Prepare Your Own Gourmet-Quality Frozen Meal
Everyone needs a quick convenient meal at times. If you need a quick meal between work and your kids school program or simply something to take to work for lunch, a gourmet frozen meal can be the ticket of the day. If you make your own frozen meals you can be assured of a tasty time saving meal.
At times you may have no choice other than grabbing something quick from the grocery store, but many times, you have another option. Make your own gourmet frozen meal.
If you make your own meals and freeze them you are the chef, so you determine what goes into your family’s food. You can leave out those things your family does not enjoy and choose how spicy to make your food. Additionally, you can choose how much salt or sugar is added to the meals your family eats.
Most people find that it is best at first to choose recipes that your family already enjoys. Who wants to have a freezer filled with dinners that no one in your family likes. If you need some ideas, try these: Beef stew, chicken curry, corn chowder, vegetable soup or Broccoli Beef.
Pasta and rice do not do well in many of the freezer recipes. The double cooking of the meal tends to over cook these starches. If you are using recipes with these ingredients, freeze the sauces and cook the starch separately. A rice cooker is a quick easy way to cook rice and fresh pasta cooks in boiling water in only three minutes. You can find fresh pasta in the deli section of most grocery stores.
If you want to stock your freezer with gourmet meals, just start cooking two or three times your normal size meal. Remove excess food to the refrigerator as soon as the food finishes cooking so that you are not tempted to over eat and the quality of the food is preserved.
Another way to stock the freezer is to have a couple of days per month that are set aside for shopping or cooking. Shop the first day and cook the second. In a short amount of time, you can prepare several meals that have been doubled or tripled and fill the freezer.
One of the best options for storing your food in the freezer is a vacuum sealer. Choose the sealer that has a heat seal to preserve the quality of your food. The bags are very heavy weight and prevent freezer burn. They can be used to heat food in the microwave or as a boil-in bag in a pot of water.
For those of you who aren’t up to this sort of planning and time, acclaimed chefs will actually prepare a gourmet frozen dinner or lunch for you.
If you choose this option where other people do the work, stay out of the supermarket aisles to be assured of good quality. Online retailers, will actually deliver the gourmet meals to your home.