That freezer isn’t looking too full. We’re almost due for our next Meal Prep. I talked a little about how we budget our food for a family of 5 previously. We’ve already covered freezing meat separately for quick ingredient meals, so today I want to look at some of our staples.
(If you just want ingredient list for the meals below click this)

Our meal prep weekends are usually split into 3 activities. Uncooked bagged meals, uncooked sorted meats, and partially cooked or fully cooked meals in aluminum baking trays. Usually Entrees separated from side dishes.

Since I went over the meat sorting in the budge article, lets talk bout the bagged meals. Creamy Ranch Chicken is one of our kids (and my) favorites. We usually start with 3 Chicken breasts, but with two teenagers we’ve increased it to 4 in some bags. The Sams club 10 lb frozen ones are usually larger and give more meat per dollar than the unfrozen ones.

We also use these Ziploc Bag holders for holding the bags up when we prep, it says so much mess when handling raw meat.
(Amazon requires I tell you that’s an affiliate link FYI).

Anyway, I’ll post the recipe a little lower and try to figure out how to hyperlink at the top of the post directly to the recipe. Then there’s cream cheese, Italian dressing packet, cream of chicken and Ranch seasoning packet. Into the bag and freeze away.

We also do a Beef and Broccoli one, and Sweet and Sour Pork (or chicken). I’ll put ingredient lists below.

Those are just three staples that we usually make multiples of when we do our meal prep. We squeeze all the air out of the bags and roll the them down to save as much space as possible.

These usually go into the Crockpot on low from just before work till dinner time. If you have one with a timer and auto warming, Low is usually good for 8 hours then it will kick over to warm.

We generally serve all these meals with Rice, but noodles work just as well. We used to stick to Minute Rice for time constraint reasons, both of us working 10-12 hour shifts and needing quick turn arounds on dinner, but two years ago my wife finally bought me the rice cooker I’d been wanting. Which was a Zojirushi Rice Cooker (Affiliate Link). I’m a fan of all their products that I own and trust them to work consistently.

This allows us to throw the rice in at the same time as the crock pot and head out for the day.

Meal	Ingredient 1	Ingredient 2	Ingredient 3	Ingredient 4	Ingredient 5	Cook Time
Creamy Ranch Chicken	3-4 Frozen Skinless Boneless Chicken Breasts	1x Cream of Chicken Soup	1x Block of Cream Cheese	1 x Ranch Seasoning Packet	1x Italian Seasoning Packet	Low 6-8 Hours Crockpot
Beef and Broccoli	1-2 Lbs beef chunks/tips	1x Aldi Teriyaki Sauce	1 x Bag Frozen Broccoli	—	—	Low 6-8 Hours Crockpot
Sweet and Sour Pork	3-4 pork chops	1x Aldi Sweet and Sour Sauce	1x Frozen Asian Medley	—	—	Low 6-8 Hours Crockpot