Convenient meals can be a lifesaver at times. They can be more nutritious than fast food and eaten at home. You can grab one of these meals when you have a busy schedule and feed you family an nutritious gourmet frozen meal.
Sometimes life gets so busy that we have no other choice than to grab a convenient meal from the grocery store. Some of these meals are very good but others are far from gourmet. Here is another option that you might enjoy, make your own gourmet dinners.
By making your own frozen meals, you get to choose what goes into your food. If there is an ingredient that someone in your family will not eat, you can leave it out or prepare an individual portion without that ingredient. In addition, you are in control of the amount of sugar and sodium that is added to your meals.
While many people just prepare the meals they know their family likes to eat, others like to experiment. If you are tired of the same old family favorites, here are some ideas that freeze well. Vegetable soup, beef stew, chicken curry, corn chowder 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.
If all of this sounds like a lot of effort, take heart! There are professional chefs who will take all of the work out of a gourmet frozen meal.
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 foods to your home.
