May 8, 2025 • 21 mins
I like freezer meals, but I wouldn’t consider myself a die hard. I like to rely on them when I need some quick wins in the kitchen, and that’s exactly what I needed this month! In this episode, I dive into a few quick and easy freezer meals that can get you through this crazy busy month.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Kelsey Nixon and this is Kitchen Prescription, the podcast
you listened to and you don't know what to make
for dinner. Today's episode one hundred and twenty six freezer
meals to help you survive Maycember. I hope you all
had a wonderful week if you follow me on Instagram
so that. I spent a good chunk of the week
in Mexico with a big group of college friends, sixteen
of us, all celebrating our fortieth birthdays. We went to
(00:29):
the Tuloom area and rented a big, beautiful Airbnb, and
truly the highlight of the trip for almost everyone was
the fact that we sprung for a private chef who
prepared all of our meals breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I
could not believe what a gift that felt like, and
not necessarily because I wasn't doing the physical cooking. It
(00:50):
was because I wasn't making the decisions. And I not
only was I wasn't worried about making the decisions for myself,
I wasn't worried about making the decisions for all of.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
The people that I lived with.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It felt like such a break and it really just
highlighted for me how taxing it is to make meals
day in and day out, to decide.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
On meals day in and day out.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
And while I wish it was realistic for all of
us to have private chefs around all the time, it's
not so. I came home with kind of this renewed excitement,
asking myself, how can I really help make the dinner
process easier for all of my Recipe Club members. I
really didn't expect to lead with that insight, but I
totally did.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I thought about it the whole plane ride home.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
But speaking of making things easier and home, after I
arrived home, I looked at our May calendar and asked myself,
what can I do make dinner easier this month? And
what can I do to reduce the amount of times
that we will likely eat out? And for whatever reason,
freezer meals came to mind, so I sprung into action.
I pulled up five of my favorite Recipe Club freezer meals,
(01:50):
I ordered the ingredients, I set aside an hour yesterday
to prep all of those recipes, and now I'll have
one freezer meal each week to rely on as we
get through this end of year madness. I'm really excited
to chat with you about it, because honestly, it was
so easy and I couldn't believe how like from idea
(02:11):
to execution, it just happened, and I was like, this
is so this is so simple. So I'm excited to
chat with you. But I do want to start how
we always start by suggesting a few recipes you could
put on your weekly meal plan, because deciding what to
make for dinner is the hardest part, so let's check at.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Least that part off of your list.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So first recipe for us this week is a new
recipe to Recipe Club.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
It is my Dilly salmon with roasted potatoes. It is
so yummy.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I make kind of a sauce that's got some Greek
yogurt in it, a little bit of mao, It's got
fresh dill, lemon, some spices, and this is both a
sauce for dipping and also a sauce that you slather
on top of the salmon flas and it's very delicious.
You do these oven roasted potatoes right alongside it. I
throw some asparagus on the sheet pan too. It's like
(02:59):
a true sheet pan meal. And I knew it was
going to be a winner when I made it last
week and my husband said, this didn't even make the
house smell like fish, and I was like, nope, it didn't.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So it's really good.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
My girls call salmon pink chicken, and I always like
it when we can work in some fish throughout our week. Next,
we've got a couple of like cold days coming up,
and so I pulled out my most summary soup, which
I consider to be my Tai Coconut Ramen. It's just
(03:32):
got some really bright flavors in it that feel kind
of tropical and light and bright, but the ramen will
be warm and perfect for an unusually cold day this
time of year. And then our third one is my.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Creamy couscuse with feta.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
This is such a good recipe that uses one of
my favorite ingredients, Israeli cuscous. It comes together very quickly
in the oven and it actually makes her great leftovers
as well. So there are your recipe suggestions for the week.
You can find and print all of these recipes and
recipee club either individually or in our weekly meal plan
that also comes with an easy to follow shopping list
that's broken down by.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
A recipe recipe club.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
As you guys Know is a one stop shop for
accessing weeknight recipes for families, meal planning, cheat sheets, basically
anything to make it easier for you to get dinner
on the table. And the thing that doesn't make that
easier are recipe sites that are littered with ads, and
we have no ads in recipee Club, no banner ads,
(04:31):
pop ups or long blog posts, just the recipes you
need to get dinner on the table. Plus are one
click shopping so that you can identify a recipe that
might be a good fit for the week and simply
click the get ingredients button and have those groceries added
directly into your grocery cart of the grocery store you
select in your closest area you get to pick. It's
(04:51):
really cool how the technology works. So anyways, if you
are looking for a system, especially this month when you
are after some five ingredient recipes and you are wanting
to avoid the drive through line as much as I am,
now might be a great time to give Recipe Club
a try. Also, I just want to remind you before
we get into it, if you're looking for a last
minute Mother's Day gift for mom Mother's Days, just in
(05:12):
a few days. Remember, you can buy gifted Recipe Club
memberships on recipe club dot com or Kelsey Nixon dot
com and that would be a perfect thing you could
print off for mom last minute or just send it
to her via email and you guys could cook together.
