Batch Cooking

Everytime I look at Pinterest I see all of these pins about Batch Cooking.  This is where you spend a lot of time but end up with A LOT of  freezer meals to help make your life easier.  It sounds like a good idea so I finally took the time Wednesday to try it out.

Tuesday night I sat down and searched and searched for some good recipes to try this thing out with.  I came up with a few and put my grocery list together.  I wanted to try to make sure the main ingredients were on sale because I wanted to be as thrifty as possible.

Wednesday morning, Trevor and I headed to the grocery store.  I know when a lot of people do this they can shop around at different grocery stores to get the best deal on their meats, but since our bread and butter comes from Winn Dixie, that would be the one and only place we do our grocery shopping.  I never can understand people who work there but don't shop there - just doesn't make sense to me.

Here's the meat

I started the batch cooking around 3:00 with cutting up all of the onions and carrots that would be going in the meat.  This was actually fun because it gave me time to practice my knife skills - yeah I love to watch Food Network and watch them cut up things - man they are good at it.  I didn't last too long until I brought out the food processor - so much easier.

2 hours later I had 2 crock pot meals ready for the freezer, 6 bags of ground beef both Italian and Mexican style, 3 bags of shredded chicken, and about 8 cups of chicken stock both in bags and ice cube trays.  There were a couple of additional recipes I wanted to try but I forgot to take out additional chicken for it, so those will have to wait until next time.

Here's the website I found this recipe from.

Beef Burritos
(6+ servings)

• 1 London Broil or top round roast (about 2 lbs)
• 1 diced onion
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tablespoons whole peppercorns
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 (8 oz) cans tomato sauce
• 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce – Use just 1 pepper!! (It’s in a can.)
• 1 ½ teaspoon chili powder (you can adjust this according to your taste)

1. Add all the above ingredients into a freezer bag.
2. When you are ready to cook the meal, dump the contents of the bag into the crock pot and cook on high for 4-5 hours or low for 6-7 hours Cook on high for 4-5 hours or low for 6-7 hours.
3. When the meat is cooked, you will need to strain the juices and add the juice back to the slow cooker. (You want to remove the peppercorns and onions.) Shred the meat and add back to the juice in the slow cooker for about 30 minutes. This is one of our favorite recipes. My kids eat it as long as we have leftovers.

It feels great to have so much beef and chicken ready to go in the freezer.  I plan to make a few additional meals, but I may try out the beef burritos first to see how that one goes.