Freezer Meals | Basics with Babish

- This episode of Basics with Babish is sponsored by Bright Cellars, a monthly wine club that brings you wines you'll love delivered right to your door. It's easy, convenient, and the bottles you receive are customized to your taste preferences. Bright Cellars is offering you 50% off your first case of six bottles plus an extra bottle. There are seven bottles in total. Follow the link in the video description to take the quiz and get started. Now let's get down to the

basics

. (upbeat music) (nice music) Alright, this week on Basics, I'm so excited to share that Sawyer, who everyone knows and loves, just became a father.

As many new parents have told me, he will need lots of heat and quick, easy

meals

. So we are doing just that. Frozen breakfasts, lunches and dinners that literally go straight to your house. As soon as we finish filming. First step, as you can see, I have a half dozen English muffins here that I'm breaking up and placing on a rack set on a rimmed baking sheet, which we're going to toast for five to 10 minutes at 350 degrees. Fahrenheit oven, both because untested English muffins taste strange and because moisture is the enemy of the

freezer

. As you may have guessed, we are making breakfast sandwiches so we need some eggs and to be cute, I want to turn my eggs into perfectly round burgers.

So I'll heat up some butter over medium heat in a non-stick skillet and a lightly beaten egg in a small bowl. Then I have a stainless steel ring mold, the exact width of my English muffins, that I will place directly into the butter, pour my lightly beaten egg inside, and continue to beat it lightly. You want to keep it moving until it's almost ready. That way, it won't be visible on one side and raw on the other. Then, once it's almost ready, we'll scrape the outside of the egg to separate it from the mold and remove it.

Give it a stir to make sure it's fully cooked and set it aside to cool completely while we prepare six more. I'll probably end up saying this a lot in this episode, but you want to make sure everything is cold to at least room temperature before assembling, refrigerating, or freezing anything. Now that our English muffins are lightly toasted and also cool, we can start assembling them. I'm going with a slice of cheddar cheese on the bottom, our egg burger, a slice of Canadian bacon, and another slice of cheddar cheese. Putting cheese on each side of the muffin insulates it from the moisture given off by the eggs or ham during the reheating process, which should hopefully help reduce sogginess.

Next we need to wrap these guys for the

freezer

. This can be achieved with parchment paper or plastic wrap followed by a layer of aluminum foil. The idea here is to reduce freezer burn as much as possible. Once you've wrapped and labeled them all, you'll place them in the freezer, where you can keep them for up to two months. You can reheat them by wrapping them in a damp paper towel and microwaving them on medium power for two minutes or by removing the parchment paper and re-wrapping them in aluminum foil and baking them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 to 30 minutes.

Next up, some big bad breakfast burritos. I plan to make about half a dozen of these and each requires about two eggs, so I'll crack 14 into a large bowl and whisk them together. Yes, I know there are too many. I'd rather have too much than too little. There's nothing sadder than a subpar breakfast burrito. And to cook said eggs, I'll melt two tablespoons of butter in a large nonstick skillet, heat over medium heat until foamy, add the eggs, and stir slowly and infrequently. I'm looking for those eggs from your dad on a Sunday morning at the hotel continental breakfast.

Large, fluffy and firm curds that will help give structure to our breakfast burritos. And since these are going to be a little healthier than breakfast sandwiches, I'm going to make a filling of sautéed onion and wilted chard. So I have a large Spanish onion that I'm going to finely chop and some rinsed and dried Swiss chard. Whose leaves I am going to start removing from the brightly colored stems. I'm going to cut the leaves into large pieces and you could cut the stems into thin slices and leave them there, but they have a very earthy flavor.

So I only recommend it. If you really like the flavor of chard. Heat one to two tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large frying pan for about a minute or until shimmering, add the onion and sauté for three to five minutes until they begin to sweat and soften. Then once they've gotten a little bit of color and look nice and soft, we're going to add our chard and cook it for another minute or two until the chard is nice and wilted. Sprinkling lightly with kosher salt will help remove excess moisture, which again is the enemy of the freezer.