Be a great thing to give a mom. All right,
let's jump into the back half of the podcast and
discuss how I made five freezer meals in one hour
(05:32):
to make my life easier this month. Listen, I like
freezer meals, but I wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Consider myself a diehard.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Like we're not doing freezer meals multiple times a year,
I mean maybe quarterly at most. I like to rely
on them when I need some quick wins in the kitchen.
But that's exactly what I needed this month, So I
knew it was time to kind of whip out that
tool in my tool belt. When I realized the upcoming
weeks would be so full, I had this brief thought
(06:06):
that freezer meals could really help. So I sprang into
action so quickly I literally didn't have time to talk
myself out of it, and before I knew it, I
was adding ingredients to freezer bags and making most of it.
Anytime I do around a freezer meals, it's important to
me that their meals will actually like eating, and that
they're also healthy ish they don't require tons of work
(06:27):
or prep. Honestly, this can kind of be tough to find.
When I initially went searching for freezer meals a couple
of years ago, a lot of the resources I found
were either too ambitious, like make ten meals at once,
which not only do I not have the time to
make ten meals at once, I don't have.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
The space to store ten meals.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
They included huge shopping lists and like really big, overwhelming.
It felt like something that was going to take a
full Saturday and I just did not That was not
appealing to me. So I came up with my own
kind of selection of recipes. And this is why I
think they're great. They're freezer meals that are healthy, and
they're made with real food or both fresh ingredients and
(07:10):
some pantry staples. A lot of the freezer meal resources
you'll find include tons and tons of canned items, sauce mixes,
things like that, where there's just not a ton of
fresh vegetables. And that was really important to me that
they were healthy. And when I say healthy, I mean,
(07:30):
like chok full of good ingredients. I wanted these freezer
meals to require a little as little work on the
back end as possible, Like I'm totally open to cooking
off some rice or pasta, or chopping some cilantro, adding
a squeeze of fresh lemon or lime juice, but really
simple when it comes to assembly. I wanted these freezer
(07:50):
meals to largely have very little advanced thawing required so
that I didn't have to think about it too much.
And most importantly, I wanted the freezer meals to be
made with fun, bold, interesting flavors that we would actually
be excited to eat. That I wouldn't say, oh, we're
having the meat balls from the freezer tonight and have
(08:11):
everybody grown.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And say, oh, I don't want that.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I wanted these recipes to at least be as good
as like takeout pizza. Otherwise it was game over and
I was not going to be doing this. If I'm
going to invest the time into freezer meals, I really
want them to be delicious, and I want them to
be something my family actually looks forward to and loves
on the table. And I didn't want it to have
too much stress. I just I just wanted to be
(08:35):
good recipes. So I started with our family's existing favorite recipes,
the ones I know we'll all eat, and then I
went from there. I figured out the marinads that could
be done in advance in froze. Well, I rewrote the
recipes so that we could really clearly have the instructions
about just what to do from the frozen state. And
(08:55):
these are the five recipes I came up with. So
these are all within recipe c life is traditionally written recipes.
And then I have created a freezer version of each
of these recipes as well. So the Italian meatballs are
a version of my five ingredient meatballs. And these are
great because they come together so quickly. I mean really,
they reheat so quickly because you just pop them in
(09:18):
the oven or the air fryer, and you can serve
them over spaghetti with jarred sauce like rayos, or turn
them into meatball subs where you split a subrole. You
add some provolone cheese on top, pop it under the broiler,
let the cheese melt, add the meatballs to some sauce,
and serve it as a meatball sub really delicious, really fun.
You could also do meatball sliders. That's something we've done
(09:39):
before and it's always a hit. Probably one of my
most popular recipes in Recipe Club is my Indian buttered chicken.
So I really wanted to make a freezer version recipe
that worked well here. So when we regularly have Indian
buttered chicken, it is really simple.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
When it comes to serving.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
It, I just do it over cooked white rice with
non I usually top with some chopped cilantro and a
squeeze of fresh lime juice. So it is one of
our most popular recipes that has been adapted for the freezer.
