Crockpot Freezer Experience

I mentioned in my Friday Quick Takes that I was going to try some crockpot freezer meals. I chose this method because I love crockpot cooking and while I have no desire to do the freezer meals for an entire month, I do like the idea of having a few meals in my freezer so that I don't have to spend time cooking every day. I do a weekly meal plan on Thursdays and then shop for the week every Friday. I include the week's events and there is always a day or two where we will be in a rush so a quick meal would be nice. I love to cook though so I could never do freezer meals for an entire month. So this option was very enticing to me.

I decided to follow this cooking day. To make it easy, I followed her plan exactly. I used her grocery list (which is missing teriyaki sauce and garlic) and used the same recipes. I even prepared the balsamic pot roast for a meal that weekend.

I started on Saturday afternoon and probably spent about 2 -3 hours doing all the work including preparing the roast for Sunday. Overall I was happy with how it went but have yet to eat any of the meals I actually froze. That will be the real test. I am also not sure I could just take any crockpot recipe I have and use this method. Like I said, I will not decide how much I like this idea till after I try the meals.

Lucky for me, Jason kept the boys occupied so I could do this with minimal distractions. As you can see from the picture my kitchen was in chaos! I used my food chopper to do the onions and I actually browned the meat in the microwave with my pampered chef microcooker. I didn't have hamburger so I used ground turkey. I also used baby carrots so there was less cutting and peeling. Finally I am using the Ore Ida frozen potatoes. Not sure that was a good idea but I read there were lots of problems with the potatoes freezing.

Everything was actually going great till right up to the end. The grocery list failed to include teriyaki sauce and I had none on hand. The recipe said to add 1/2 cup sauce to the bag and then also another 1/4 cup the day you cooked it. I was not sure if it was necessary to freeze some of the sauce since they split it up. So I checked my fridge and I had an open bottle of Island Soyaki sauce from Trader Joes. Its a combination of Teriyaki and Soy Sauce. I decided it had to be close enough. So then the next problem arose when I realized I only had a half cup instead of the whole cup it called for. Oh well, each bag was going to have half what it called for and I would just add more the day I cooked it. Well, I quickly dumped in the sauce and then a second later realized I had dumped a 1/4 cup of soyaki sauce NOT into the Teriyaki chicken bag but into the BBQ chicken. Ugh!

Seriously?! Here I had spent hours on these meals and I just ruined 2 of them. It was seriously disheartening but of course, I was trying to keep it in perspective. Thankfully my great husband, said, its ok. Haven't you heard of Teriyaki BBQ? Um, no but we will find out when I pull the bag out. Also, we will find out if its necessary to freeze the meals with the sauce included. Now we just have to wait....

By the way, the Balsamic Pot Roast was really good. I would just suggest not trying them with carrots. They really soaked up the vinegar and became very bitter.

Other than my little mishap, I think the trial went well. I will report back in a month.