Insanely Easy Healthy Freezer Meals

Here are 6 insanely easy healthy freezer meals + staples you can batch that you will feel good feeding your family and pulling out of the freezer at any time.

Do you ever feel like there are seasons where it is HARD to get a meal on the table that is healthy and quick? For me it seems like it is always when baseball kicks up and all of our obligations are full steam ahead.

I was so glad I did this HUGE healthy freezer batch cooking freezer meal day so that I could weather some storms of life a little easier.

Watch Me Make All of These Recipes H ERE

Over on YouTube I share motherhood content that inspires you to lean on Jesus through the day to day of loving our families well!

I want you to help you feel like you are more than just surviving through the little years! My goal is be a nudge to help us soak in the gift of what it means to a mother to our children!

I know you will find some encouragement, tips and tricks and that you will feel seen in these exhausting, but wonderful days of motherhood!

Why Freezer Meals Are Such a Game-Changer?

We just never know what life is going to throw us! After making this HUGE round of freezer meals we had 3 fairly unexpected funerals in a row. One of which we traveled twice for out of state. Whew!

Having these meals in the freezer just helped me be more gentle with myself. Walking through grief can really zap anyone’s energy!

I share that because having some batched meals in the freezer is a little bit like having an emergency fund. We all know food is the thing that comes 3x a day-“mama, I am hungry!”

Organization and Planning for Freezer Meal Batch Day

I am not naturally an organized gal. I am a bit of a fly by the seat of my pants kind of mama.

This gets me into trouble at times and most likely I am going to forget something at the store, because I either didn’t make a list or I left it at home.

I knew that making easy freezer meals wasn’t going to be easy without some organization so I made this…

On the right is the list of the meals, snacks etc that I was making and on the left was the ingredients that I needed to grab at the store. This is a 3 page google sheet, but you get the idea. And putting it on a clip board was a HUGE help too!

I took ONE weekend, dirtied up my kitchen ONE time, and BOOM so many nights of meals covered!

So much money saved on not running having to run through a drive through on those LATE baseball nights too!

Freezer Meals for Expecting Moms + Gifts for Those Who are Sick or Struggling!

It was wonderful to be able to pull out a big ziplock full of Green Chicken Chili to share with a friend. I knew she was going to be able to put it in a pot and have dinner within 10 minutes when she was tired and struggling!

What a gift we can give with just some time and intention of spending one weekend making some freezer meals!

To Be Considered Healthy Freezer Meals/Staples this was the criteria I was thinking of:

Little to no seed-oils (see this video on why)
A from scratch as possible without being too complicated
Use of sourdough starter when possible to make bread easier to digest.
No fake flavoring packets or tons of jars of sauce with lots of sugar (did use BBQ sauce and pasta sauce 1x each, but you get the idea!)
Minimal ingredients

Recipes that I used in this BIG Freezer Batch Day!

Some of the recipes are my own and some are from other food bloggers, but I will be pointing you to where you can go download the recipe!

Many of these recipes were not originally freezer meals, but I tell you how to convert them to freezer meals!

I made even more recipes in the YouTube video, but chose to only include the best recipes in this blog post!

1. Honey Rosemary Chicken Meat Marinade for a Crock-Pot

2-3 lbs chicken breast (leave whole)- (I used chicken theighs and they shrunk a whole bunch, so I do think breasts work best, because the amount of liquid in the crock pot)
1/3 c balsamic vinegar
1/3 c olive oil
1/3 c honey
2 tsp sea salt
2 Tbs chopped rosemary

Original Instructions:

Combine ingredients and let chicken marinate for an hour or two. Cook on low 4-5 hrs in crockpot. Serve over rice, cauliflower rice, quinoa, or mashed potatoes

Freezer Meal Variation:

Combine all the ingredients in a ziplock freezer bag, then add the chicken to the bag and seal well. Pull out the bag either the night before and place in the fridge or put straight from the freezer into the crockpot.

Cook for 4-5 hours low if thawed first, and low for 8 hours if straight from freezer bag.

Serve with side of rice or quinoa, because the juice leftover is sooo tasty on top of a side.

***If you froze it flat (great for space and organization reasons) it may take some breaking apart to get into the crockpot if straight from the freezer, that is why I like to put in the fridge overnight to thaw a bit.

