We just returned from dinner out, and I saw that Money Saving Mom has her link-up posted for Freezer Cooking Day.

Honestly, it doesn’t feel like I spent much time cooking, but I did everything on my list. I think I’m a great example of how you can use “freezer cooking” to make your life easier without devoting an entire day to it.

Wednesday night I browned all 12 lbs. of the ground beef that I had purchased that day. I did it while I would be cooking supper anyway. I then used a pound or so of it to make tacos.

Thursday night I trimmed the 14 lbs. of chicken breasts and divided them into ziploc bags for the freezer. This way, they’ll be easy to pop into the crockpot or thaw to do whatever with them, since they’ve already had all the nasty stuff cut off. And I put the “nasty stuff” in a skillet and cooked it for our dog. She loves it, I don’t feel like I’m wasting it, and it keeps us from having raw chicken scraps that stink up the trash.

After trimming the chicken, I made a Chinese Chicken Stir-fry (recipe w/pics coming soon on that). I initially seasoned it with only garlic and onion so that I could do double what we needed and have some to freeze. Seasoned that way, it can go into tortilla soup, on top of spinach artichoke pizza, or used to make another stir-fry in minutes.

I also started a crock-pot of 2 lbs. of beans yesterday afternoon. I put it on low, and it wasn’t done until lunchtime today. I was a little surprised that it took so long, but they turned out fine. Once they fully cooled, I divided them into quart sized freezer bags and put them in the freezer.

Although I have done some more intensive freezer cooking projects, this is generally how I do things. I use a normal supper-cooking time, somewhat extended, to do some extra work that will make it easy to throw future meals together in minutes.

Check out more freezer cooking posts at Money Saving Mom.