And I'm not joking when I say it probably took
me seven minutes to assemble it and see it in
the freezer.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
It was so fast.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Next are my Greek chicken pedas. This is a version
of our sheet pan chicken pedas in Recipe Club, and
what I love most at this is the delicious marinade
and the flavors. It kind of flavors the chicken from
the inside out. It turns into a very simple sheet
pan dinner with fresh bell peppers. You could throw a
red onion there as well. We like to serve this mixture,
once cooked, stuffed into pedas or over pearl or is
(10:41):
rayley couscous. A little strawbot set zeki is great on it,
or a doll of Greek yogurt with a squeeze of
fresh lemon juice, just.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
To kind of add something bright at the very end.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
And I think that's actually a really important tip to
point out. Whether you're using my freezer meal recipes or
somebody else's, or maybe you're even buying. There are companies
that do these now, like behive meals. If I think
one thing to do you can do to take those
from good to grete is to add something to finish fresh.
Finish with some chopped herbs or cilantro, or some acid
(11:14):
or some texture like some chopped peanuts, depending on what
it is. Just think about finishing fresh. Next on my
list is my sal saverde shredded beef, and this is
like the ultimate set it and forget it freezer meal.
They can go directly into the slow cooker or the
instant pot to cook all day develop delicious flavors. We
usually shred the beef and turn them into tacos or
(11:35):
burrito bowls, but there are some great shortcut ingredients in
that recipe, like a jarred sal saverite that go a.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Long way when it comes to flavor.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And then finally, my baked chicken tiktos. So this is
probably my kid's favorite after school snack that can also
be turned into dinner. I love these because you can
eat them individually, like you can just grab one out
of the freezer, or you can bake them all together
and serve them with rice and beans for a quick
weeknight dinner option. Usually when I'm doing these, I always
(12:07):
double the recipe. It typically makes between eight and nine,
like larger sized tektos, Like my girls will only eat
one tiqto my thirteen year old son will usually ea
two or three tiktos, and my husband I will probably
have two. So it's a full recipe, but we just
love them so much that it never hurts to double
that recipe.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So that's it. Those are the five recipes I prepped
in an hour.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
They're all nothing's too similar. You have the Italian meatballs,
you have the Indian butter chicken, the Greek chicken pedas,
that salsa Verdi shredded beef, and the baked chicken tiktos,
so you've got a nice variety. And the way I
like to do it is take those meals and just
plan to make one per week. And what I will
(12:53):
do is look at my family calendar and try and
identify the busiest days. Now, some of these you're gonna
have to stay something in in the morning. Now, you're
not gonna have to do much more than that other
than transferred to the slow cooker. But keep that in mind,
and you might want to have to you might have
to put some like reminders in your phone, but it's
really not that big of a deal. Here are a
(13:14):
few other tips that kind of made the process run
really smoothly for me. Especially if this sounds like something
you might be interested in doing, I would keep these
in mind.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I would buy the baggy hangers.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Now, if you I posted a reel about this, if
you saw the reel, you know what I'm talking about.
These baggy hangers. They kind of are like there's kind
of like this cheap plastic thing, but they pop up
into this V shape and it holds each side of
the bag open, and so it makes it really easy
to add all of the ingredients when you're making the
freezer meals. There are a couple bucks, but if you
(13:48):
think you might be a freezer meal person, or you
might even do this quarterly like I do, it's worth
getting them.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
It really does make it easier. Make sure. This is
so important, you guys.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
If you really want to prep five meals in one hour,
you must make sure to take the time to mees
and plos or get everything in its place before you
start cooking. It will take you three to four times
as long if you don't. So.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Look at the recipes you're gonna do.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Maybe you're gonna do all five, you're gonna do three
of them, or just one or two of them. Pull
all of the ingredients out and put the ingredients in
little piles next to the recipes and pull everything out. Then,
if you really want to be a top student here,
earn a gold star. Chop anything that needs to be chopped,
which is gonna be very little for these recipes. You
(14:36):
could pre measure some things. You could take the can
the lids off of cans, like one of these has
coconut milk in it, another one has some tomato paste
in it. Just get ready, get all your stuff in
order so that you're not going back and forth and
back and forth. Huge tip like it will make such
a difference. I recommend freezing flat to optimize space. I
(14:57):
don't have a ton of freezer space in my current setup,
and so freezing flat is my favorite way to do that.
And then, like I mentioned earlier, just add the freezer
recipes to your calendar. Now. If you're gonna go to
the effort to make the freezer recipes, heaven forbid you
forget that they're there and you never use them. So
put them in your calendar. Put a reminder that we
are having Indian butter chicken on this night, and if
(15:18):
you need to put a reminder to pull it out
the night before for it to thaw, then put that
in your calendar now. And when you do this, that
might sound like an annoying step, but you were gonna
feel like a champion. You're gonna feel so proud of
yourself that you have just made five dinners in advance.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Dinner is done. Not only have you done the majority.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Of the prep, you have decided what you were having
for dinner that night. And that is truly a gift.
