Healthy Freezer Prep / Girl, Teach Me

 

Honey Rosemary Chicken Meat Marinade for a Crock-Pot

  • 2-3 lbs chicken breast (leave whole)- (I used chicken theighs and they shrunk a whole bunch, so I do think breasts work best, because the amount of liquid in the crock pot)
  • 1/3 c balsamic vinegar
  • 1/3 c olive oil
  • 1/3 c honey
  • 2 tsp sea salt
  • 2 Tbs chopped rosemary
Original Instructions:

Combine ingredients and let chicken marinate for an hour or two. Cook on low 4-5 hrs in crockpot. Serve over rice, cauliflower rice, quinoa, or mashed potatoes 

Freezer Meal Variation:

Combine all the ingredients in a ziplock freezer bag, then add the chicken to the bag and seal well. Pull out the bag either the night before and place in the fridge or put straight from the freezer into the crockpot.

Cook for 4-5 hours low if thawed first, and low for 8 hours if straight from freezer bag.

Serve with side of rice or quinoa, because the juice leftover is sooo tasty on top of a side.

***If you froze it flat (great for space and organization reasons) it may take some breaking apart to get into the crockpot if straight from the freezer, that is why I like to put in the fridge overnight to thaw a bit.

*Special thanks to friend Kate Bowers for sharing this crock-pot recipe with me, what would we do without friends!?! Grateful for you Kate!

2. Shredded BBQ Pork in a Crock-Pot

My papa used to make this when all 10 of the cousins plus family were coming over. He would have 3 Crock-Pots going with this and we would come home from church to lunch ready to go!

  • Big Pork Tenderloin (best size and price is from Costco, can’t say though that it is the best quality of pork, but is the best value for price/size)
Ingredients:
  • 1 Pork Tenderloin
  • Onion (optional)
  • 2 tsp of Garlic Powder
  • 1 tsp of Onion Powder
  • 2 tsp Sea Salt
Directions:
  • Cut pork tenderloin in half and cook one at a time in a Crock-pot or better yet two at a time if you can borrow your neighbors Crock-Pot
  • Sprinkle garlic salt and onion salt on top
  • Optional: cut some big chunks of onion to put around the pork, but big enough that you can easily grab them out after cooking.
  • Add 3/4 a cup of water to the bottom of the Crock-Pot
  • Cook 4 hours on high or 8 hours on Low
  • Shred with two forks
    • strain some of the liquid out and freeze that broth to use in soups or to cook rice with, its so yummy too in taco soup!
  • Add some quality BBQ sauce over the top (Stubbs is the cleanest I have found) and some good salt, Redmond is my favorite!
  • Let it cool and bag up the shredded pork, freeze flat to make it easier to store.
    • Consider making your own buns (use recipe below called Freezer Sourdough Bread) with this sourdough freezer buns recipe, you can see me make the buns in this video.

3. Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

This soup was so incredibly yummy!

Freezer Variations:

The one thing I did to make this recipe optimal for freezing was to leave the milk and cream out until I was ready to warm the soup up.

It may have been just fine, but in my opinion soup seems to do better without freezing the milk to avoid clumping when you warm it up.

Subsitutions from Orginal Recipe:

Also, I substituted homemade bone broth for the chicken broth, if you want a super easy way to do that see this video.

4. Easy Green Chicken Chili

I first had this soup when I went to help a new church plant in Nova Scotia, CA. The pastor’s wife served this soup and I just kept coming back for more!

Special Recipe Notes:

It is super simple, the only thing is you need to have Pablano Peppers. Make sure to wear gloves or just put your hand in a plastic baggie when chopping them. They aren’t that spicy to the tongue, but they sure are to the hands!

Freezing Tips:

Consider freezing them in these Souper Molds! They are a game changer when it comes to freezing leftovers or to make the soup portioned out perfectly.

Freezer Staples to Keep on Hand:

These next couple of recipes are not necessarily a full meal, but having these staples on hand will help a meal come together quickly.

1. Freezer Bulk Sourdough Bread-Sandwich, Rolls, or Buns

This recipe is thanks to my MIL who jumped into sourdough before me. She uses this recipe ALL the TIME and swears by how simple and versatile it is!

