Imagine being able to have dinner readily available every night for a month. If you have some extra time, you can batch cook and freeze a month’s worth of meals! 

As a personal chef, I used to help new moms by providing meals for their family every night. You can use the same techniques so that you always have a meal waiting for you at the end of the day. It's a great way to make weeknight cooking manageable! 

The benefits of batch cooking include saving money, wasting less food and spending more time in the evenings with your family.

My approach is to prep over two days and to have a longer third cooking day. Once a week, usually on Sunday when there is more time to cook, I prepare a roast that will turn into two other meals.

I mix up the month with a variety of meals that include chicken or meat frozen in a marinade and ready to cook. I also brown several pounds of ground beef and freeze in one-cup portions. These packages are great to take out for easy meals. Sprinkle on pizza, add to spaghetti sauce or layer with mashed potatoes and corn for a shepherd’s pie. 

Choose two or three marinade recipes that will work with beef, chicken or pork. This Spicy Orange Marinade can be used with chicken or beef. You can find other marinade ideas here.

Ready to get started?

Planning

Take out a calendar and build a menu plan. I look through my cookbooks and magazines for inspiration. I keep recipes that I have pulled out from magazines or printed from online sites in file folders, which are organized by season.

Gather all the recipes you have chosen for the month and place in a three-ring binder. This makes it easy to go back and forth to recipes during the cooking process. Compile a grocery list. See what you have in your pantry and determine what you will need for each recipe.

I also like to map out a cooking plan by looking at the recipes and finding common ingredients. For instance, make note of what recipes call for diced onions, so you can do all the onion cutting at one time.

Gather your freezer containers. I use freezer bags and foil containers that can go from freezer to oven. Keep in mind that freezer bags take up less room in the freezer.

Shopping and Prepping

Take the list and go shopping for groceries. When you come home, it is time to prep. First, clean and dry all the fruits and vegetables. Cut them up according to your recipes and then divide into freezer bags or containers for each recipe. Remember to date and label the packages.

Batch-Cooking Tip: To get a jump on cooking, prepare one of the slow cooker recipes.

Meanwhile, cook a large batch of rice. Package in containers for freezing. Cook your ground beef and place one-cup portions in freezer bags.

Cooking Day

Group all your ingredients by recipe so that you can quickly move through the cooking. Start with the recipes that will take the longest to cook and then move on to the quicker recipes.

Batch-Cooking Tip: If you clean as you go, it will be less overwhelming and the counters will be available to prep the next round of recipes.