Poll: What is Your Freezer Cooking Style?
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Having just completed the February 2010 Blogiversary events, I have been a bit enlightened about readers cooking styles. If you are new to this whole freezer cooking thing there are actually a lot of different terms that are thrown around on a day-to-day basis to describe it.
This week, I have listed *my* definitions of each and I want you to indicate in the right side bar poll, which best describes your method of choice. I am thinking that this poll is going to help enlighten me about the Once A Month Mom methods and those of the various readers. As always, feel free to leave comments below, but make sure that you are also indicating your answer in the right side bar.
Definitions:
- Batch Cooking – Picking a recipe that you will be making for dinner but instead of making it just for that night, you double, triple, quadruple (etc) the recipe and freeze the extra portions for later.
- Bulk Cooking - Buying large quantities of a type of meat and cooking meals only with that type of meat. For example, buying large quantities of beef when they are on sale and making recipes or staples from that meat only.
- Freezer Cooking – Coming up with a recipe list and cooking those meals over the course of a day or two filling your food with staples to be utilized throughout the month. This would be the equivalent of cooking up ground beef, or taco meat, or chicken to have on hand at a moment’s notice. For the most part, cooking still takes place on the serving day, the most time consuming tasks having already been handled.
- Once A Month Cooking (OAMC)- You cook all of your meals for the entire month (for the most part) all in one day (or several days). This leaves only meals to reheat throughout the month. You may do this for all of your meals or just certain meals. You may also not do it once a month but less frequently. For example, only dinners. This is the methodology utilized at Once A Month Mom.
- Other - If you indicate this one please leave an explanation in the comments section.
I do a combination of the different methods. This seems to work best for me. Every time I try to do the stick OAMC method, something comes up that keeps me from completing the task. lol!
I voted Other. I use a combination of Batch, Bulk and Freezer Cooking methods. I rarely make up an entire month’s worth of meals, but rather I pick and choose recipes to only make 1 or 2 weeks’ worth at a time (Freezer Cooking). Tomorrow I am making tuna casserole and freezing some of it (Batch). Last month DH smoked a whole turkey (my favorite!) and I used the meat in several casseroles (Bulk).
I usually make breakfast items on a separate Baking day once or twice a month. Our favorite is waffles, so I always make those. I also might make muffins, breads, and pancakes. We really like the pizza roll-ups, so I make them on Baking day with the breakfast foods since the oven is already on.
Batch cooking works for me. I want to be organized enough to do OAMC but I’m starting with baby steps – batch cooking.
I didn’t vote twice since I’m really more batch cooking (like like the choc chip breakfast cake or apple struesel muffins) but I do occasionally veer into bulk cooking. I don’t usually do OAMC just do to time and picky-eating [my own!]
My vote is for “other”! Like the others, I do a combo…some meals I double for freezing, I usually keep shredded chicken and browned beef in the freezer, and I do semi-OAMC thanks to this site
I do the batch cooking. I love to be in the kitchen so I will make extra of a couple meals a week to have ready for those extra crazy days that I have forgotten to get something out of the freezer to prepare. It makes life so simple to know there is always something ready for dinner even when you don’t have time that day to prepare it.