This recipe makes 3 batches of buns that you see me measuring out below, to watch me do all of this watch this video!

Ingredients:
  • 2 cups starter (I feed mine the night before)
  • 1 egg beaten
  • 1 tablespoon of sea salt
  • 1/3 cup of avocado oil
  • 2 ½ cups of warm water
  • 3/4 cup of honey
  • 8-9 cups of flour (I use Kirland organic unbleached all-purpose flour from COSTCO)
Directions:
  1. Combine everything but flour in a mixer
  2. Add eight (8) cups of flour (mix and combine a bit with each cup)
    • if dough is not lopsided in bowl or sticks to the sides of bowl add more flour.
  3. Knead eight (8) to ten (10) minutes until dough stretches thin
    (windowpane)
  4. Place in bowl with lid and let rise until it doubles in size
  5. At this point, divide dough into three (3) equal parts
  6. You can either put it into a sandwich loaf pan, split into equal parts for rolls or buns, I show you HOW to do this with a kitchen scale in this video, mine were around 100 grams each.
    • Once the dough is in the pan place a wet wrung out towel or avacado oil sprayed plastic wrap over the top and let it do a second rise around 1-2 hours.
    • If rolled into rolls or buns place on pan with parchment paper and then cover with a wet wrung out towel or oil sprayed plastic wrap over the top and let it do a second rise around 1-2 hours.
  7. Crack one egg into a bowl, whisk and brush on top of the buns.
  8. Bake at 350° for 15 minutes plus. I cut one open to see if done, if not done in center, but getting crispy on top, drape a piece of foil over the top and bake 5-10 minutes longer.

2. Homemade Healthy Avocado Mayo

I used this recipe, but MAKE sure you blend the egg FIRST until it is creamy and white (BEST results with immersion blender), BEFORE you add the rest of the ingredients.

You can see me make this mistake in this video at time stamp: 28:00

***You can also see how I corrected the mayo not coming together correctly if this happens to you!

I used the homemade mayo to make Homemade Ranch Dressing!

3. Homemade Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

This homemade ranch is really a homerun, especially when you have a quality mayonnaise or make your own (see the last recipe).

My kids were dunking all their veggies gladly into this ranch and I even used this ranch as a freezer marinade. It was actually really yummy! Not my best idea (because I would rather have used the ranch on veggies or in a salad), but not my worst idea.

You can see me make the ranch at timestamp: 37:40 in the batch cooking video.

I went ahead and made a double batch!

**I used fresh parsley and dried dill, since my grocery store was out of fresh dill. I bet fresh dill is so yummy!

4. Sourdough Discard Freezer Banana Muffins

You can make these into muffins or even little mini loaves, like I did in the video.

Freezer Muffins Pro Tip: Allow the muffins to completely cool and even add them to the freezer on a cookie sheet for 15 minutes before you bag them up to freeze in a gallon ziplock. This keeps the chocolate from smearing all over the bag. Just ask me how I know haha.

Freezer Loaves Pro Tip: Allow to the loaves to completely cool, then set them in the freezer for 15 minutes. Then pull them out and wrap tightly with foil. Then you can bake the loaf directly in the foil to warm them up straight from the freezer (takes around 15 minutes at 350°)

Ingredients:
  • 3-5 large bananas (better if older and softer)
  • 1/2 of organic cane sugar
  • 1/2 cup of coconut oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups of organic flour
  • 1/2 tsp of baking soda
  • 1 tsp of baking powder
  • 1 tsp of vanilla
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt
  • 1 cup of sourdough starter discard
  • 1/2 cup of chocolate chips
Instructions:
  1. Mash bananas and use a mixer to cream the sugar, bananas, and the coconut oil together.
    • This handy measuring tool is a game-changer for measuring coconut oil.
  2. Mix in beaten eggs, flour, baking soda, baking powder, sourdough discard, and vanilla.
  3. Stir in chocolate chips
  4. Pour batter into muffins tins or loaf pans and bake at 350° for 15 minutes and 20-25 minutes for mini loaves. If you feel like the loaves are not done in the middle, but are getting too crispy on top cover with tin foil.

Other Recipes That Work Well for Batching and Freezing

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