The main thing with bulk cooking is finding recipes for things that freeze well. Since our approach is mostly to precook meat so it only takes a few minutes to put a meal together, we don't have a lot of these to share ourselves.
But I do know the types of things that are often frozen. Spaghetti sauce freezes well, and you just have to cook the pasta and warm the sauce to have dinner. Hamburgers freeze well. Steak freezes, but tends to be tough when you thaw it. Fried chicken strips freeze well (my daughter will cook a large batch of these and freeze them for emergency meals).
In general, don't freeze things with most dairy, like sour cream, yogurt, etc. Some cheeses do freeze OK. You can make batches of soft tacos or breakfast burritos to freeze, but leave off sour cream and tomato until you thaw them. Eggs can be tricky, but I know a lot of people who freeze breakfast burritos (we are in Texas, after all...). I've had quiche that was frozen, and while it was not nearly as good as the fresh (the eggs get a bit rubbery), it was still pretty good.
A lot of soups will freeze well, and some casseroles---again, leave out dishes with sour cream or yogurt for the most part. I haven't tested our versions of chicken teriyaki or Szechuan chicken, but I think they'd freeze, and you'd just need to make rice or noodles to serve them on. I'm told some curries freeze well.
Speaking of curry, do anyone know a substitute for coconut milk in curries? The chicken curry recipe that our friend taught my daughter calls for a can and a half, which at local prices is over $2, more than the cost of the chicken...
3 comments:
The three most common curry sauce bases (depends heavily on the region of india) are coconut milk, butter/ghee or a more tomatoy base with a range of other liquids mixed in.
Tropical regions of india lean toward coconut milk, wheras the drier regions use dairy due to the abudance of cows. I'll see what I can do to acquire recipies for the non coconut milk ones.
Oh, I'd love it if you could! Thanks!
If all else fails, I'll bring you some cans. With the population, coconut milk is about half what it is there - cheeper still when I can get to the asian market.
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