Sharla

Easy Asian Meatballs Freezer Meal

Freezer meals don’t get much simpler to assemble than these easy asian meatballs, especially if you are using pre-made meatballs. It can be cooked in the oven or in the crock pot.

You can make this recipe using meatballs you make yourself or using meatballs bought from the store. It’s great to have meatballs in the freezer for all kinds of reasons, so you may want to go ahead and make a huge batch and use some for this recipe and some for other recipes or to add to spaghetti or soups.

Easy Asian Meatballs Freezer Meal:

2 lbs. meatballs, pre-cooked
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. lime juice
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 tsp. sesame oil
1 tsp. ground ginger*
1/2 cup green onions, diced

*If you prefer, you can substitute fresh ginger for the ground ginger.

To assemble this easy freezer meal, add the pre-cooked meatballs to a large resealable bag. Add the minced garlic, lime juice, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, and green onions to the bag. Remove excess air, seal and freeze.

On the day of cooking, take the bag out of the freezer. Thaw. Bake, covered at 375° for 20 minutes or cook on low in the slow cooker for 2-4 hours.

You can serve these meatballs with rice and vegetables or a salad. The sauce tastes really good as a gravy over the rice.

This recipe is perfect for busy weekdays when you have to be out the door quickly to get to soccer or piano or one of the dozens of other scheduled events that families have in the evenings.

Easy Asian Meatballs Freezer Meal

This recipe is perfect for busy weekdays when you have to be out the door quickly to get to soccer or piano or one of the dozens of other scheduled events that families have in the evenings.

Ingredients

2 lbs. meatballs pre-cooked
2 cloves garlic minced
2 Tbsp. lime juice
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 tsp. sesame oil
1 tsp. ground ginger*
1/2 cup green onions diced

Instructions

Add the pre-cooked meatballs to a large resealable bag.
Add the minced garlic, lime juice, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, and green onions to the bag.
Remove excess air, seal and freeze.
On the day of cooking, take the bag out of the freezer.
Thaw.
Bake, covered at 375° for 20 minutes or cook on low in the slow cooker for 2-4 hours.

Recipe Notes

*If you prefer, you can substitute fresh ginger for the ground ginger.

You can serve these meatballs with rice and vegetables or a salad. The sauce tastes really good as a gravy over the rice.

This make ahead easy asian meatballs recipe is included in the Dinner in 20 Freezer Meal plan along with other recipes, shopping lists, prep lists, and printable labels.

The Best Freezer Meal Tips to Save You Time and Sanity

By Sharla

There is nothing quite like standing back at the end of a freezer meal day and admiring the stack of meals. Knowing that you won’t have to cook supper again for days, weeks, or even months is one of the best feelings in the world! Having meals made ahead is already such a time saver, but these little freezer meal tips add up so they will make you even more efficient.