All right, that's it. Let's finish how we always finish
with my weekly gimme five five things that made my
life easier or more enjoyable this week. Number one on
my list is my favorite slow cooker. If you guys
have been with me for a while, about nine months ago,
(15:58):
I swapped out my loved slow cooker that I had
received from my wedding fifteen years ago for a new
one that had a saute function on the bottom, and
I'm obsessed with it.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I used it this week to.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Make my carnitas, and I did the slow cooker version,
but then at the very end, because you'll have some
liquid in there obviously from slow cooking the carnitas, I
wanted to reduce that liquid to kind of intensify the
flavors of the carnitas, and so I just turned on
the saute function and it worked beautifully.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
It was so great.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Another thing I used it for this week is we
went to a SINCODMYO party with some friends and I
was asked to bring the black beans. So I seasoned
these black beans, I stored put them in the slow cooker,
and they had this buffet setting and so it was
like more than just a low on a slow cooker heat,
but not quite a sate or a simmer. It was
(16:51):
called buffet and the idea being that it's the perfect
temperature for people to come through the line and dish
up black beans, and.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
They were perfect.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It was perfect. So it's really cute. It actually it's
not cute, it's pretty. It's a pretty slow cooker, if
you can imagine such a thing. So that made my
list because I really am just so happy with that purchase. Next,
I had to include the baggy hangers. We're talking about
freezer meals this week. Those baggy hangers made my life easy.
And if you are, like I said, if you're thinking
(17:19):
about becoming a freezer meal person, or at least just
trying it once, it's worth a couple bucks to spend
on those. Okay, Next, this is a little unexpected I
have for years. I used to get regular manicures. Years
when I did my show on Food Network, I always
had big apple red red nail polish and it was
part of my routine. Then, as I had more children
(17:42):
and family life got busier, I just I didn't want
to spend the money on weekly manicures and I did
not want to spend the time. Mostly so I have
mentioned before, I have this favorite product. It's called Nail Concealer.
It's a really light just kind of not even a shimmer.
This makes my nails look nice and I love this polish.
(18:03):
But that's been on this give Me five lists before.
I was noticing that my cuticles were starting to look dry,
and I think it's because I'm not going into a
nail salon and having like a traditional manicure that often.
And I'm sure I could do that. But someone recommended
this product called heart as Hoof nail cream and it's
almost like just a really thick lotion and I keep
(18:23):
it at my desk and once a day I just
rub it into my nail beds and it has totally
made a difference. It also comes in this like coconuty smell,
which smells like vacation and I love it.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
It was a couple bucks and it's totally solved that
problem for me of dry cracking cuticles.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Number four is something from a reference from my girl's
trip last week. Our friend kat Catherine. She came out
in this most jarling set from Amazon that had like
this scalloped edge on it.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
We all stopped looked.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
At her and said, where did you get that, and
she said, You're never gonna believe it was ten dollars
on Amazon, and so we kept talking about the ten
dollars set throughout the vacation. It comes in all these colors,
and before we left, everybody had ordered the ten dollars
Amazon scalped set.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
It's so cute, so cute.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Especially for the price, great cover up or just cute
little summer set to where it's very, very cute. And
then finally number five is I've added our Mother's Day
gifted memberships. And I've added this because this is something
I've noticed in my life as I've been thinking about
Mother's Day this week and my own mom and what
(19:34):
I'm gifting my own mom.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I am so.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Grateful that Recipe Club has become something I can share
with my mom. Oftentimes we are cooking the same recipes
because we both follow the Recipe Club meal plan to
a certain extent, and it is so fun to have
that commonality. We don't live in the same state, so
we don't see each other that often, but there's something
that I love about us both making the carnitas on
(20:01):
the same night of the week. It's so fun to
share that. So if you need a last minute gift
for your mom or your favorite mom figure in your life,
we're eating yourself.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Think about this.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Cooking with friends. Maybe you want to give your sister
a Mother's Day gift cooking with friends and doing it
in a club like setting where you are surrounded by
virtually my.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
People who are in the thick of getting.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Dinner on a table for the people that they love,
and they are doing it because they know that that
connection point is important. This is the perfect thing to share,
So don't forget about that. If you're looking for a
last minute gift. All right, that's it for today. I
will be sending positive vibes to anyone tackling on a
few freezer meals this week. It already feels so nice
(20:44):
to note that I have dinner waiting for us in
the freezer for those busy nights this month, and otherwise
we likely would have driven through some restaurant and it
would have cost me seventy five dollars to feed my family.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Who knows? Who knows.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Make sure you're subscribed to the Post podcast so that
you never miss an episode. This podcast is always meant
to be a quick twenty to thirty minute listen just
while you map out your own meals for the week.
I've always left listening to a podcast, and it's been
part of my routine for years. Thank you so much
for being here today. I'm so glad we got to
chat about freezer meals. Until next time, happy cooking. I'm
(21:19):
Kelsey and forward to chatting with you all next week.
