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Whether you cook only for yourself or you cook for an entire family, you know how time consuming it can be to prepare your own food. Look inside your freezer. How much space do you have in there, and how much are you utilizing? Do you store only frozen food boxes in there that you bought from the supermarket, or do you have room for some frozen food containers? Freezer containers for soup, smoothies, and more are perfect for optimizing your cooking and saving you time and money.

Part of the trick with freezer cooking (also sometimes called “once-a-month cooking” or “meal assembly”) is to come up with related recipes which utilize some of the same basic ingredient components. A good way to start coming up with a week or a month’s worth of recipes is to shop smart and choose a main ingredient that is on sale at the supermarket. Since meat tends to be the most expensive element of cooking, looking for a meat sale might be a good way to start. Also look for other recipes that might involve common ingredients. For example, you might plan to make beef chili as well as beef macaroni casserole. Both dishes might involve onions and other similar ingredients (this helps cut down on grocery costs).

Some people really do use their freezers for “once-a-month cooking,” with no exaggeration. If you are so inclined, you can plan to serve similar recipes all month long (maybe with some repeat nights thrown in for good measure). You can then come up with a shopping list, go out and get everything on the same day, and then the next day, you can prepare all of your food for that month. This isn’t as hard as it sounds, because each time you do a step which is involved in more than one meal, you make enough for all your meals. With our example above, you cook enough beef for both the casserole and the chili, and you chop and sauté the onions for both simultaneously.

Even if the meal assembly plan doesn’t appeal to you, you can still make good use of freezer containers for food. With these containers, you can store leftovers instead of trying to eat them when you are already full (or throwing them away). Those leftovers later can be used to assemble meals in the future. Now and again you can enjoy a free, effortless meal this way.

If you’re not using your freezer to its fullest advantage, it is a great idea to stock up on a few sealable round freezer containers. That way you can start freezing your leftovers instead of wasting them, and you can also start learning the basics of meal assembly. Cooking doesn’t have to take up hours each day when you choose an efficient path and keep food fresh in the freezer over the weeks to come! You’ll also appreciate how much money you manage to save when you decide to cook this way!