Do you like saving money on home-cooked food, but hate actually doing the cooking part?
Me too.
I’ve been on a huge home-cooking spree in the past half a year or so in a desperate effort to tone down my food budget. I’ve tried finding and collecting new recipes, planning my meals, and even streamlining my cooking processso it’s not as painful.
But still, even with all the progress I’ve made in cooking more meals at home, I still haven’t solved one big problem yet: how to eat home-cooked meals each night without actually going through all the hassle of cooking them.
First-world problems, I know.
Nevertheless, it’s still a problem that needs solving, and I’ve recently found just the thing. It’s cheap. It’s almost too simple. It saves a ton of time. It’s…
Dump meal cooking!
Wait, wait, wait…what are dump meals all about?
“Dump meals” are meals made to be dumped out all at once and cooking. Not because…er….dumps (tee hee).
I admit, it’s not the best name for this style of cooking, but it’s one of the most popular. You may also know it as freezer cooking.
It’s a simple process, and it’s broken down into three easy steps:
- Do all the meal prep on the weekend, or when you have more time available. This involves pre-cooking of meats, chopping vegetables, mixing everything together, etc… At the end, you put all of the raw ingredients together in a bag, and pop it in the freezer.
- Thaw the meals so they’re defrosted when you want to cook them. You can thaw them the same morning you’re planning on cooking (use warm water), or thaw it in the fridge. I usually find it takes two days at least to fully thaw in the fridge.
- Dump all the contents of the bag into your slow-cooker before you head off to work for the day, or stick it in the oven when you get home from work.
It’s so simple! You don’t actually have to cook anything when it comes time to eat it!
Why the hell didn’t I find out about this sooner?
What I Really Like About Dump Meals
Freezer cooking has definitely made my life a lot easier. Here’s why:
- It saves time. I can do all the meal prep in one go, rather than in seven separate sessions.
- It saves money. If there’s a sale on a certain cut of meat one week, I can stock up and make a whole pile of meals ready-to-go. Recently my grocery store had BOGO pork chops—guess what’s in my freezer now?
- It’s easy. Dump meals are simple to make and don’t require a lot of fancy ingredients or hassle.
- It makes my freezer more organized. I freeze everything on cookie sheets so it’s flat and stacks well. I literally have a library of dump meals in my freezer!
- It lets Zach eat meals while I’m away working. I can make a set of dump meals before I go and even my silly husband can figure out how to cook them for dinner.
Related post: Cooking Tips For People Who Hate Cooking: Create A Recipe Bank
Tada! Frozen burritos and dump meals galore…no excuse to get expensive and time-consuming takeout!
What I Don’t Like About Dump Meals
There aren’t many downsides to making dump meals, but there are a few that I’ve found.
It can be a bit wasteful. Each batch calls for a separate plastic bag, and some recipes are frozen directly in disposable aluminum trays. It’s a bit much to throw away. I suppose you could always wash and reuse the bags and nix the aluminum trays, though.
The types of recipes that can easily be made into dump meals are limited. It requires a special type of food to be able to be frozen and cooked all together in one go. You might not find all the recipes that you might otherwise like to eat with this method alone. But, no one ever said you had to stick to dump meals alone! I still like to make fresh meals during the week too.
You Can Learn How To Make Dump Meals Too!
Making dump meals isn’t rocket science, but it still helps to have some guidance when you’re just starting out.
I started out by subscribing to Erin Chase’s MyFreezeasy program. I really like her program because she comes out with tons of new meals each month, and my even my picky eater husband never gets bored of them! She also has videos and in-depth shopping guides, preparation instructions, and printable labels for each meal.
For even more freezer cooking recipes, I recently started up an entire Freezer Cooking board on Pinterest. You can check it out here!
Related: 365 Days Of Quick & Easy, Make-Ahead Meals For Busy Families (affiliate link)
Most of the freezer cooking meals rely on slow-cookers because it’s pretty much the easiest way to cook meals. Here’s a pro tip: Buy a programmable slow-cooker with a temperature probe. Here’s the one that we use (affiliate link). That way, your meal will be cooked just to the right temperature and you won’t come home to a piece of stale shoe leather.
