How to Cook 40 FREEZER MEALS for New Moms in ONE Evening!!

(easy guitar music) - Well friends, today is going to go down. You know, it's been several months since I've been able to really, really, really, really, I mean since this fall, since I started

cook

ing in the super mega

freezer

. I had a little

freezer

cook

ing day in January, I got like four hours of dedicated freezer cooking time, which was great. I love cooking in large quantities, it is very useful to feed all my people. And in today's video we will help feed other people. I have two homeschool mom friends, one just had her baby and the other is a few days late with her baby.

So what I'm doing is I'm cooking my large family frozen

meals

, pack two, and by cooking that pack I'm going to get 35 to 40 postpartum

meals

, we're going to call them frozen meals and I'm going to give each member of that family a bunch of meals. frozen for all the next weeks. They have other people bring them food and the

moms

have also prepared the meals in advance, but when you have a new baby you can always use 10 or 12 extra containers of something, something in your freezer or takeout bags in your slow cooker very fast. It's just very useful.

I'll probably save about 10 containers of various recipes for my own family to start rebuilding my freezer stash, since we just finished a three-week pantry and freezer challenge where we had everything practically empty and my freezer is in the garage and that's a great place to be. I did this shopping haul the other day, which will be linked in the description below if you'd like to check it out. I think I made about $279 and when you break down all the meals it works out to a little over six dollars per large family meal and then with that you can add applesauce, salad, spice it up however you want or sometimes a whole lo What mom can do, or someone can help that mom, is just take out some lasagna, eat a slice of bread with butter and that's it, call it good.

So, let's get started. This is a lot, but I will open my own Big Family Frozen Meals Two Pack, use the Large Batch Cooking Guide that is included and follow my own instructions and that will make this much easier because the thinking is done, now I just need to get out of the process. We interrupt this with lunch break. This is a quick lunch and snack for seven kids. Benjamin is taking a nap so everyone will get a bowl of applesauce so I have on hand this unsweetened applesauce and a banana and then if you want something else you can certainly get something else but this is my attempt to feed them.

I can start cooking. Amelia, get the news: silence is golden, unless you have children, then silence is suspicious. That's my new favorite mug, but my joke is that it will last a week. Daniel and then we probably have Jaden, we still feed him too, Jaden, Zion, Naomi, Gabriel, Liam. Put spoons on everything and then I'll give you a banana and then I'll say, okay, let your mom start frying some food now. Here is my little list. So I have my frozen meals for large families, the two pack on my phone ready to go, I used it to do my shopping, but also, being the super visual person that I am, I have my meals listed on my whiteboard.

So I broke it down into baked or stewed meals, then meals that I just need to prepare and go, and then slow cooker meals. So in the baking category, we're making four Taco Bakes, we're making seven, because this grows and that's how my recipes go. Chicken Broccoli Alfredo Bake and this is a noodle bake, not the low carb version I put out that recipe a few weeks ago. This one has good noodles and that's how it stretches so far. We are going to make three baked potatoes with ham and cheese, they are delicious. This might actually be what I end up giving my kids for dinner tonight.

I'm going to make four Beef Stroganoff dishes, this is with rice and ground beef. Four pans of Baked Ziti, another big favorite, and four Tater Tot Chicken Casseroles. Then I'm going to make a bunch of tuna cakes for the freezer and then there will be three slow cooker meals, meatloaves, lemon garlic chicken, teriyaki chicken, so this should be done in about 40 postpartum freezer meals . go. I need to cook 8 1/2 pounds of ground beef and that's ready because I had ground beef in the freezer and I prepped it so I'm going to use that. It says: Cook and shred nine pounds of chicken breasts for me to put in the electric pressure cooker.

Chop the onion, chop the green pepper, cook all the rice and cut the ham into well-cooked cubes. So I'm going to continue with this now. Okay, I've got all those chopped veggies ready to go, I've got the rice in the pot that's boiling. The chicken leaves. My ground beef that I already precooked, I don't know, about a month ago, is loose, but it's not completely thawed, so I need to work with it to prepare these various meals. So I'm going to put them in the microwave, they'll be free again here in a moment, and I'll defrost them.