Hi, everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Kelsey Nixon and this is Kitchen Prescription, the podcast
you listened to and you don't know what to make
for dinner. Today's episode one hundred and twenty six freezer
meals to help you survive Maycember. I hope you all
had a wonderful week if you follow me on Instagram
so that. I spent a good chunk of the week
in Mexico with a big group of college friends, sixteen
of us, all celebrating our fortieth birthdays. We went to
(00:29):
the Tuloom area and rented a big, beautiful Airbnb, and
truly the highlight of the trip for almost everyone was
the fact that we sprung for a private chef who
prepared all of our meals breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I
could not believe what a gift that felt like, and
not necessarily because I wasn't doing the physical cooking. It
(00:50):
was because I wasn't making the decisions. And I not
only was I wasn't worried about making the decisions for myself,
I wasn't worried about making the decisions for all of.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
The people that I lived with.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It felt like such a break and it really just
highlighted for me how taxing it is to make meals
day in and day out, to decide.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
On meals day in and day out.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
And while I wish it was realistic for all of
us to have private chefs around all the time, it's
not so. I came home with kind of this renewed excitement,
asking myself, how can I really help make the dinner
process easier for all of my Recipe Club members. I
really didn't expect to lead with that insight, but I
totally did.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I thought about it the whole plane ride home.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
But speaking of making things easier and home, after I
arrived home, I looked at our May calendar and asked myself,
what can I do make dinner easier this month? And
what can I do to reduce the amount of times
that we will likely eat out? And for whatever reason,
freezer meals came to mind, so I sprung into action.
I pulled up five of my favorite Recipe Club freezer meals,
(01:50):
I ordered the ingredients, I set aside an hour yesterday
to prep all of those recipes, and now I'll have
one freezer meal each week to rely on as we
get through this end of year madness. I'm really excited
to chat with you about it, because honestly, it was
so easy and I couldn't believe how like from idea
(02:11):
to execution, it just happened, and I was like, this
is so this is so simple. So I'm excited to
chat with you. But I do want to start how
we always start by suggesting a few recipes you could
put on your weekly meal plan, because deciding what to
make for dinner is the hardest part, so let's check at.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Least that part off of your list.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So first recipe for us this week is a new
recipe to Recipe Club.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
It is my Dilly salmon with roasted potatoes. It is
so yummy.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I make kind of a sauce that's got some Greek
yogurt in it, a little bit of mao, It's got
fresh dill, lemon, some spices, and this is both a
sauce for dipping and also a sauce that you slather
on top of the salmon flas and it's very delicious.
You do these oven roasted potatoes right alongside it. I
throw some asparagus on the sheet pan too. It's like
(02:59):
a true sheet pan meal. And I knew it was
going to be a winner when I made it last
week and my husband said, this didn't even make the
house smell like fish, and I was like, nope, it didn't.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So it's really good.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
My girls call salmon pink chicken, and I always like
it when we can work in some fish throughout our week. Next,
we've got a couple of like cold days coming up,
and so I pulled out my most summary soup, which
I consider to be my Tai Coconut Ramen. It's just
(03:32):
got some really bright flavors in it that feel kind
of tropical and light and bright, but the ramen will
be warm and perfect for an unusually cold day this
time of year. And then our third one is my.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Creamy couscuse with feta.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
This is such a good recipe that uses one of
my favorite ingredients, Israeli cuscous. It comes together very quickly
in the oven and it actually makes her great leftovers
as well. So there are your recipe suggestions for the week.
You can find and print all of these recipes and
recipee club either individually or in our weekly meal plan
that also comes with an easy to follow shopping list
that's broken down by.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
A recipe recipe club.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
As you guys Know is a one stop shop for
accessing weeknight recipes for families, meal planning, cheat sheets, basically
anything to make it easier for you to get dinner
on the table. And the thing that doesn't make that
easier are recipe sites that are littered with ads, and
we have no ads in recipee Club, no banner ads,
(04:31):
pop ups or long blog posts, just the recipes you
need to get dinner on the table. Plus are one
click shopping so that you can identify a recipe that
might be a good fit for the week and simply
click the get ingredients button and have those groceries added
directly into your grocery cart of the grocery store you
select in your closest area you get to pick. It's
(04:51):
really cool how the technology works. So anyways, if you
are looking for a system, especially this month when you
are after some five ingredient recipes and you are wanting
to avoid the drive through line as much as I am,
now might be a great time to give Recipe Club
a try. Also, I just want to remind you before
we get into it, if you're looking for a last
minute Mother's Day gift for mom Mother's Days, just in
(05:12):
a few days. Remember, you can buy gifted Recipe Club
memberships on recipe club dot com or Kelsey Nixon dot
com and that would be a perfect thing you could
print off for mom last minute or just send it
to her via email and you guys could cook together.