Once the chard has reduced its volume by half, we will give it a final seasoning with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. We'll also squeeze in a clove or two of garlic and sauté them for about 30 seconds until they're nice and fragrant. So a great way to cool most of these ingredients is to spread them thinly on a rimmed baking sheet, maximizing their surface area and steam production, which again, steam moisture, moisture is bad. For protein, I'm just going to make some of this commercially available, fully cooked chicken and garlic sausage, cut into nice thin bite-sized pieces so it's easy to bite into.

Then, just like with breakfast sandwiches, we'll set up a sort of assembly station. All of our planned fillings, including some sorted Gruyere cheese, all located in one place, easy to grab so you don't forget anything. And it lasts, it's time to ride it. And just like with sandwiches, we want to try to isolate the tortilla from its moist fillings. Then layer of cheese, layer of eggs. layer, of our commercially available, fully cooked garlic chicken sausage, layer of our onion, chard and garlic mixture and a final insulating layer of cheese. Then it's time to wrap this guy up.

You may have noticed that I put all the fillings in the bottom quadrant of the burrito so I could fold up the bottom, followed by the sides, and then roll it up like, I don't know, like a burrito. . Wrap it well and there you have it. Ready for the freezer. Rinse and repeat with the remaining 'rites. So the preparation of the freezer is very similar to that of the sandwiches. We want to wrap it in plastic or parchment paper. Jess was filming with the B camera at the time and thought this angle was really funny. She's a big fan of framed humor.

Either way, wrap it in plastic or parchment paper followed by aluminum foil, label it with its contents, the date it was packaged, your full name and social security number, and place it in the freezer, again, for up to two months. . Microwave or bake the same as the sandwiches, but maybe a little longer since these types are thick. Next, for lunch, how about a soul-nourishing chicken noodle soup? Starting with about eight boneless, skinless chicken thighs that we will remove the fat and cartilage from and cut into small pieces. Then, for the onions, carrots, and celery, I use store-bought frozen vegetables that were commercially frozen at their peak of freshness.

Then they will be better for a frozen soup. For extra flavor points, you can add things like fresh chopped parsley, lots of freshly chopped dill, which I think is an absolute must. A large finely chopped parsnip, which I think adds a nice earthy sweetness to the chicken noodle soup and some chopped fresh fennel stalks. And then we're going to go ahead and mix everything together to make our kind of frozen soup vegetable mix, to which I'll also add three large cloves of finely minced garlic, as well as a few inches of freshly grated ginger. Adding them to the vegetables at this stage will ensure they are evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

Make sure they are all nice and mixed. And then it's time to start discussing the actual elements of this soup. Now, in an ideal world, you have plenty of frozen, pre-portioned homemade chicken broth. What I have here is pretty concentrated, so about two cups will be perfect if diluted with two cups of water, but you can also use store-bought chicken broth or a couple bullion cubes. Either way, your soup base goes into a large zip-top freezer bag, followed by about two thighs of our chopped chicken thighs and several healthy tablespoons of our frozen vegetable and fresh herb blend.

Of course, this flavor can be seasoned when cooking, but it doesn't hurt to add a pinch of kosher salt and a few grinds of freshly ground black pepper. Lastly, the noodles. And you can add any type of pasta you want in the last 10 minutes of cooking when you make the soup. But if you are making it for someone else, like me, I will put the pasta in a separate bag along with the following instructions. Put everything in a pot, except the pasta. Add two cups of water. Simmer for 45 minutes, add the pasta in the last 10 minutes of cooking, and make, completely from scratch, chicken noodle soup.

Now, all that's left to do is rinse and repeat with the remaining bags and put them in the freezer, again for up to two to three months. Next up for dinner was lasagna. So let's start by making a very standard Italian-American ragù. One large, finely chopped onion is sautéed in about two tablespoons of olive oil in a large pot. Approximately three to five minutes until well sweated. Then we add two carrots and two ribs of celery, finely chopped, and sauté them for eight to 10 minutes until they're nice and soft and starting to caramelize. Then we squeeze, I'm going to use about six cloves of garlic.