Clean your kitchen before you start. This may seem obvious, but starting with a clean canvas will make clean-up less overwhelming later.
Make room in your freezer before you begin so that you’ll have room to put all of those great new meals you’ll be making!
Invest in an electric can opener. I cannot stress this enough. I wish we had gotten ours years sooner. When I think of all those freezer meal days where my wrist and thumb were so sore by the end of it, I can’t believe I didn’t make the small investment in a good electric can opener sooner. It’s also a huge time saver. Another bonus is that my kids love operating it. Opening cans is an easy way for my kids to feel involved and makes one less thing for me to do.
During your prep and while you assemble your meals, wear comfortable shoes. This is another tip that I cannot stress enough. This will be the difference between having very sore feet, shoulders and back and not. I even use an anti-fatigue gel mat in the kitchen by the sink for all the standing I do that day.
Make a good, energetic playlist for your freezer meal day. Good music helps the time go by faster and keep your mood upbeat.
Choose a friend to make freezer meals with or even a small group of friends. This helps the time go faster and maximizes your time. You can assign people to “stations” and have them assemble a large quantity of the same recipe. This also makes the experience a lot of fun. I make my freezer meals with my friend Christie, who also happens to be my neighbour. We get so much visiting in while we make our meals and we’ve gotten such a good system going that we just keep getting faster and faster.
For ground beef freezer meals, put 20 – 30 lbs of ground beef into a large counter top electric roaster and let it cook on 200/250° overnight. In the morning, it’s browned and ready to use. You’ll need to use a ladle to take out the excess liquid or drain the meat. This tip (and picture) is from my dear friend Kimberly Walker, who is a mom of 10 and a freezer meal veteran.
For recipes that call for cooked diced chicken, bake chicken breasts on a cookie sheet at 350° for 45 minutes and then chop. This allows you to cook a lot of chicken at the same time.
Use printable labels and add the date to them so you can see at a glance which meals to use first. A freezer meal inventory sheet can also be useful for this.
Dump recipes are the way to save the most time when assembling freezer meals. You can easily make ten meals in an hour or less. The downside of course is that there is less variety than using a freezer meal plan, but for speed, they just can’t be beat!
If you’re making dump meals with a friend, have one of you fill the bags with the protein while the other makes the sauces to pour in. This makes things go even faster.
Track your progress as you go and celebrate the victories. When you’re in the thick of a big freezer meal day, it can be easy to lose sight of why you’re doing it. You may start to feel discouraged. You can choose to keep track of your progress by crossing the recipes off a list or by keeping a tally sheet. At the end, celebrate your accomplishment! You can do this by giving yourself a treat such as chocolate or a glass of wine or going out for dinner with a friend, particularly if you and the friend made the freezer meals together.

Hopefully you’ll find these freezer meal tips helpful. If you’re new to freezer meals, you might want to read The Quick Start Guide to Freezer Meals. You can also check out our library of freezer meal recipes.

Make Ahead Beef Fajitas Freezer Meal

By Sharla

These make ahead beef fajitas are an easy freezer meal to put together. You can serve the fajitas with guacamole, salsa, shredded cheese, and sour cream.

I buy the beef already sliced into stir fry strips to save time, but you can also buy any tender beef (such as sirloin, top loin, tenderloin, or rib eye) and slice it yourself to save money. The assembly of this recipe is so fast once you have the peppers and onions sliced that it makes the most sense to make two or four meals at a time. Just open the bags on the counter and dump the ingredients in.

Make Ahead Beef Fajitas Freezer Meal Recipe:

1 lb. beef stir fry strips
1 onion, sliced
2 cups red and yellow peppers, sliced
1 cup salsa
3 Tbsp. lime juice
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

To assemble this freezer meal, add the raw beef stir fry strips, sliced onion, sliced red and yellow peppers, salsa, lime juice, and Worcestershire sauce to a large resealable freezer bag. Remove the excess air, seal and freeze.

On the day of cooking, take the bag out of the freezer and thaw. Stir fry in skillet over high heat on stovetop until meat is cooked through. This really doesn’t take long at all especially if the beef strips are thin.

Serve in flour tortillas. If you want, you can top the fajitas with sour cream, salsa, shredded cheese, cilantro, or guacamole.

If you like things spicy, you can add jalepenos or hot sauce either at the time of cooking or when serving.

Make Ahead Beef Fajitas Freezer Meal Recipe

These make ahead beef fajitas are an easy freezer meal to put together. You can serve the fajitas with guacamole, salsa, shredded cheese, and sour cream.

Ingredients

1 lb. beef stir fry strips
1 onion sliced
2 cups red and yellow peppers sliced
1 cup salsa
3 Tbsp. lime juice
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

Instructions

Add the raw beef stir fry strips, sliced onion, sliced red and yellow peppers, salsa, lime juice, and Worcestershire sauce to a large resealable freezer bag.
Remove the excess air, seal and freeze.
On the day of cooking, take the bag out of the freezer and thaw.
Stir fry in skillet over high heat on stovetop until meat is cooked through. This really doesn't take long at all especially if the beef strips are thin.
Serve in flour tortillas.
Top the fajitas with sour cream, salsa, shredded cheese, cilantro, or guacamole.