Be a great thing to give a mom. All right,
let's jump into the back half of the podcast and
discuss how I made five freezer meals in one hour
(05:32):
to make my life easier this month. Listen, I like
freezer meals, but I wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Consider myself a diehard.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Like we're not doing freezer meals multiple times a year,
I mean maybe quarterly at most. I like to rely
on them when I need some quick wins in the kitchen.
But that's exactly what I needed this month, So I
knew it was time to kind of whip out that
tool in my tool belt. When I realized the upcoming
weeks would be so full, I had this brief thought
(06:06):
that freezer meals could really help. So I sprang into
action so quickly I literally didn't have time to talk
myself out of it, and before I knew it, I
was adding ingredients to freezer bags and making most of it.
Anytime I do around a freezer meals, it's important to
me that their meals will actually like eating, and that
they're also healthy ish they don't require tons of work
(06:27):
or prep. Honestly, this can kind of be tough to find.
When I initially went searching for freezer meals a couple
of years ago, a lot of the resources I found
were either too ambitious, like make ten meals at once,
which not only do I not have the time to
make ten meals at once, I don't have.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
The space to store ten meals.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
They included huge shopping lists and like really big, overwhelming.
It felt like something that was going to take a
full Saturday and I just did not That was not
appealing to me. So I came up with my own
kind of selection of recipes. And this is why I
think they're great. They're freezer meals that are healthy, and
they're made with real food or both fresh ingredients and
(07:10):
some pantry staples. A lot of the freezer meal resources
you'll find include tons and tons of canned items, sauce mixes,
things like that, where there's just not a ton of
fresh vegetables. And that was really important to me that
they were healthy. And when I say healthy, I mean,
(07:30):
like chok full of good ingredients. I wanted these freezer
meals to require a little as little work on the
back end as possible, Like I'm totally open to cooking
off some rice or pasta, or chopping some cilantro, adding
a squeeze of fresh lemon or lime juice, but really
simple when it comes to assembly. I wanted these freezer
(07:50):
meals to largely have very little advanced thawing required so
that I didn't have to think about it too much.
And most importantly, I wanted the freezer meals to be
made with fun, bold, interesting flavors that we would actually
be excited to eat. That I wouldn't say, oh, we're
having the meat balls from the freezer tonight and have
(08:11):
everybody grown.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And say, oh, I don't want that.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I wanted these recipes to at least be as good
as like takeout pizza. Otherwise it was game over and
I was not going to be doing this. If I'm
going to invest the time into freezer meals, I really
want them to be delicious, and I want them to
be something my family actually looks forward to and loves
on the table. And I didn't want it to have
too much stress. I just I just wanted to be
(08:35):
good recipes. So I started with our family's existing favorite recipes,
the ones I know we'll all eat, and then I
went from there. I figured out the marinads that could
be done in advance in froze. Well, I rewrote the
recipes so that we could really clearly have the instructions
about just what to do from the frozen state. And
(08:55):
these are the five recipes I came up with. So
these are all within recipe c life is traditionally written recipes.
And then I have created a freezer version of each
of these recipes as well. So the Italian meatballs are
a version of my five ingredient meatballs. And these are
great because they come together so quickly. I mean really,
they reheat so quickly because you just pop them in
(09:18):
the oven or the air fryer, and you can serve
them over spaghetti with jarred sauce like rayos, or turn
them into meatball subs where you split a subrole. You
add some provolone cheese on top, pop it under the broiler,
let the cheese melt, add the meatballs to some sauce,
and serve it as a meatball sub really delicious, really fun.
You could also do meatball sliders. That's something we've done
(09:39):
before and it's always a hit. Probably one of my
most popular recipes in Recipe Club is my Indian buttered chicken.
So I really wanted to make a freezer version recipe
that worked well here. So when we regularly have Indian
buttered chicken, it is really simple.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
When it comes to serving.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
It, I just do it over cooked white rice with
non I usually top with some chopped cilantro and a
squeeze of fresh lime juice. So it is one of
our most popular recipes that has been adapted for the freezer.
And I'm not joking when I say it probably took
me seven minutes to assemble it and see it in
the freezer.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
It was so fast.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Next are my Greek chicken pedas. This is a version
of our sheet pan chicken pedas in Recipe Club, and
what I love most at this is the delicious marinade
and the flavors. It kind of flavors the chicken from
the inside out. It turns into a very simple sheet
pan dinner with fresh bell peppers. You could throw a
red onion there as well. We like to serve this mixture,
once cooked, stuffed into pedas or over pearl or is
(10:41):
rayley couscous. A little strawbot set zeki is great on it,
or a doll of Greek yogurt with a squeeze of
fresh lemon juice, just.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
To kind of add something bright at the very end.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
And I think that's actually a really important tip to
point out. Whether you're using my freezer meal recipes or
somebody else's, or maybe you're even buying. There are companies
that do these now, like behive meals. If I think
one thing to do you can do to take those
from good to grete is to add something to finish fresh.