Also, super cute, I'll link it in the description below. I've been watching some of my first freezer cooking videos from almost five years ago and they are so, so cute, so I'm using baby Daniel. So I'll link them in the description below. So now I have a fully cooked ham. Now that the ham was accidentally put in the freezer, it didn't mean that would happen. So I've been defrosting it with the cold water defrosting method in my sink. Now that it's thawed enough, I can cut it up and that will go into the ham and potato pies that are so good.

Okay, with the meat that I've thawed, this last piece of pre-cooked burger is still frozen in the middle, so I'm going to put this back in the microwave and then I think we can start meal prepping. A lot of meal prep is being reduced. Last are the noodles for the Baked Ziti and I need to drain them in a moment. I just wanted you to sit down for a minute more, part of my observation school that I do. Anyway, I'm going to start preparing these meals. First we start with Taco Bake. Now, in a perfect world it would have been wonderful to have pre-cooked that ground beef with the taco seasoning, but I didn't do it that way.

The meat was already cooked, but I'm still going to mix it to add flavor and it will still be good. So we got four cans of corn, four cans of black beans, and four cans of diced tomatoes. Okay, so I just added 10 cups of precooked rice and we've got our ground beef here, our taco seasoning, corn, black beans and tomatoes and now I'm going to mix it all together. Lots of sour cream, 20 cups of sour cream. But remember that we are making four large pans, which means each pan has the equivalent of five cups of sour cream.

So don't worry, I'm not going to force-feed some poor innocent 20 cups of sour cream at a time. Okay, so with this Taco Bake I made my four planned pans and I'm going to see, because I like to see if I can push it, if I can get a fifth. I think I can. I put my next largest bowl inside my mega bowl to help with my counter space, but we're off and running. Everything I have to do, I have it all done. I just have to prepare these meals now. Putting them together should take, maybe it should take an hour at most.

That was about an hour and a half, or possibly two hours, of total prep time. I didn't have to spend time cooking the ground beef because I had it ready and prepped in batches and in the freezer, but there were a few other things. Like my ham accidentally freezing and things like that that weren't planned and took that long. Now I've been asked several times if the shells are crispy. So, no, the shells are not crispy in these bakes, but they're not, you don't feel like you're eating soft shelves, shelves, you don't eat shelves, you don't, you don't. taking bites and saying, man, these are soft shells, I did it again, I said shelves again, soft shells.

You're taking bites and you're thinking, man, this is an amazing baked taco, that's all you're thinking. I also get a lot of questions about freezing sour cream. Every time I freeze sour cream, whether in a baked or prepared meal like this, it's perfect, no problem at all. Yes, five pans, exciting. Well, I usually have Zion do this for me, but I'll take it to the garage myself. (upbeat guitar music) So what I've been working on is Chicken Broccoli Alfredo Noodle Bake. I ended up with five pans. This is because I made a little less noodles than listed in the direction for my Large Family Frozen Meal Plan.

I only used one of the five pound bags, it's usually seven pans anyway, but I made up for it a little by making an extra pan with my Taco Bake. Anyway, super delicious. I'm going to wrap it now and label it and while I do this I watch my old cooking videos in the freezer. This is when whoops, whoops, you know I'm talking about your dumb television, there you go. This was when I was pregnant with Benjamin and I made 100 Plus Freezer Meals for large families, Six Week's Worth, and they were so helpful. Here we go.

These are the five Chicken Broccoli and Alfredo Bakes. I followed the very easy instructions: defrost, bake at 400 for an hour or until hot and bubbly, put the date on there, five of them. I still watch my other freezer cooking videos. I'm going to get them out of the garage now. Here's a look at how the freezer is filling up. From my recent pantry and freezer challenges, you know that this freezer is practically empty. I mean, I have an entire freezer door dedicated to ribs and bones for bone broth, excuse me while my dogs bark at me, okay.

So I have these pans here. This is the Taco Bake, this is the Alfredo Bake. I have some big bags in there that I can put in another freezer if I need to, but we're going to have this pretty full when we're done with this assembly, but remember that 2/3 of what I'm making is gone. If we stay here, it'll only be here for a few days until we can leave it. Well, this is what's happening with Ham and Cheese Baked Potatoes. I have three bags of these hash brown style potatoes, I have a whole bowl, all the ham is sliced.