I don’t cook exclusively with dump meals. But, they’re a super important part of my arsenal now. Thanks to this tactic (and others), I shaved my monthly food bill in half! Now that’s what I call a worthwhile investment.
Have you tried making dump meals? What did you like or not like about it? Leave a comment below!
I LOVE THIS IDEA Lindsay! It’s exactly what I needed. We are always complaining that there isn’t enough time in the night to do everything, so we will definitely try freezer cooking. I think you may have just change my world completely. Thank you for this!!!
Freezer cooking is a great idea. I’ve done it on a small scale but could definitely use some recipes. I’ll have to check out Freezeasy.
This is great stuff. I love the freezer library – that would force me to be more organized with the way I pack (toss/shove) food in there too. Have you ever tried to freeze any of your food using the wrap called “Press n Seal” – it’s really wonderful. It might cut down the need for the plastic bags but you’d have to do a little price comparison. I use it a lot for raw meat because it eliminates a good portion of the freezer burn.
I plan on doing freezer cooking this fall. My husband is having knee surgery and my company is converting our software, so I’m going to be busy. I don’t want to end up buying takeout.
I sort of forgot about freezer cooking. I was so into it for a few months and we saved tons of time preparing all the meals at once and tons of money not eating out because of it! I need to get back to having a few meals ready to go. Thanks for the reminder!
O I love this, definitely need to try. There’s nothing more fulfilling than coming home and grabbing a home-cooked meal out of the freezer, ready to eat. Evenings are always mayhem here, between walking dogs, feeding cats, changing diapers and feeding kids.
The prepping on Sundays is holding me back a bit, it requires some thinking ahead!
This is something we need to implement in our household. With the move, we’ve been terrible about meal planning, and have eaten more than our fair share of fast food and pasta-based meals. This sounds like a much more reasonable, time-conscious way to make meals with fresh meat and veggies happen!
I would love to make freezer meals, but it’s difficult for us. First, we don’t eat meat! Second, I don’t have time at this point in my life. Maybe one day =)
Tim’s stomach is too temperamental to plan meals in advance, unfortunately. The best we can do is keep convenience food around and try to get that on sale. But in a perfect world, I’d totally do that — or at least do the slow cooker thing.
Oh man, meal prep is awesome! We started doing weekly meal preps before our groceries and batch cook usually on a Sunday for the week. Saves times, money and having 3 kids it saves my sanity as well!
I love Erin’s meal plans! I use them too. I actually started freezing the meat separately though. That way if I see meat on special, I can just buy in bulk and freeze it. Most of her recipes use about a pound of meat, so I just put it in one-pound bags in the freezer and note how many pounds I have in there. Chicken is the only tricky meat because some recipes call for bite-size pieces and some for whole chicken breasts. I just do about half and half. I love how her recipes let you get about ten meals prepped in an hour. Following her plans has saved me a ton of time and about $150-$200 a month on groceries because I’m using fewer convenience foods and there’s less waste.
That’s a great tip! I usually still combine them when I’m putting the meals together because it saves space in my freezer. I used to have a chest freezer, but then we moved to a tiny apartment and all I have now is my fridge freezer. It’s so tiny!
Check out thrift stores for terrific prices on previously owned Corningware or other casserole styled dishes. I bought up a few and can put many casseroles in them directly, eliminating the need for freezer bags except for crock pot recipes.
That’s a great idea! We did something like that a little while ago with individual potato casseroles, but it’d work equally great with larger things. Thanks!
I tried Erin’s freezer meals but unsubscribed after a month. The meals are high in sodium and contains a lot of meat. We recently switched to no meat meals. If no meat is not for your family, try no meat Monday and build from there. You will be surprised on how much you will save by switching out to no meat meals.
We make veggie pizzas, soup and salad meals, and other meatless options. The possibilities are endless.
Oh man, I don’t think I could convince my husband to do a no-meat meal. Or myself for that matter, haha! But yes, Erin’s meals do have a lot of meat. We also use low-sodium cooking products so we try to stay healthier that way (plus, I need that extra protein for my daily workouts!).