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I’ve done it again, friends…and I just HAVE to share! With Back-To-School season upon us, I’m stocking my freezer with plenty of easy dinners that are ready and waiting for me on our busiest evenings. Check out my latest Saturday afternoon project: preparing 6 Healthy Slow Cooker Freezer Meals in Less Than 1 Hour! I promise, it just doesn’t get any easier than this, and I’ve even included a printable shopping list!

Healthy Slow Cooker Freezer Meals

Are you familiar with Crock Pot freezer meals? Basically, all you do is toss some RAW ingredients into a large zip-top freezer bag, label it, and stick it in your freezer. When you’re ready to make your dinner, just thaw the bag in the refrigerator overnight and dump the contents into your slow cooker in the morning. Let the Crock Pot do the cooking while you go about your day…then dinner is cooked and ready when your troops are hungry!

For this particular batch of freezer meals, I selected 3 healthy slow cooker recipes that I knew my family would love. When I pull together freezer meal menus, I make a point to choose recipes that use a variety of meats and that offer a nice variety of meals. For instance, you don’t want to end up making 6 chicken dinners (boring!) or 6 different soups.

I printed the recipes and prepared a shopping list based on DOUBLING each recipe. That way I would get two separate dinners with about the same amount of prep time.

You can download a printable PDF of the complete grocery shopping list HERE!

When I returned from the grocery store, I didn’t even bother to put away the food. Instead, I labeled my zip-top freezer bags (with the name of the recipe, plus the cooking time), chopped my veggies, and tossed the appropriate ingredients into each bag. I actually set my timer to see exactly how long it would take me to make all of these dinners and I was VERY pleasantly surprised to see that I was completely finished in 45 minutes (and that included a couple of interruptions from the little ones!). With a few more minutes of clean-up, my kitchen was spotless and my freezer was full in under 1 hour!

Here are the three meals that we will be enjoying in the coming weeks (and remember, I doubled each recipe for maximum efficiency!):

The World’s Best Chicken from Rachel Schultz

THE-WORLDS-BEST-CHICKEN-from-Rachel-Schultz-2

 Healthified Crock Pot Beef & Broccoli from The Skinny Fork

Beef and Broccoli 2

 Skinny Taco Chicken Chili from Skinny Mom

TacoChickenChili1_horRESIZED

[Tweet “Make nutritious #dinners easy: 6 #Healthy Slow Cooker Freezer Meals in 1 Hour!”]

Delicious, right?!

Before you get started, here are a few quick tips:

(1) Label all of your gallon-size freezer bags with the cooking instructions in advance. This way you’ll know how to cook the meal when the time comes — no pulling out the recipe to find the details later on! And take it from me: you want to use high-quality freezer bags here. This is NOT the time to get cheap and risk a rip or tear in your bag!

chicken

(2) I like to start with the meat. I set all of my meat out on the counter and place the appropriate amount into each labeled bag. Then I can clean up my mess and not risk cross-contamination with veggies or other ingredients later. Another tip: cooking in bulk batches like this allows you to save money on ingredients because you can buy value packs of meat. When else would you need 16 chicken breasts at one time?! 🙂

Meat

(3) Take short-cuts! To decrease prep-time, I like to buy pre-sliced stir-fry beef or minced garlic in a jar. Then it’s just a matter of dumping the ingredients in the bag — with very little time-consuming chopping and slicing on my part!

Beef

(4) Use tools that make it even easier to get your ingredients in the bags quickly and easily. I love my flexible cutting boards because I can chop my veggies (or meat, if necessary) and then fold the board and dump the whole thing into a bag. I don’t even have to touch the food or worry about scooping it up with my hands. Mess-free and FAST! Another awesome product? These Hands-Free Bag Holders make it super-easy to dump the ingredients in the bags you go. So smart!

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Are you ready to get started? Would you love even more easy crockpot freezer meal ideas? Check out my previous posts:

6 Healthy Crock Pot Freezer Meals in 45 Minutes

6 Healthy Crockpot Freezer Meals

10 Family-Friendly Crock Pot Freezer Meals Crock Pot Freezer Meals6 Easy Freezer Meals in 1 Morning!

6 Easy Freezer Meals Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

blair

Hey, I’m Blair!

Welcome to my farmhouse kitchen in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Inspired by local traditions and seasonal fare, you’ll find plenty of easy, comforting recipes that bring your family together around the table. It’s down-home, country-style cooking!

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Comments

  1. This is such a great idea, Bllair! I definitely need to start making meals that I can freeze. I always intend to and then somehow forget! Love your meal prep!