Finish with some chopped herbs or cilantro, or some acid
(11:14):
or some texture like some chopped peanuts, depending on what
it is. Just think about finishing fresh. Next on my
list is my sal saverde shredded beef, and this is
like the ultimate set it and forget it freezer meal.
They can go directly into the slow cooker or the
instant pot to cook all day develop delicious flavors. We
usually shred the beef and turn them into tacos or
(11:35):
burrito bowls, but there are some great shortcut ingredients in
that recipe, like a jarred sal saverite that go a.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Long way when it comes to flavor.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And then finally, my baked chicken tiktos. So this is
probably my kid's favorite after school snack that can also
be turned into dinner. I love these because you can
eat them individually, like you can just grab one out
of the freezer, or you can bake them all together
and serve them with rice and beans for a quick
weeknight dinner option. Usually when I'm doing these, I always
(12:07):
double the recipe. It typically makes between eight and nine,
like larger sized tektos, Like my girls will only eat
one tiqto my thirteen year old son will usually ea
two or three tiktos, and my husband I will probably
have two. So it's a full recipe, but we just
love them so much that it never hurts to double
that recipe.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So that's it. Those are the five recipes I prepped
in an hour.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
They're all nothing's too similar. You have the Italian meatballs,
you have the Indian butter chicken, the Greek chicken pedas,
that salsa Verdi shredded beef, and the baked chicken tiktos,
so you've got a nice variety. And the way I
like to do it is take those meals and just
plan to make one per week. And what I will
(12:53):
do is look at my family calendar and try and
identify the busiest days. Now, some of these you're gonna
have to stay something in in the morning. Now, you're
not gonna have to do much more than that other
than transferred to the slow cooker. But keep that in mind,
and you might want to have to you might have
to put some like reminders in your phone, but it's
really not that big of a deal. Here are a
(13:14):
few other tips that kind of made the process run
really smoothly for me. Especially if this sounds like something
you might be interested in doing, I would keep these
in mind.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I would buy the baggy hangers.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Now, if you I posted a reel about this, if
you saw the reel, you know what I'm talking about.
These baggy hangers. They kind of are like there's kind
of like this cheap plastic thing, but they pop up
into this V shape and it holds each side of
the bag open, and so it makes it really easy
to add all of the ingredients when you're making the
freezer meals. There are a couple bucks, but if you
(13:48):
think you might be a freezer meal person, or you
might even do this quarterly like I do, it's worth
getting them.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
It really does make it easier. Make sure. This is
so important, you guys.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
If you really want to prep five meals in one hour,
you must make sure to take the time to mees
and plos or get everything in its place before you
start cooking. It will take you three to four times
as long if you don't. So.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Look at the recipes you're gonna do.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Maybe you're gonna do all five, you're gonna do three
of them, or just one or two of them. Pull
all of the ingredients out and put the ingredients in
little piles next to the recipes and pull everything out. Then,
if you really want to be a top student here,
earn a gold star. Chop anything that needs to be chopped,
which is gonna be very little for these recipes. You
(14:36):
could pre measure some things. You could take the can
the lids off of cans, like one of these has
coconut milk in it, another one has some tomato paste
in it. Just get ready, get all your stuff in
order so that you're not going back and forth and
back and forth. Huge tip like it will make such
a difference. I recommend freezing flat to optimize space. I
(14:57):
don't have a ton of freezer space in my current setup,
and so freezing flat is my favorite way to do that.
And then, like I mentioned earlier, just add the freezer
recipes to your calendar. Now. If you're gonna go to
the effort to make the freezer recipes, heaven forbid you
forget that they're there and you never use them. So
put them in your calendar. Put a reminder that we
are having Indian butter chicken on this night, and if
(15:18):
you need to put a reminder to pull it out
the night before for it to thaw, then put that
in your calendar now. And when you do this, that
might sound like an annoying step, but you were gonna
feel like a champion. You're gonna feel so proud of
yourself that you have just made five dinners in advance.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Dinner is done. Not only have you done the majority.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Of the prep, you have decided what you were having
for dinner that night. And that is truly a gift.
