I was first introduced to the world of freezer cooking when I was pregnant with my second child. Like a lot of you probably did, I channeled my nesting instincts into filling my freezer for when life got hectic. I don’t have a newborn these days, but I still find a freezer filled with food to be seriously comforting.
Some of our freezer favorites include tried-and-true dairy dishes like lasagna, quiche, burritos, and macaroni and cheese. But today, I wanted to share with you a favorite fleishig recipe: Mini meatballs.
There are tons of meatball recipes out there, but what I love about these are that they are quick and easy to make, and incredibly versatile. They work well in a tomato sauce over whole wheat spaghetti; in a sweet and sour sauce with rice or orzo; or as a faux Swedish meatballs.
I usually make these up on Friday and then portion out enough for dinner. I flash freeze the rest before dumping them all into a gallon-size Ziploc bag. This way, they don’t all stick together and I can take as out as many, or as few, as we need.
Mini meatballs
2 pounds ground beef
1 egg
2-3 T onion, finely chopped
1 Tbsp bread crumbs
1 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp mustard
Preheat oven to 325°. Mix all ingredients with a spoon (or your hand!) and roll into 1-inch balls. Place on a baking tray (I spray lightly with Pam ahead of time) and bake for 25 minutes until brown.
By the way, these are just as good regular-size, but I think that the mini-size slows us down ever so slightly in gorging ourselves on them!
Okay, now it’s your turn: Won’t you please share one of your favorite freezer-friendly recipes? Dish the dish in the comments section (or let me know if you’d like me to put up a Mr. Linky.)
And as a fun way for me to show my appreciation to those of you who share recipes in my Friday exchange, I’m going to have a drawing for a $10 Target gift card at the end of the month among everyone who has commented with a recipe this month.
I do not have any good freezer recipes because I just found out about freezer cooking this month. I am looking forward to using your recipe and collecting more recipes that come from your comments.
I’m bummed you didn’t get more recipes from this exchange, but there are lots of bloggers out there talking about freezer cooking. Please let me know if you need help pointing you in the right direction.
I just realized (a few weeksn ago) that you can make schnitzel, freeze it individually, and reheat straight from freezer to oven. So now I just line up 20 or so chicken breasts sandwhiched between saran wrap on my kitchen island, pound the heck out of ’em, bread them, bake them off in a few batches, let them cool, and then put them each in their own sandwhich baggie all inside larger freezer bags. It’s perfect that when I’m exhausted ahead of Shabbos (otherwise known as ALWAYS) or if we have surprise guests we can just pull out of the freezer and have something delicious and filling.
We also love veggie chili and lentil soup out of the freezer, but I’ll save those for the beans and lentils week. 🙂
Shabbat Shalom!!!
What’s the crispness factor like when frozen and reheated? I’ve all but stopped making schnitzel for Shabbat lunch because the plata kills the crispy 🙁
I just saw this post while looking at the recent lunch ideas post. This looks like a great freezing recipe, but how do you “flash freeze”?
Lily – To flash freeze, I lay out on a cookie sheet (so they aren’t touching each other… this works w/ anything, not just meatballs) and leave in the freezer for about an hour, maybe a little longer. So it’s just frozen, but not necessarily all the way through. Then I drop it all into a ziploc bag and that way they don’t stick to each other, and you can pull out as much or as little as you need (rather than having a huge chunk of frozen together meatballs). HTH.
How do you make the sauce in the pic?