*Special thanks to friend Kate Bowers for sharing this crock-pot recipe with me, what would we do without friends!?! Grateful for you Kate!

2. Shredded BBQ Pork in a Crock-Pot

My papa used to make this when all 10 of the cousins plus family were coming over. He would have 3 Crock-Pots going with this and we would come home from church to lunch ready to go!

See the Recipe Here:

3. Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

This soup was so incredibly yummy!

Freezer Variations:

The one thing I did to make this recipe optimal for freezing was to leave the milk and cream out until I was ready to warm the soup up.

It may have been just fine, but in my opinion soup seems to do better without freezing the milk to avoid clumping when you warm it up.

Subsitutions from Orginal Recipe:

Also, I substituted homemade bone broth for the chicken broth, if you want a super easy way to do that see this video.

4. Easy Green Chicken Chili

I first had this soup when I went to help a new church plant in Nova Scotia, CA. The pastor’s wife served this soup and I just kept coming back for more!

Special Recipe Notes:

It is super simple, the only thing is you need to have Pablano Peppers. Make sure to wear gloves or just put your hand in a plastic baggie when chopping them. They aren’t that spicy to the tongue, but they sure are to the hands!

Freezing Tips:

Consider freezing them in these Souper Molds! They are a game changer when it comes to freezing leftovers or to make the soup portioned out perfectly.

Freezer Staples to Keep on Hand:

These next couple of recipes are not necessarily a full meal, but having these staples on hand will help a meal come together quickly.

1. Freezer Bulk Sourdough Bread-Sandwich, Rolls, or Buns

This recipe is thanks to my MIL who jumped into sourdough before me. She uses this recipe ALL the TIME and swears by how simple and versatile it is!

This recipe makes 3 batches of buns that you see me measuring out below, to watch me do all of this watch this video!

2. Homemade Healthy Avocado Mayo

I used this recipe, but MAKE sure you blend the egg FIRST until it is creamy and white (BEST results with immersion blender), BEFORE you add the rest of the ingredients.

You can see me make this mistake in this video at time stamp: 28:00

***You can also see how I corrected the mayo not coming together correctly if this happens to you!

I used the homemade mayo to make Homemade Ranch Dressing!

3. Homemade Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

This homemade ranch is really a homerun, especially when you have a quality mayonnaise or make your own (see the last recipe).

My kids were dunking all their veggies gladly into this ranch and I even used this ranch as a freezer marinade. It was actually really yummy! Not my best idea (because I would rather have used the ranch on veggies or in a salad), but not my worst idea.

You can see me make the ranch at timestamp: 37:40 in the batch cooking video.

I went ahead and made a double batch!

**I used fresh parsley and dried dill, since my grocery store was out of fresh dill. I bet fresh dill is so yummy!

4. Sourdough Discard Freezer Banana Muffins

You can make these into muffins or even little mini loaves, like I did in the video.

Freezer Muffins Pro Tip: Allow the muffins to completely cool and even add them to the freezer on a cookie sheet for 15 minutes before you bag them up to freeze in a gallon ziplock. This keeps the chocolate from smearing all over the bag. Just ask me how I know haha.

Freezer Loaves Pro Tip: Allow to the loaves to completely cool, then set them in the freezer for 15 minutes. Then pull them out and wrap tightly with foil. Then you can bake the loaf directly in the foil to warm them up straight from the freezer (takes around 15 minutes at 350°)

Ingredients:

3-5 large bananas (better if older and softer)
1/2 of organic cane sugar
1/2 cup of coconut oil
2 eggs
2 cups of organic flour
1/2 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of baking powder
1 tsp of vanilla
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 cup of sourdough starter discard
1/2 cup of chocolate chips

Instructions:

Mash bananas and use a mixer to cream the sugar, bananas, and the coconut oil together.
- This handy measuring tool is a game-changer for measuring coconut oil.
Mix in beaten eggs, flour, baking soda, baking powder, sourdough discard, and vanilla.
Stir in chocolate chips
Pour batter into muffins tins or loaf pans and bake at 350° for 15 minutes and 20-25 minutes for mini loaves. If you feel like the loaves are not done in the middle, but are getting too crispy on top cover with tin foil.