Meal Prep & Deep Freezer Food Storage - Foodmaxxing: Share Your Tips for Meal Prep and Freezer Storage

[Crab Latte]

I am starting this thread with the hope that it becomes a searchable resource for myself and other kiwis interested in food prep, deep freezing, and bulk storage of frozen foods.



You can toss anything into a freezer, but it's helpful to know the best way to store specific foods so they are not destroyed in the process. If you've ever tried to freeze vegetables with a high water content, you'll know what I mean. Not all foods or prepped meals can be frozen and maintain the same quality, taste, and texture after thawing. Please share your experiences with meal prep and deep freezing so that other people may learn from your successes and mistakes!

I'll start.
I am in my first year of owning a chest freezer. I purchased it used (in great shape) for $60 and it's reduced my grocery spending by at least $100/month without having to compromise on my favorite meals. It's been a great investment and I've been freezing my own home made 'convenience foods' like dumplings and pot stickers, and portioned cooked curry and rice. I would love to get into freezing premade alfredo pastas but I haven't found a way to stabilize the sauce when I reheat it in a pan. The oil always separates and makes it greasy. Has anyone had success with this?

Things I've had success with to help me reduce wasting leftovers are freezing them, like with curries and rice. This is a nice option to have when I'm feeling under the weather, especially when you just need something spicy. I enjoy artisan bread but sometimes I don't finish it in time, so I've begun freezing half of it when I buy it. Hard cheeses also hold up well frozen in blocks but it can impact the meltability. I also like to buy those massive bags of carrots they have for juicing and cut them all up at the same time, processing them for slaw, soups, and roasted vegetables at the same time. Then I freeze it all. One thing that actually gets better after you freeze it is pressed firm tofu, it gets even more spongy and soaks up more flavor, in my opinion.

 

[Cane Skretteburg]

Glad someone made this thread! In my opinion, the bottom line with meal prep is minimizing $$$/meal without sacrificing nutritional value. In the beginning phase of economic decline that we are in now, the first thing that has significantly impacted most people has been the increased cost of food. Fat retards who use Doordash or UberEats have been most affected. The good news is that these price hikes are very easily offset, especially if you are someone who already cooks for yourself.

The key to maximizing the efficiency of your meal prep is to understand the value of your food versus what you pay for it at a grocery store. As inflation has affected literally every step of the food supply chain, understanding this has become not only more pertinent, but also much easier. Bell peppers in a little plastic sleeve? That will be costing you more. Rice and beans pre-packaged in a box? 2-3 times more expensive than making it yourself. Deli foods and ready-to-eat frozen meals? Prohibitively expensive. The other day I saw 16oz cans of nasty ass Skyline chili for 7 dollars a can. It is easy to see how those most affected by food inflation are those who cannot cook.

Switch your attention to items which are usually in the peripheral areas of the supermarket; raw vegetables, eggs, cheeses and secondary cuts of meat. These are not only the cheapest items per unit of weight (generally), but also the most nutritious items. A pound of dry beans and a pound of dry rice cost together about $2.50. A couple bell peppers, half a head of celery, and a few onions will cost you ~5 dollars. A pound of smoked neck bones will cost you ~3 dollars. Go crazy with spices and butter and whatever else you want and you will make a very large (see picture below) pot of Cajun red beans and rice for less than the cost of a couple of Red Baron pizzas. That’s 4000ish calories of a micronutrient rich complete protein for under 20 dollars

If you are not someone who is capable of cooking your own food, it’s time to grow up and become an adult. How can a person reasonably expect to be free if they are dependent on somebody else for every step involved in getting food into their body? This is more in the vein of self reliance than self sufficiency, but nobody can have one without the other.

 

[Casshern]

You could be even more efficient by using a chest freezer and DIY chest fridge with a DIY mini fridge for drinks. The better insulation really helps. You can also boost efficiency in pre-power outage by storing tons of water within the empty spaces of your fridges and freezers, which acts as cold “batteries” to even out fluctuations in temperature and reduce the need for the compressor further. Plus the added benefit that in a low water situation you can have gallons of water on hand.

I’ll be including part of a post I made in the Power Generation General that I feel is particularly useful for a thread all about storing things cooly and efficiently.

For freezing, I recommend J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s article on it. A great and short read. For how I store in the freezer, I typically use some decently thick but cheap glass containers I bought off Amazon, although I’ve found they may not freeze fast enough to stop the food from forming larger crystals. I’ve also frozen some Ball jars and let them come back to temp in an ice bath in the fridge. I’m very interested in reusable silicone bags, particularly for the storage method shown in the article, which with sufficiently large/contrasted labels is perfect for chest freezers. Like flipping through delicious vinyl records.

As for what I freeze, I have basically been living off of this lentil-turkey taco recipe:

Spoiler: Recipe

3lbs ground turkey (can be replaced with chicken or other lean meat, but others will impact macros).
1lb dried lentils
1lb potatoes
1lb peppers
1lb onions
1 15oz can beets (both liquid and solids)
1 28oz can diced tomatoes

Everything is diced and slow cooked/pressure cooked until done, where I then leave it to come to freezer temp and additionally dry out some. Makes 8lbs of mix, and at my typical 3oz servings is hilariously 42 servings at 420kcal w/ 13g fat, 38g carbs (15g of which is dietary fiber), and 42g of protein. All for $15 (or ¢39/serving)

Skyline chili

Genuine polish nigger slop.

 

[Trig.Point]

I batch make stock, reduce it down (which isn't ideal but depending what I use if for I typically don't notice) and then freeze it in ice cube trays. If I'm doing one pan dinners a few cubes in the pan makes a nice sauce, without having to fuck around with thickening agents like flour or cream.

 

[Justa Grata Honoria]

I am just going to post about root cellar. Read up on it they now sell decent prefab root cellars ready to be put in ground . They are superb for storing various root vegetables. They need no power and have minimal fluctuations. The prefab ones i saw in Norway were 5-6 k for 8 sqm fiberglass for lazy fucks .

 

[hideandgoseekchampion]

My parents buy a quarter/half of a cow (rear end usually) for like $1100 and it saves them $2000+ a year, which is pretty cool.

 

[Oh Darn]

My parents buy a quarter/half of a cow (rear end usually) for like $1100 and it saves them $2000+ a year, which is pretty cool.

This. Nothing will improve your health/grocery budget more than buying a half a cow and eating on that. You can get gorgeous grass-fed filets, NY strips and more ground beef than you can shake a stick at for ~$5 a lb.

It's definitely made me more creative in the kitchen, but there's still some stuff I can't figure out how to use, like pigs feet. If anyone's mammie has a recipe she wants to share with me, let me know.

 

[Nonconsentual Pronouns]

for ~$5 a lb

Nobody tell this guy that he's overpaying.

But really, you can get cheaper than that for beef, and a whole other kind of deal on venison if you hunt.

Spoiler: storytime

Not so much these days, but my dad was one of those annual hunters. Every year without fail, he bagged a buck and used minimal supplies (gun, ammo, maintenance kit, knife, camo thermal outerwear and a thermal butt pillow) to make it happen. The same butcher that we used to get our quarter cow from every year had a deal with my dad where his buck got split down the middle aside from the head, the butcher kept the half with the head, bones and pelt, and my dad got the other half broken down, smoked, made into shelf stable sausages, etc at no cost on top of a discount on our quarter cow. Both of them felt guilty because they thought they were getting the better end of the deal at the expense of the other guy. I have no idea what those processing costs vs meat costs are like nowadays though, TBH.