Recipe Notes

If you like things spicy, you can add jalepenos or hot sauce either at the time of cooking or when serving.

This make ahead beef fajitas recipe is included in the Dinner in 20 Freezer Meal Plan along with other recipes, shopping lists, prep lists, and printable labels.

Make Ahead Freezer Smoothie Bags

By Sharla

These make ahead freezer smoothie bags can be made using all kinds of fruits and vegetables. It’s fun to try different combinations. My kids love having these in the freezer.

We have 7 kids with 6 of them still living at home. Mornings are so busy at our house. Having things ready to go in the freezer such as these smoothie bags, sausage hand pies, taco egg bites, or pancake mini muffins means an easy breakfast. That’s one less thing for me to worry about which is a very good thing!

On this particular day, the smoothie bags that we assembled had the following combinations:

kiwi, apple, avocado
kiwi, apple, banana, spinach
mango, pineapple, banana
blackberry, raspberry, blueberry
blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, roasted beets (we found we needed to add honey to this one)

Two sample recipes for freezer smoothie bags:

1 cup blueberries
1 cup strawberries, sliced
1 cup bananas, sliced

Divide the blueberries, strawberries and bananas up into medium sized resealable freezer bags. Remove excess air, seal and freeze. To serve, add 2 cups of milk or fruit juice and blend in a blender or with a hand blender. Pour into glasses.

1 cup frozen mango cubes
1 cup pineapple, chunked
1/2 cup spinach
1/2 cup avocado, cubed

Divide the mangos, pineapple, spinach, and avocado into other medium sized resealable bags. Remove excess air, seal and freeze. To serve, add 2 cups of milk or fruit juice and blend in a blender or with a hand blender. Pour into glasses.

To make the smoothie bags, you can use fresh or frozen fruits or vegetables or a combination of both. Other ideas of what to include in the freezer smoothie bags include strawberries, cranberries, peaches, grapes, kale, broccoli, clementines, oranges, cantaloupe, and honeydew melon.

You can also freeze yogourt by pouring it into an ice cube tray and freezing and then popping a few of the frozen yogourt cubes into your smoothie bags.

The possibilities for variety with this are endless! This makes it easy to personalize and create smoothie bags that you and your family will love. Get creative!

You just need to stick to a ratio of 3 cups of any fruit/veggie combo and then when blending, add 2 cups of liquid.

You can add in chia seeds, hemp seeds or flaxseed for added nutrients. If you or your kids like it, you can also toss in some unsweetened coconut in the bags.

When serving smoothies for breakfast, you can make it a more complete meal by topping with granola such as our freezer granola.

Make Ahead Freezer Smoothie Bags

These make ahead freezer smoothie bags can be made using all kinds of fruits and vegetables. It's fun to try different combinations.

Ingredients

1 cup blueberries
1 cup strawberries sliced
1 cup bananas sliced
1 cup frozen mango cubes
1 cup pineapple chunked
1/2 cup spinach
1/2 cup avocado cubed

Instructions

Recipe 1:

Divide the blueberries, strawberries and bananas up into medium sized resealable freezer bags.
Remove excess air, seal and freeze.
To serve, add 2 cups of milk or fruit juice and blend in a blender or with a hand blender.
Pour into glasses.

Recipe 2:

Divide the mangos, pineapple, spinach, and avocado into other medium sized resealable bags.
Remove excess air, seal and freeze.
To serve, add 2 cups of milk or fruit juice and blend in a blender or with a hand blender.
Pour into glasses.

Recipe Notes

More smoothie combinations:

• kiwi, apple, avocado • kiwi, apple, banana, spinach • mango, pineapple, banana • blackberry, raspberry, blueberry • blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, roasted beets (we found we needed to add honey to this one)

These freezer smoothie bags are one of the recipes included in our Breakfast Freezer Meal Plan along with other recipes, shopping lists, prep lists, and printable labels.

