You know how I rave about freezer meals like they are the greatest things since sliced bread? Well, they are. But to be totally honest with you, they’re also hard work. I had someone ask me if the upfront work was worth it in the end. Do freezer meals really live up to the hype? I decided to break it down for you so you can be the judge. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly side to freezer meal cooking:
The Good:
The time savings. This one might seem like it shouldn’t make the list when you are deep in the heart of making those freezer meals, but I promise it makes sense once the initial work is done. You’ll be shuffling kids to volleyball and football and violin lessons and completely space dinner or decide you are too exhausted to cook, so all you have to do is pluck a freezer meal out and within 30 minutes you have a warm home-cooked meal on the table. The bulk of the work is already done. I cannot tell you the hours this has saved me in the kitchen each night! It’s my favorite thing about freezer meals!
The financial savings. We all know that buying in bulk saves money {if you do it right!}, so it should come as no surprise that one of the easiest ways to slash your budget is to cook in bulk also. Making 3 or 4 times the amount you’d normally make of one recipe allows you to purchase ingredients in larger quantities, which almost always saves you money. Then times those savings by the number of freezer meals you decide to make and the savings really add up. I have saved hundreds {yes, hundreds!} off my grocery bill by buying and cooking in bulk!
The sanity savings. Life gets busy, regardless of what stage of life you’re in. I always thought with my kids out of school that I’d suddenly find myself with all sorts of time. That’s laughable. My days are just as busy now as they’ve always been. The busy is different now, but I’m busy still the same. That means I can occasionally stress myself out trying to keep up with everything. And that includes meal planning. When I’m at my max and I just don’t have the mental capacity to deal with planning a menu or big shopping trip, I make my menu based on my freezer meals. Just like that, my stress level drops exponentially!
The planet saving. I’m not sure if you know this, but the energy it takes to process convenience food is crazy high, not to mention all that tossable packaging! By making all of your meals from scratch and then storing them in reusable containers, you’re doing earth a big favor!
The friend time. I try to fit in some time with my friends every few weeks, but scheduling is hard when everyone’s lives are crazy busy, but they aren’t crazy busy on the same schedule. So when I decide to do freezer meals, I use the “go big or go home” mentality, invite over all my girlfriends and enjoy a day working alongside my favorite peeps. We get to be productive while catching up. It really does make the time go by faster and I’m killing two birds with one stone. I highly recommend planning a freezer meal party with your friends if you’ve never hosted one before! You might even say they’re fun!
The Bad:
The food could taste different. When you freeze things, textures change. When you reheat them, sometimes some of the flavor is lost. When you freeze for long periods of time, the quality of the meal can diminish. But these are rare instances, and for the most part, my family rarely notices. If you find a freezer meal that just doesn’t taste quite right when prepared from frozen, mark it off your list. I promise there are hundreds more to take its place and taste as delicious as if it came straight from the oven that day {which will actually happen with many of the freezer meals on my site!}.
The upfront effort. This one is the heart of the freezer meal debate. Is it worth all that upfront effort? I’ve been asked that so many times. And the answer is, it depends on you. Freezer meals take a lot of planning, a lot of prep work, a lot of continuous hours in the kitchen. You’ll be exhausted and probably never want to grocery shop or chop another onion as long as you live. But then all that work culminates in a freezer stocked full of healthy freezer meals that will make your life so much easier. Yes, it is A LOT of work upfront. I won’t lie about that. But I never regret it. Ever!
The Ugly:
Your kitchen. Be prepared for it to be a serious, disgusting disaster. Like bad bad. After we made 100 Freezer Meals in 5 Hours, my kitchen was scary. Like I wanted to check into a hotel for the night scary. And I had a bunch of friends to help clean it up. If you are doing this all on your own, the aftermath can feel overwhelming. But you have to keep in mind that it’s a one and done thing. Normally you would be making a disaster of your kitchen every night, and you’ll have to clean it up every night! This way a bulk of the disaster takes place on one night, and even if you didn’t get a group of friends together, you can enlist the help of your family to make quick work of it!
And there you have the truth about freezer meals. It might not be all roses, but the pros absolutely outweigh the cons in my book. What do you think? Is it worth all the extra effort and mess? Are you a freezer meal lover?
Freeze on!
~Mavis
ps. If you’re a freezer meal newbie, you can check out my Complete List of Freezer Meal Recipes here. There are pretty pictures for all you visual peeps like me, so you can decide if a recipe looks delicious before attempting it.
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