I also put the ham bone that still had some meat on it in another freezer bag, put it in the freezer, labeled it and dated it because at some point I will make some kind of soup with it. So we got sour cream, three cans of cream of chicken soup, and then shredded cheese. So I'm going to mix all of this together in my big bowl, then we're going to fill it into ramekins, top it with more cheese, label it, and it's ready. This is what the ham and potatoes bake looks like all mixed together and now we will put it in the molds.

Well, here are the ham and potato pies. I'll label them and put them in the freezer now. Well, the children have gone to bed. Daniel is actually still up with me finishing a late-night bowl of applesauce, but while they were saying goodbye, etc., I wasn't filming. Hey honey, you're done with that, good job, but anyway, all that to say, I just made several trays of this Beef Stroganoff that I'm going to put, oh, oh, oh, hello. Look, I have it. (lips kissing and laughing) - And now I'm going to put cheese on it. Okay, I love you, mmmmmaaaaaa, good night. - Not to my face. - Okay, see you in the morning, see you in the morning, okay, but now we're going to put cheese on them.

Well, they are all ready to put in the freezer. This is the Beef Stroganoffs stack and then here I have the five Baked Zitis, all wrapped up, so yeah, we're going to put this in the freezer and when we come back, it's going to be Tater Tot Chicken Casserole. After that, it's three slow cooker meals and those tuna cakes and we're done, but I know there's still a lot between here and there, but we're getting there. This is what the freezer looks like right now. Like I said, we have the Chicken Tater Tot Bake to go here and then those slow cooker frozen meals and then the tuna cakes.

So we still have room to make it work. I already moved a few bags of frozen fruits and vegetables that I had in my small top freezer. Well, here are four skillets of Tater Tot Chicken Casserole. I have kids who are already excited that we're going to have a pot or two of this in the freezer ready to go because it's a big favorite. So here's the pile of frozen slow cooker meals going into the freezer. We have four of these meat loaves, four bags of slow cooker teriyaki chicken and for these

moms

I put a lot more instructions, but I can also pass these instructions to them when they drop them off.

And we also have four bags of Lemon Garlic Chicken with instructions. Hi, happy day. I slept after so much cooking. All those frozen slow cooker meals I made last night I put in the refrigerator at home. I just moved them to one of the beast freezers in my garage. So I'm just saying that when you see them, they're not frozen yet because they've been here for 30 seconds. Okay, ♪ glory of glories, ah. ♪ I feel like we should sing some kind ofbeautiful chorus, but yeah, still all those ribs and all of you will tell me your rib recipes, right?

No, don't leave me hanging. But anyway all the dinners, tons of dinners, tons, and wait, there are more, even more, tons of dinners. And then the slow cooker frozen meals, I have two meat loaves here, two there and then whenever I put these meals in bags here, I put them on a baking sheet first. I've made the mistake before. If you place these bags of liquid on these types of shelves, they will most likely get through and freeze around these metal bars. So I can even stack them like this because I didn't have room for a second tray.

These are the Slow Cooker Teriyaki Chicken Frozen Meals, below them are the Lemon Garlic Chicken Frozen Meals, and in about a day, I mean when they're completely solid, I can stack them up and pull out this pan. But yes, Here is a look, glory-glory. So if you want to fill your freezer with these exact same meals, all you need to do is get my Large Family Frozen Meals, Pack Number Two and remember when you come into my store, I have a special little 20% off coupon. code listed there that is valid for your first order. In addition to this, I will have all the recipes I used favorited in a blog post on largefamilytable.com.

The benefit of the Freezer Meal Pack is that you have the Shopping List, Batch Cooking Guide to help you every step of the way. So I made these 40 frozen meals, large-family style, in one night thanks to all that good organization. Every time I make my recipes spontaneously without the Batch Cooking Guide and step by step guide. Even when I'm holding my own hand because we make these packages, it takes me longer, as you can see in my other Freezer Cooking videos. So I was happy to be able to do all this in one night, 40 meals, yeah.

And I'll talk to you in those comments below. Bye bye.