Check out some of our other make ahead breakfast on the go ideas:

Everything Bagel Breakfast Muffins

Taco Egg Bites Breakfast Sausage Hand Pies

Sausage and Peppers Freezer Meal

By Sharla

This sausage and peppers freezer meal recipe came about the same way some of our others have. We invented it using what we had left at the end of our freezer meal assembly day. We took some extra vegetables that were already prepped, onions and peppers and combined it with other ingredients we had on hand.

I had accidentally bought too much sausage because of a miscalculation on my part, so we actually invented three different recipes using sausage and what we had left of other ingredients. Sometimes the best freezer meal recipes come about that way! That day, our Italian Sausage Pasta Sauce and our Italian Wedding Soup were also born.

This recipe can either be served over rice or it can be rolled in a flour or corn tortilla and eaten as a wrap.

Sausage and Peppers Freezer Meal Recipe:

1 lb. of Italian sausage (see directions for preparing it below)
1/2 a yellow pepper, sliced
1/2 a red pepper, sliced
1 onion, chopped or sliced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1-2 tsp. cajun seasoning
14 oz. can diced tomatoes

You can use mild or spicy sausage depending on your family’s preference. Remove the sausage from the casing and slice. I prefer to actually squeeze out sausage meatballs and flatten them a bit with my fingers to slicing. It is a messier method, but it is easier to remove the casing this way.

Fry the sausage slices in a frying pan over medium-high heat until lightly browned on both sides. Alternately, you can place the raw sausage “meatballs” in a single layer on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven.

Blot the cooked sausage slices on a paper towel to remove some of the grease.

To assemble this meal, place the cooked sausage pieces in a large resealable freezer bag. Add the sliced peppers, onion, minced garlic, cajun seasoning, and the can of diced tomatoes.

Remove the excess air from the bag, seal and freeze.

On the day of cooking, thaw the sausage and peppers freezer meal. Cook in a skillet over medium-high heat until heated through. Serve over rice or in a wrap.

This recipe is gluten free and keto friendly if served on cauliflower rice. You can even make cauliflower rice ahead and freeze.

Can you freeze cooked Italian sausage?

You can absolutely freeze Italian sausage. If you freeze raw Italian sausage, it has a tendency to get freezer burnt quite quickly even if it is packaged well. By cooking the sausage first, it will keep much longer in the freezer.

To freeze ground Italian sausage, brown it first in a skillet. Be sure to drain it to remove the extra grease. Measure out 1 or 2 cup portions into medium sized resealable freezer bags or add the cooked ground sausage to freezer meal recipes and freeze.

Make meatballs out of Italian sausage by squeezing chunks out of the casing and laying them in a single layer on a baking sheet. Cook at 350° until the outside is brown and they are no longer pink inside. Blot the excess grease before adding them to a resealable freezer bag or into a freezer meal recipe and freeze.

Sausage and Peppers Freezer Meal

This recipe can either be served over rice or rolled in a flour or corn tortilla and eaten as a wrap.

Ingredients

1 lb. of Italian sausage see directions for preparing it below
1/2 a yellow pepper sliced
1/2 a red pepper sliced
1 onion chopped or sliced
2 cloves garlic minced
1-2 tsp. cajun seasoning
14 oz. can diced tomatoes

Instructions

Remove the sausage from the casing and slice.
I prefer to actually squeeze out sausage meatballs and flatten them a bit with my fingers to slicing. It is a messier method, but it is easier to remove the casing this way.
Fry the sausage slices in a frying pan over medium-high heat until lightly browned on both sides.
Blot the cooked sausage slices on a paper towel to remove some of the grease.
To assemble this meal, place the cooked sausage pieces in a large resealable freezer bag.
Add the sliced peppers, onion, minced garlic, cajun seasoning, and the can of diced tomatoes.
Remove the excess air from the bag, seal and freeze.
On the day of cooking, thaw the sausage and peppers freezer meal.
Cook in a skillet over medium-high heat until heated through.
Serve over rice or in a wrap.