All right, that's it. Let's finish how we always finish
with my weekly gimme five five things that made my
life easier or more enjoyable this week. Number one on
my list is my favorite slow cooker. If you guys
have been with me for a while, about nine months ago,
(15:58):
I swapped out my loved slow cooker that I had
received from my wedding fifteen years ago for a new
one that had a saute function on the bottom, and
I'm obsessed with it.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I used it this week to.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Make my carnitas, and I did the slow cooker version,
but then at the very end, because you'll have some
liquid in there obviously from slow cooking the carnitas, I
wanted to reduce that liquid to kind of intensify the
flavors of the carnitas, and so I just turned on
the saute function and it worked beautifully.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
It was so great.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Another thing I used it for this week is we
went to a SINCODMYO party with some friends and I
was asked to bring the black beans. So I seasoned
these black beans, I stored put them in the slow cooker,
and they had this buffet setting and so it was
like more than just a low on a slow cooker heat,
but not quite a sate or a simmer. It was
(16:51):
called buffet and the idea being that it's the perfect
temperature for people to come through the line and dish
up black beans, and.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
They were perfect.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It was perfect. So it's really cute. It actually it's
not cute, it's pretty. It's a pretty slow cooker, if
you can imagine such a thing. So that made my
list because I really am just so happy with that purchase. Next,
I had to include the baggy hangers. We're talking about
freezer meals this week. Those baggy hangers made my life easy.
And if you are, like I said, if you're thinking
(17:19):
about becoming a freezer meal person, or at least just
trying it once, it's worth a couple bucks to spend
on those. Okay, Next, this is a little unexpected I
have for years. I used to get regular manicures. Years
when I did my show on Food Network, I always
had big apple red red nail polish and it was
part of my routine. Then, as I had more children
(17:42):
and family life got busier, I just I didn't want
to spend the money on weekly manicures and I did
not want to spend the time. Mostly so I have
mentioned before, I have this favorite product. It's called Nail Concealer.
It's a really light just kind of not even a shimmer.
This makes my nails look nice and I love this polish.
(18:03):
But that's been on this give Me five lists before.
I was noticing that my cuticles were starting to look dry,
and I think it's because I'm not going into a
nail salon and having like a traditional manicure that often.
And I'm sure I could do that. But someone recommended
this product called heart as Hoof nail cream and it's
almost like just a really thick lotion and I keep
(18:23):
it at my desk and once a day I just
rub it into my nail beds and it has totally
made a difference. It also comes in this like coconuty smell,
which smells like vacation and I love it.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
It was a couple bucks and it's totally solved that
problem for me of dry cracking cuticles.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Number four is something from a reference from my girl's
trip last week. Our friend kat Catherine. She came out
in this most jarling set from Amazon that had like
this scalloped edge on it.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
We all stopped looked.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
At her and said, where did you get that, and
she said, You're never gonna believe it was ten dollars
on Amazon, and so we kept talking about the ten
dollars set throughout the vacation. It comes in all these colors,
and before we left, everybody had ordered the ten dollars
Amazon scalped set.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
It's so cute, so cute.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Especially for the price, great cover up or just cute
little summer set to where it's very, very cute. And
then finally number five is I've added our Mother's Day
gifted memberships. And I've added this because this is something
I've noticed in my life as I've been thinking about
Mother's Day this week and my own mom and what
(19:34):
I'm gifting my own mom.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I am so.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Grateful that Recipe Club has become something I can share
with my mom. Oftentimes we are cooking the same recipes
because we both follow the Recipe Club meal plan to
a certain extent, and it is so fun to have
that commonality. We don't live in the same state, so
we don't see each other that often, but there's something
that I love about us both making the carnitas on
(20:01):
the same night of the week. It's so fun to
share that. So if you need a last minute gift
for your mom or your favorite mom figure in your life,
we're eating yourself.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Think about this.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Cooking with friends. Maybe you want to give your sister
a Mother's Day gift cooking with friends and doing it
in a club like setting where you are surrounded by
virtually my.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
People who are in the thick of getting.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Dinner on a table for the people that they love,
and they are doing it because they know that that
connection point is important. This is the perfect thing to share,
So don't forget about that. If you're looking for a
last minute gift. All right, that's it for today. I
will be sending positive vibes to anyone tackling on a
few freezer meals this week. It already feels so nice
(20:44):
to note that I have dinner waiting for us in
the freezer for those busy nights this month, and otherwise
we likely would have driven through some restaurant and it
would have cost me seventy five dollars to feed my family.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Who knows? Who knows.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Make sure you're subscribed to the Post podcast so that
you never miss an episode. This podcast is always meant
to be a quick twenty to thirty minute listen just
while you map out your own meals for the week.
I've always left listening to a podcast, and it's been
part of my routine for years. Thank you so much
for being here today. I'm so glad we got to
chat about freezer meals. Until next time, happy cooking. I'm
(21:19):
Kelsey and forward to chatting with you all next week.
Host
Kelsey Nixon
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