I don't think you can go overboard with garlic in a red sauce. You'll notice that I moved the vegetables to the outside of the pan. Then the garlic comes into direct contact with the heat. Sauté for 30 seconds before adding about half a cup of tomato paste. Sauté that for two or three more minutes until it starts to stick to the bottom of the pan and then deglaze with about a cup of red wine. I know it's normally sacrilege to put it in tomato sauce, but remember, I said Italian-American. I'll also add a tablespoon of oregano and three 28-ounce cans of whole San Marzano tomatoes, which you can mash by hand before tossing or mash with a potato masher.

I'll also add a cup of water and maybe half a cup of freshly chopped basil and parsley. So this guy will be cooked for between one and four hours. Bring to a simmer, keep partially covered. Lower the heat to low and let it go until it has a sweet, balanced flavor, similar to tomato sauce. Oops, I almost forgot. If you have an extra parmesan crust hanging off, go ahead and throw it in there. Once the sauce is simmered to spicy perfection, it's time to crust the Parmesan cheese and season to taste with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Once it's seasoned to your liking, one way to cool it quickly, like everything else, is to spread it out on a rimmed baking sheet. It should be almost completely cold in about 20 minutes. It's too much sauce for our lasagna. So I'm going to pack a couple liters of this just for the sake of the sauce. You want to have pasta, boom, homemade sauce ready. Spread it nice and flat. Remove all the air and freeze for up to three months. Now let's go back to making lasagna. You can just pile on unboiled noodles, but if you have traditional noodles, go ahead and cook them for about five or six minutes so they're really al dente.

Then I'll toss them with a little olive oil on a rimmed baking sheet so they don't stick, and like everything else, let them cool completely before stacking. Lastly, I'm going to make some of these Italian sausage lasagnas, so I'm going to squeeze maybe a pound of Italian sausage out of their casings, grind them up and sauté them until they're browned and cooked through and drain them on paper. towels to absorb excess oil. And of course, let them cool completely. Once everyone has calmed down, it's finally time to gather together. I have some disposable aluminum baking sheets here that I think will be perfect for two, let's face it, one person.

Starting by spreading an even layer of sauce on the bottom so that the noodles do not stick and burn. Then I drop in a layer of noodles, a layer of low-moisture mozzarella, and optionally our Italian sausage and add way more sauce than I think I need. Frozen lasagna has a tendency to dry out and this will help combat that. Then I finish with just mozzarella on top of the noodles and a grating of parmesan cheese. This will give us a nice crunchy and cheesy layer on top. Then we wrap everything as tightly as we can in aluminum foil and freeze, once again, for up to three months.Reheat by baking at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 70 to 90 minutes, if coming straight from the freezer, and 45 to 60 minutes if previously thawed overnight in the refrigerator.

Just make sure to cover the foil a bit when you bake it so the cheese doesn't stick. And that's it folks, some quick, easy and convenient frozen

meals

. Thanks again to Bright Cellars for sponsoring this episode. I look forward to receiving my bottles every month because I can always try something new. I also love that each box comes with a wine educational card for each bottle that explains the wines' origins, flavor notes, and pairing suggestions. You will always have a good wine on hand and you will be able to rate each bottle you receive so that your next box adapts even more to your tastes.

After a long day in addition to preparing frozen meals, I have enjoyed this Sabelia, which is a Syrah blend, especially because it pairs so well with nights on the patio. This Mojave Rain Cabernet blend pairs very well with weeknight wine drinks, which I think my new parent friends will need. This is one of the bottles that will go well with your food. Bright Cellars is offering you 50% off your first case of six bottles plus an extra bottle. There are seven bottles in total. Follow the link in the video description to take the quiz and get started. (pleasant music)