A couple months ago I told you about a fantastic new e-cookbook by Stephanie from Mama And Baby Love. I’ve given a couple more recipes in it a test run, so I thought I’d share my successes.
A couple weeks ago, I whipped up a few bags full of her Summer Veggie Soup and Valencian Paella. Easy peasy.
I made a few batches of each recipe, so I’m glad we ended up liking both of them. The paella includes shrimp that you add in just for the last half hour of cooking time, so I put those in a separate bag and taped it to the big bag. I also got another great idea from Stephanie’s book: dumping chicken into the bag all in one big chunk and then cutting it up when it’s cooked. I rarely cook meat, and I don’t enjoy handling raw meat. Gives me the willies. Anyway, I had some organic chicken thigh meat in the freezer when I was prepping this bag of food, and I didn’t want to thaw it, cut it, and then re-freeze it. Instead, I put the whole frozen chunk into the bag with the veggies and seasonings. Yesterday I dumped the whole thing into the crock pot and when it was cooked, I pulled the chicken out and shredded it with a fork (much easier than cutting it raw). Most of our meals will continue to be meat-free, but my guys all love meat, so there are some chunks of chicken getting cooked around here. But cutting it up after it’s cooked is far preferable, and I’ll continue to do it that way. Thanks for the idea Stephanie!
One other thing that I did with this go-round of freezer cooking was that I worked on it bit-by-bit, as I had time and ingredients. It took me a few days to get the bags fully assembled, but it seemed like very little effort because I didn’t have to block off a large chunk of time to do it. The first day I chopped some veggies and also dumped in things like peas and green beans that were already prepped (in giant bags from Costco). I didn’t have any tomatoes or onions on hand that day, so I made myself a note listing what still needed to go into each bag, and then after I went shopping I did a bit more chopping and added the remaining ingredients. I also made some substitutions (the only dry beans I had on hand were kidney beans, so that’s what I soaked and put into the veggie soup – it turned out great) in order to use what I had in the kitchen.
These were both very easy and very tasty. We have lots of leftovers, which are my secret weapon in the kitchen. If you haven’t got Stephanie’s awesome cookbook yet, I highly recommend it. Next up on my list of things to try is her Cumin Beans and Carrot Ginger Soup. Get the cookbook here if you want to start filling your freezer with bags you can dump into your slow cooker whenever you have a busy day.
Becky says
About what percentage of her recipes call for chicken? We are meat eaters, but I already have a TON of chicken-based recipes. Do any of them call for ground beef? I just don’t want to buy her ebook and then not use it :)
Frugal Babe says
Becky, there are roughly the same number of chicken and beef recipes in the cookbook, as well as some that use lamb and sausage, and several vegetarian recipes (of course you could always add meat to the veggie recipes if you prefer it that way). There is a ground beef recipe, as well as recipes that use stew meat, flank steak and rump roast. I hope that helps!
Jennifer says
I read in another slow cooker book that taking things from frozen to cooked in a slow cooker was not a good idea. It has something to do with getting the internal temperature of the meat above 140 within 30 minutes, otherwise it fosters the growth of bacteria.
Frugal Babe says
Wow, I hadn’t thought of that at all. Does a slow cooker get the temp of meat above 140 within 30 minutes if it’s not frozen? I would have thought that it would take longer than that even with defrosted meat, especially if it’s a big chunk of meat like a roast. Personally, I prefer veggie-based recipes anyway, but we do use the meat-based ones sometimes too. One of the recipes I like has sausage in it (fully cooked before being frozen), so I’m not too worried about that. But for the chicken recipes, I might just leave the meat out of the freezer bag and thaw it in the fridge the day before I’m going to be making the meal. Then I could add it to the crock pot after the veggie ingredients had defrosted and started to cook a bit. Thanks for the heads up!
M Kate Dawson says
Well this is a good question – but I know that one of my slow cooker recipe books calls for frozen chicken breasts – with the explanation that they won’t overcook so much if they start out frozen. Not sure about the bacteria question though.
Jennifer says
I found the book. Its called $3 Slow-Cooked Meals by Ellen Brown. On page 14 she talks about making the internal temperature of meat reach 140 within 2 hours and stay there for at least 30 minutes. I may have just interpreted that as “don’t cook from frozen”.
Frugal Babe says
I’ve been doing some reading about this since your first post – thanks for getting us all thinking. It looks like larger chunks of meat (a whole chicken or a roast, for example) should probably not be put in a crock pot frozen, since it takes a long time for them to defrost in there. But smaller chunks, like a chicken breast or chopped up stew meat, should be ok. It does look like we should be cooking them for longer than the recipes call for, especially if they are on the bigger end (like a chicken breast as opposed to little chunks of chopped chicken).
Anne Marie says
I purchased this book when I first saw the blog praising it, but just recently started using it. My husband is a chef and so we rarely cook together because I can’t keep up with him and he tends to over-correct me a lot which can be frustrating when I’m trying to cook him a decent meal. But prepping these meals gave us a chance to work together in the kitchen. He would cut up the vegetables beautifully, like he does, while I prepped everything else. It was a really nice experience that I look forward to turning into a routine. And the meals taste pretty good too, so that’s a plus!.
Frugal Babe says
I’m glad to know it’s working for you! I’ve got a freezer-to-crockpot meal in the slow cooker right now. Pea soup will be waiting for us when we get home tonight from our family bike ride to our son’s first soccer practice. I love the simplicity of it all!