Lisa99
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2010
- Messages
- 1,440
This is a bit long, but it has so simplified our cooking and eating that I wanted to share.
In the last week or so I've been reading various posts about people buying individual serving meals because it's quicker and easier, some who are having meal issues because you're on different schedules, etc.
I wanted to share a 'modular' approach to cooking and eating that DH and I have developed over the last few months. We did it as a means to lose weight (via portion control), but this approach also works if you want good, healthy food fast, with almost no cleanup. There is a bit of prep on the front-end but nothing overly time consuming.
The premise of the method is to cook in volume individual ingredients one would want to mix and match into a "Chipotle-type" bowl. Then freeze the outcome in individual muffin tins.
For example, we pressure cook one pound of black beans. Takes 45 minutes to cook. Once done you spray a muffin tin with PAM and place 1/2 cup servings in each of the 12 muffin cups (1 lb of beans will produce about 24 - 1/2 cup servings). Place the muffin tins full of beans in the freezer and let freeze for about 24 hours. Remove from the freezer and pop out the frozen bean 'pucks'. Place the individual pucks in a gallon-size freezer bag, label and store in the freezer.
Using the same cooking and freezing approach we have the following 1/2 cup size food pucks in our freezer:
brown rice
Lime/cilantro white rice (Chipotle knock-off)
Refried beans
Grilled chicken
Chile Colorado
Brisket
Barbacoa
Pork Adobo
Taco meat (hamburger with taco seasoning)
+ More
When you're ready to eat you simply choose from the various pucks what you want to eat at that meal. DH's favorite right now is 1 brown rice puck, one black bean puck and one Chile Colorado (very spicy) puck. Place the three pucks in a bowl and nuke on defrost until thawed. Once thawed, nuke on high until heated through.
You can then eat the 'bowl' as is or continue to dress it up with Pico, lettuce, sour cream (or if you're watching your weight fat free Greek Yogurt), cilantro...the ideas are endless.
DH and I both work from home and he likes to eat lunch much earlier than me. When he gets hungry he just picks out his pucks and gets himself fed We have a different bowl just about every day for lunch and it never gets boring.
We also use the puck approach to make single servings of homeade spaghetti sauce, peanut sauce, meat loaf, pot roast....the ideas are endless.
If you're interested in trying this I have several recipes I'd be happy to share.
In the last week or so I've been reading various posts about people buying individual serving meals because it's quicker and easier, some who are having meal issues because you're on different schedules, etc.
I wanted to share a 'modular' approach to cooking and eating that DH and I have developed over the last few months. We did it as a means to lose weight (via portion control), but this approach also works if you want good, healthy food fast, with almost no cleanup. There is a bit of prep on the front-end but nothing overly time consuming.
The premise of the method is to cook in volume individual ingredients one would want to mix and match into a "Chipotle-type" bowl. Then freeze the outcome in individual muffin tins.
For example, we pressure cook one pound of black beans. Takes 45 minutes to cook. Once done you spray a muffin tin with PAM and place 1/2 cup servings in each of the 12 muffin cups (1 lb of beans will produce about 24 - 1/2 cup servings). Place the muffin tins full of beans in the freezer and let freeze for about 24 hours. Remove from the freezer and pop out the frozen bean 'pucks'. Place the individual pucks in a gallon-size freezer bag, label and store in the freezer.
Using the same cooking and freezing approach we have the following 1/2 cup size food pucks in our freezer:
brown rice
Lime/cilantro white rice (Chipotle knock-off)
Refried beans
Grilled chicken
Chile Colorado
Brisket
Barbacoa
Pork Adobo
Taco meat (hamburger with taco seasoning)
+ More
When you're ready to eat you simply choose from the various pucks what you want to eat at that meal. DH's favorite right now is 1 brown rice puck, one black bean puck and one Chile Colorado (very spicy) puck. Place the three pucks in a bowl and nuke on defrost until thawed. Once thawed, nuke on high until heated through.
You can then eat the 'bowl' as is or continue to dress it up with Pico, lettuce, sour cream (or if you're watching your weight fat free Greek Yogurt), cilantro...the ideas are endless.
DH and I both work from home and he likes to eat lunch much earlier than me. When he gets hungry he just picks out his pucks and gets himself fed We have a different bowl just about every day for lunch and it never gets boring.
We also use the puck approach to make single servings of homeade spaghetti sauce, peanut sauce, meat loaf, pot roast....the ideas are endless.
If you're interested in trying this I have several recipes I'd be happy to share.