Whether you are preparing for maternity leave, building up a supply of meals for the next few months or aiming for convenience cooking, bulk cooking freezer meals are the way to go!  I have done bulk freezer meal cooking prior to having each of my children, and have been so thankful for it.

If you have the schedule to dedicate 5-10 hours to preparing meals, then this is the way to go!

Bulk cooking freezer meals is AWESOME because you only need to do it four times a year or less.  When I say bulk cooking, I’m talking about picking out 10-15 recipes and making them all at once (or split into a few days).  These are full meals (like in casserole dishes), not the frozen Ziploc bag kind that you use a Crock-Pot for. Then all of those meals are like a reserve for you for the next 3-4 months.  This means you only need to do this a few times a year to have a constant supply of meals.

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Bulk Cooking Freezer Meals Can Be Awesome Because:

• You dedicate one day (or more pending on the number of meals you are doing) to cooking and then you are done for months!
• You build up a 3-4 month supply of meals in one day.
• It cuts down your cooking load for the next few months.
• Even if you hate cooking, it is a day of just throwing meals together accompanied by wine and music (those things make it fun!)
• Once they are done, your husband can start doing all the “cooking,” (ie. pulling meals out of the freezer lol).

Bulk Cooking Freezer Meals Can Be Challenging Because:

• You have to have all of your groceries purchased in advance which can destroy your grocery budget if you haven’t planned for it.
• It takes up an ENTIRE day.
• If you have small children around, they can make accomplishing this a bit more challenging.
• It can really seem like a “production” if you haven’t done it before.
• If you don’t have available freezer space, this won’t work for you (or you will only be able to do a few meals at a time).

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How to Get Ready for Bulk Cooking Freezer Meals.

Prepare for bulk cooking freezer meals.

Pick out recipes.

This is the fun part!  Pick out however many meals you are wanting to make and mark the recipes (tab them in the cookbook, make copies, write them out, whatever you want to do).  As an example of what you may be able to accomplish, prior to having kids I made 9 meals in one day. When trying to do this with a 16-month-old running around I had to break up my 14 meals into three Sunday afternoons to get them all done.

I think 5-10 meals would probably be a good amount to start with.  This is my favorite freezer meal cookbook. I’m sure you can find others, but this is my go-to for recipes.

Budget for the meals.

Once you have your meals picked out, then you need to set up a budget for them.  There are two ways to go about budgeting for your meals:

1. Save for them quarterly.  You can put $50/month (or whatever that number looks like for you) toward saving for the next round of freezer meals.  Then when it is time to purchase the ingredients, you have $150-$200 saved for them.
2. Use money out of your monthly budget.  If you have enough income you can just increase your grocery budget for one month and cut some expenses elsewhere.

Both of these budgeting methods are just fine, you just need to decide what will work best for your family.

Organize your shopping list for bulk cooking freezer meals.

Use our FREE Freezer Meal Grocery List Sheet to organize your shopping.  Sign up below to download instantly!

Once you download the Freezer Meal Grocery List Sheet, using it will completely simplify your shopping.  

• You will need to print off one sheet per recipe.
• At the top of the sheet write the recipe name.
• Then list all the ingredients/items needed in their appropriate category on the sheet.  
• There is also a spot to write what size baking/cooking container you need for that particular recipe.

These grocery sheets will help keep you organized when you are in the store, make it easier for you to check your inventory you already have available at home and once you have written down one recipe on this sheet, you never have to do it again!

Once this sheet is filled out for one of the recipes, just keep it.  In the future, if you plan to make the same freezer meal, the grocery list is already written out!  All you have to do is see what you already have at home to know what you need to get at the store, but 90% of the work is already done for you.

Shopping for bulk cooking freezer meals.

Once your grocery list is all written out, it is time to go to the store!  I only shop at two places for all of my groceries: Aldi and Walmart. Aldi has about 85%-90% of the stuff I need, but there are a few food items I have to get at Walmart.  I also like Walmart for their foil casserole dishes. I buy these with every round of freezer meals.

The cost of these foil baking dishes may be worth it to free up your own personal casserole dishes for continued use while you have things in the freezer for 3-4 months.  These are also disposable dishes which means much less clean-up for you. That alone is worth the cost in my book.

You decide what you want to do.  If you have enough baking dishes at home that you can have those tied up in your freezer for extended periods of time, then you probably don’t need to buy the foil baking dishes.

Don’t forget when you are doing your shopping at Walmart (or anywhere else other than Aldi) to use the iBotta app to save money on your purchases.  Sign up here to get started. It’s as easy as scanning your receipt to start getting cash back on purchases you were going to already be making.

After you have all of your groceries make sure you keep them separate from the rest of the food in your house.  The last thing you want is to be all ready to go with making your meals and find out some ingredients accidentally were used up.  So frustrating!

Pro-tip:  I have found what works best is to leave all my freezer meal ingredients in the shopping bags and storing them in a separate closet.  Even the refrigerated and frozen items I leave in bags as kind of a marker they are designated for freezer meals.

Organize for bulk cooking freezer meals.

Pending on your lifestyle your actual day of cooking may look different from someone else’s.  Plan for what meals you are making on which days. If you plan to cook everything in one day, awesome!  If you plan to break it up into 2-3 separate days, awesome!

No matter what your schedule will be, the day before you plan to do your meals, there are a few things you can do to make the day go more smoothly.

1. Move all frozen meat into the refrigerator so it is thawed when you need it.  Don’t forget this! Your day will go so much faster if your meat is already thawed.
2. Organize your cooking order and set out your meals in that order.  This may seem like overkill, but it really helps keep the process moving along.  You don’t have to stop to figure out your next move.

Pro-tip: I tend to organize my meals into beef, chicken, and pasta.  This way I am dealing with certain kinds of meat all at one time (ie. I can brown all the beef at once for multiple recipes and my pan is already dirty with the beef so I don’t need to wash it if I am using it for the same thing for another recipe).

The best way to visually organize (and my favorite OCD way) is to set out the cooking container with all the ingredients and recipe for that particular meal.  Setting out all the ingredients will be super easy for you because you can just work off of your Freezer Meal Grocery List sheets.

Download these Freezer Meal Grocery List sheets instantly by signing up below.  Trust me, they will make your life so much easier!

Making the bulk cooking freezer meals.

You are now ready to start cooking!  Follow the recipes and put the meals in their designated containers.  Once the meal has been transferred to its container, make sure you let it cool all the way.

Then wrap it in saran wrap (I do a complete wrap all the way around the container two times).  Then place aluminum foil to cover the top (I do not wrap the foil all the way around).

Use these labels to put on the meal.  The label should have:

• Name of meal
• Date made
• Cooking instructions for when you are ready to serve it
• Number of servings (great to know in case you want to use it for an impromptu dinner party)
• How long it can be frozen for

Then stack them in the freezer and enjoy!

Pro-tip:  As you eat your way through the meals, mark your rating of the meal in your cookbook.  This will be very helpful to know if the meal was good and if you want to make it again, or if it wasn’t really what you liked.

There you have it!  Bulk cooking freezer meals isn’t really that difficult, it just requires a little bit of planning.  The more you do it, the easier it gets. This is especially true if you are using some of the same recipes because the Freezer Meal Grocery List sheet will already be filled out from before.  

If you find bulk cooking isn’t really going to fit into your lifestyle, check out how to do Freezer Meal cooking incorporated into your daily life (coming soon!).  This may be a better fit for you!

Did you try bulk cooking freezer meals?  What did you think?

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