve got your planner, you’re ready to create a freezer meal prep plan.

Decide on your recipes.

I like to work my freezer cooking plans around a common protein. Using common ingredients or recipes that build on one another is a great way to maximize the time benefits of batch cooking and to make use of good grocery sales as well as save time.

Choose your freezer recipes based on what you already have on hand (shop your kitchen!) or what’s on sale at the store. 

If you’re not sure a recipe freezes well, test it. Prep it as you normally would, but set aside a small portion, like one serving. Chill it well, wrap it for freezing, and chuck it in the deep freeze. In a few days thaw and reheat and see if you like it.

Never make a big batch of something that you haven’t already tested yourself. There are content creators pushing freezer meal recipes that are absolute garbage. 

Assemble the ingredients.

As you’re going through your freezer meal prep recipes, jot down which groceries you’ll need to pick up. 

Be sure to check the pantry, fridge, and freezer before you write a grocery list. You may already have what you need.

Prep ingredients ahead of time.

Your cooking session will go much more smoothly if you prep your veggies and other ingredients in advance. 

Go through each recipe and create a prep list of all the things that you need to precook/prepare, chop/slice, or grate. 

Make note that several recipes may call for the same prepped ingredient, such as chopped onion or chopped broccoli. Write down how much you will need for all your recipes in your freezer meal prep and do all the chopping at one time.

Even if the only freezer meal prep you did was prep ingredients, you’d save time.

You can freeze onions and so many other things.

Assemble your recipes.

If you’re preparing more than one recipe to freeze, you’ll want to prepare them in an order that makes the most sense. What will be the most efficient use of your time?

Some recipes will be part of other recipes. For instance, if you’re making a homemade red sauce to use in meatball sub kits and lasagna, you’ll need to prepare the sauce first so that you have it ready when you want to assemble the other recipes.

In the same way, put your recipes in order of what appliances you’ll be using. You can’t use the oven for five different recipes at once. You’ll need to space them out throughout the cooking sesson.

Start with the longest cooking item so that the other freezer meal prep items will be finished in the same time. You want to condense your time in the kitchen as much as possible to be efficient.

Before you freeze food, make sure to:

• Chill it in the fridge if it’s a cooked food. Baked goods need to cool completely on a wire rack.
• Wrap it well for freezing. These are the freezer containers I recommend.
• Label it clearly so you know what you have.

Then stash it in the freezer.

Keep an inventory of what you’ve made.

Once all your recipes are prepared, cooled, wrapped, labeled, and ready for freezing — your work is not quite done. 

Make an inventory of your freezer meal preps so that you know what you have. Keeping a freezer inventory is key to using up these great meals you have made!

Use it or lose it, baby. You don’t want to lose your precious work to freezer burn. Know what you have so you can use it up in the next 6 to 8 weeks.

Make a plan to use your freezer meals.

Create a meal plan for how you’ll use these frozen meals in the coming month, reverse meal planning, if you will. 

This step-by-step process should help you easily create an efficient freezer meal prep plan with your own recipes. 

Don’t got the bandwidth to plan? That’s okay. We’ve got free freezer cooking plans.

Freezer Meal Prep Recipes

If you’re running short on recipes that your family loves, check out our freezer-friendly recipes here on the blog to get some inspiration. There are dozens to choose from!

Here are some of our favorites freezer recipes

Freezer-friendly Sauces

Sauces are the building blocks to great meals. There are so many easy sauce recipes you can make homemade instead of buying a can.

Make and freeze sauce to save money and time as well as add flavor to your meals.

Main Dishes

Whether it’s a chicken casserole or a homemade frozen pizza, having a main dish ready to go is a game-changer for busy weeknights. My husband loves having a stash of Spicy Chicken Fajita Burritos in the freezer.

These are some easy main dishes you can add to your freezer meal prep plans:

Cooked Proteins

Maybe you don’t want to commit to full meals and casseroles in the freezer. No problem. Having some budget proteins cooked and recipe-ready is so nice.

These all freeze beautifully and can easily be added to soups, salads, tacos, sandwiches, and more.

Desserts

This post was originally published on April 1, 2011. It has been updated for content and clarity.