Now that the kids are back in school, we needed to restock our snacks and produce. So the baby and I made a trip to Aldis this morning to stock up on some of my Aldis favorites. I got pretzels, tortilla chips, tortilla wraps, Nilla wafers, Graham Crackers, grapes, strawberries, green peppers, watermelon and more,
However, my favorite find was a manager special on Chicken Breast. Each jumbo pack was an additional $2 off. The chicken states no additives or hormones so I picked up 3 packs for a total of 13.08 pounds at a cost of $16.11. That made it only $1.23 per pound.
The chicken was on a manager special because the sell by date was TODAY. So I knew I either needed to use or freeze the chicken today. Instead of just freezing the chicken plain, I figured I could make them into freezer crockpot meals just as easily.
I know many Freezer Meal Cookers base their shopping list on the meals they plan to prepare. I’m a bit different. I buy what’s on sale and then plan my recipes using what I have found on sale or have in my stockpile. As I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite sites for this is Yummy and Google Searches also work great.
Today I googled Chicken and Green Peppers (I got a 2 pack for 99¢ today at Aldis.) It didn’t take me long at all to figure out what I was going to make and out came my extra crockpot. Here’s what I ended up making:
- Chicken –at-the- Ready (see recipe below) It’s really simple.
- 2 Batches of Slow Cooker Green Pepper Chicken Recipe. One went in the crockpot for dinner tonight and one is in the freezer for a future meal.
- 1 Freezer Bag with Slow Cooker Chicken Taco Stew – I added some green peppers to this recipe, but otherwise left it pretty much untouched.
For today’s Crockpot Tuesday recipe it was Slow Cooker Green Pepper. I changed the recipe up a bit for the amounts, but also had to leave out the green chilis because I didn’t have any. Instead I used about 8 drops of Tabasco Green Pepper Sauce that do I have in my stockpile since I got it for Free. Another change was Greek Yogurt for the sour cream.
Also, since I was in a bit of hurry to serve dinner so my husband could get to a meeting, I left out the part where you blend up the sauce and green peppers. Instead I just stirred in the Greek Yogurt and let it cook for 20 minutes. Then when it came time to serve, I used a serving spoon with slots to drain out the liquid. I placed the chicken and green peppers on top of the tortilla and sprinkled on a bit of cheese.
Even in this simplified version, the meal was well enjoyed by the family.
My Freezer version of this includes some diced fresh tomatoes that my neighbor had given me and were about to go bad. That’s one more benefit of freezer cooking. You can avoid spoilage of fresh produce. For this version, my plan is to blend it all like the original recipe suggests.
For the remaining chicken, I made Chicken–at-the-Ready. It’s basically poached chicken, but made in the crockpot. As the name suggests, this chicken will be ready when I need to use it in recipes that call for cooked chicken in the future.
You don’t see it in the freezer bags yet, because it’s still in the crockpot while I’m writing this. I plan on pulling it out of the crockpot tonight and placing it in the refrigerator. In the morning, I will dice it and place in the storage bags.
To make it my Chicken-At-The-Ready, I placed 6 Skinless Chicken Breast in my crockpot. I covered them with water and seasoned it with some garlic powder. I turned the crockpot on low and let it cook for 7 hours. That’s it.
So that’s it for my Crockpot Tuesday/Adventures in Freezer Cooking day. In about the same amount of time it would take me to just divide the chicken into serving size portions before freezing, I got 4 meals either made or ready to cook. Not bad in my opinion.
How do you do your freezer cooking? Do you plan trips based on recipes or do you shop and then plan your recipes?
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A few months ago I started trying freezer cooking after a mom gave a presentation at MOPS. I don’t know why I didn’t try this before! In the same amount of time as it takes to make one meal, you can make a few meals to have on hand. All I need to do now is find a freezer at a garage sale because between the freezer meals and the stockpiling on sales, my freezer is packed! Thanks for your posts on this topic! I’m sure I will be referring back to some of your recipes in the future!