  2. I so need to do this! I hate having to scramble at the last minute to figure out what’s for dinner! Your post comes at the perfect time too–for some crazy reason I seem use my crock pot waay more during fall/winter than during the summer! Definitely pinning!

    1. Excellent, Jeanette! I’m so glad that you might try them! Enjoy. 🙂 We just had the chicken taco chili last night and my kids LOVED it!

  3. I am going to try the freezer meals but just wanted to confirm I add all ingredients to the freezer bag or are there some items that should not be added until it is cooked? thanks,

    1. Hi, Shannon! I’m so glad that you’re going to try these recipes! You’ll LOVE it when you have a fully-stocked freezer!

      You’re correct — you want to add all of the raw ingredients into the freezer bags. That way when you go to actually cook the meals, all you have to do is thaw and dump the bag into your slow cooker! If you want to serve with any extras (like rice or pasta) or garnish with fresh herbs or cheese at the end of cooking, then those items would not go in the bag. Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions!

    1. Hi, Jess! I honestly don’t know, since I’ve never experimented with that swap. Canned tomatoes are cooked, seeded, and peeled, so you would want to make sure that you remove your seeds and peels from the fresh tomatoes, and the ultimate texture might be a little bit different…I’m just not positive. Let me know if you give it a try!

  4. Hello Ive got a question! Or rather a few questions.
    First since you put all the raw things in a freezer bag when you took them out, you cook them in the slow cooker right? So Im kind of new to this, do you add water in the slow cooker and then put the bags in?
    Also do the things like the chicken still taste good, considering the original recipe tells you to put them in the oven!
    Thank you for answering my questions!

    1. Hi, Gladys! That’s right — the raw ingredients go into the freezer bags and are frozen RAW. Then I like to thaw them in the refrigerator overnight before dumping them into the Crock Pot to cook.

      There’s no need to add any additional water to the slow cooker. And YES — even though you can bake the chicken in the oven, these particular recipes still work really well in the slow cooker too! Enjoy. 🙂

  5. Hi , I have a clarufying question. The title says 6 freezer meals but only 3 are mentioned. Is this because you are doubling those meals to make 6 for the week? If so, how do you modify the recipes to ensure they are different meals each time you’re eating? Thank you.

    1. Hey, Michelle! That’s right — it’s 3 meals that are doubled, so you have dinner for 6 different nights. I usually just get creative with different sides, so if I’m serving the chicken I might put it over pasta with the pan sauce and a side salad one night, or over wild rice and steamed broccoli the next. For the beef and broccoli, you could bake some spring rolls to serve on the side one night, or do rice or quinoa another. With the chili, you can serve it in a bowl with toppings one night, and then over baked potatoes or in tortillas another night. Just some ideas…have fun with it! 🙂

    1. Hey Jenn! If you look at that recipe, she also has instructions for making it in the slow cooker, which is what I have done. Let me know if you have any other questions!?

      1. Hi Blair, thanks so much for your reply, I admit, I did not fully read the recipe early. I’m sorry! I have one other question, should I be freezing the raw meet in with the rest of the ingredients?

        1. No worries at all, Jenn!! Happy to help!

          And yes, you just add the raw meat in with the rest of the ingredients before freezing — exactly like you would do if you were dumping it directly into the slow cooker! 🙂

  6. Hi! I have a question about the beef and broccoli. When do you add the corn starch and water? Do you freeze that? Or have it on hand to add it toward the end of the cooking process?

    1. Hey, Kelsey! Yep, just keep it in your pantry to have on hand. Add it at the end when the rest of the meal is done cooking. It will thicken the sauce at the end. 🙂

  7. I love these ideas and the PDF is amazing! Thank you! I just wish the ads didn’t slow the page down so much and lock up my computer make it hard to work with which doesn’t happen on many other sites. I’ll try again but if it says this way I won’t come back because of the bad experience which is sad… I love the site.

    1. Oh no! So sorry about the load time! Thank you for letting me know, though — I have a call scheduled with my ad company this week, so I’ll let them know about your complaint. Hopefully we can get that resolved ASAP!

  8. I dont know about preparing meals in an hour, I have been sitting here in the UK for about 20 mins trying just to download the PDF shopping List.

    I do hope I can find the recipes. Please look into your site as no one is going to sit here forever waiting for it to download.

    1. Hi, Mo! I just emailed the recipes and the shopping list to you directly. I hope that you enjoy! Next time when you are asking for a favor for free, perhaps you could be a bit kinder in the delivery of your request? There’s no need to be rude. Have a great day!