– Benjamin hi Are you in your bouncy? You are
Now today we're gonna bust through chicken pot pies, manicotti, sausage and rice baked, baked chicken spaghetti, pizza casserole with zucchini, orange sesame chicken and bacon egg rolls Hey friends so it is day two of my freezer cooking It's not gonna be like a freezer cooking day though because by the time I get started it's gonna be like 5:30 in the evening I've just been putter and doing other things I want to do because you know that's my motto I just do what I want to do
I've been doing those things for much of today and now I'm gonna go on a nice big hike with the kids – Hey mommy – Hi sweetie and then I'm gonna let loose in the kitchen I'm probably gonna end up going I don't know, 5:30 till 11 or so but I'm hoping to bust out all those meals that I did a lot of meal prepping for tomorrow So here we go on our big walk first
Okay we're in our forest now and Liam wants to show something Okay Liam ready set go Oh yeah Oh awesome yes I found those at Walmart marked down to five dollars
As a Star Wars mom I could not not get those so I got everybody a set because they were regular you know like $1999 $20 so for five dollars in the clearance section I was like yes You got your light saver Daniel? Okay so I must be like a kid who doesn't want to clean their room but we got back from our hike and around and now I've been resting and watching the kids play I've almost found my motivation It's gonna happen, these meals are going to get done
(mumbles) So what have you been doing in this hammock Gabriel? (laughs) Wow look at this kid (laughs) How do you get yourself out of that Gabriel? – I have no idea – [Jamerrill] Well I was sitting here having my rest and I was watching him do this and I said okay, the internet friends need to see this Wow yeah you unspin faster, there you go then you can stick your feet out – This is how I get out
– [Jamerrill] And your clothes are wet because why country boy? – I asked Naomi to pour water on me – [Jamerrill] You're a forest explorer aren't you? (laughs) Gabriel you look so much older to me when I'm looking at you I know how what are you now? – Nine – Nine Now friends who've been watching our videos the last four years Gabriel you were five when I started doing YouTube
Okay but wait before I get going on freezer cooking I'm in here now talking to Travis and I told Travis if I'm gonna start vlogging more he's gonna show up some more So he's doing car guy stuff You have to see this before you see freezer cooking Okay he's replacing universal joints – [Travis] In the driveshaft
– [Jamerrill] On his driveshaft you hear this ladies Universal joints, driveshaft – [Travis] C-clip is rusted in there – C-clip is rusted in there – Right here
– Right there – Part of it broke off Trying to dig it out of there so I can push this out with my clamp here and then we'll push a new one in – We made you talk, yay Okay so here we go for real now
So I came in these are all of my new ginormous I think they're like 10 by 15 glass baking dishes I had Zion rinse those out for me These were a few more bowls I had soaked in from last night So I have slowly been investing in glass baking dishes for my freezer cooking but I want to encourage you especially if you're just starting out you do not have to have big thick sturdy baking dishes to get going with your freezer cooking I have been doing this a while
When I first started freezer cooking back when I had three small children and I was working full-time outside of the house as a nurse I had three like old funky I probably got it from the thrift store baking pans and they were metal and so I would just make an extra pan lasagna or an extra kind of like rice bake or whatever it was I was doing and I would freeze those for the weekends when I worked or I would make like a big pot of soup, big pot of spaghetti sauce, some sort of big pot meal so that when my husband was home with the three small children and I was working that 36 to 40 hours within three night shifts he wouldn't have to think too much about food since he was home with little kids all weekend We know how that goes People wanted to know if you can actually use glass for freezer cooking So yes you can, now of course you have to follow the manufacturers directions and all of those disclaimers so when people are looking to not do freezer cooking and use a lot of aluminum products it's pretty common for people to use glass baking dishes
You do want to make sure those are thoroughly defrosted You don't want to put ice cold from the freezer pans into your oven That is where from what I've read glass can break Now I have frozen glass before, I've never personally had a problem with it All that to say don't let not having all the perfect things that you need up front stop you from freezer cooking
You can do a whole lot in freezer bags I have read and several of my YouTube viewers have suggested that if you wrap your pan you can freeze your meal and then you do like a flash freeze once your meal is frozen you can take it out of the pan, put it into a freezer bag or wrap it securely with freezer paper and plastic wrap and then the day that you need it you would just remove all of that, put it back into the baking dish, let it defrost and then cook it as normal So there's lots of different ways you can do that So those are like all my disclaimer saying hey, I got a bunch new glass baking pans that are also freezer and oven safe I'm excited to use them but I say again please don't let it hold you back
If we don't match you just get started wherever you are Okay so looking at our list here where we left off last night and if you missed all of this, I have a big freezer meal prep day I did yesterday It was ended up being about eight hours which included real-life interruptions, cleanup time etc I cooked a ton of sausage, a ton of chicken, a ton of ground beef I did a big stockpot of vegetable beef soup, a big stockpot of quinoa tortellini sausage soup and I both cooked my rice and my noodles today and I made 144 mini meat loaves
So it was a good session now today we're gonna bust through chicken pot pies, manicotti, sausage and rice bake, baked chicken spaghetti, pizza casserole with zucchini which also I don't have any squash I would normally put squash in it too but Walmart didn't fulfill that part of my order We're gonna do orange sesame chicken and baked egg rolls and just going through what I have prepped and ready I think I'm gonna actually do this a little backwards backwards in how I have it written I'm gonna start down here This orange sesame chicken is actually a slow cooker recipe which you can do big, in bulk in actually the instant pot or the slow cooker
I'm gonna get mine going in the slow cooker because I may need my instant pots for something else I shall see long story short I'm gonna get that cooking and then I'm gonna jump to doing baked egg rolls and just kind of go and where inspiration hits to get it all done Getting all of our ingredients over here so I can get the orange sesame chicken I am going to use the instant pots I decided I would do it instant pot wise because I get lots of instant pot requests and so the only difference would be if you would go to do it in your slow cooker
You're gonna want your chicken to be defrosted first You're gonna dump in all of these ingredients I'm getting ready to show you and then you would let it cook on low for about four to six hours and then after we get this orange sesame chicken moving then we'll get the egg rolls bacon because that's what the family is feeling like for dinner anyway So that'll be great I will feed that to them and freeze 90% of it and then we'll move on to the next recipes What I have done in both of my electric pressure cookers, I'm doing 10 pounds of this orange sesame chicken right now So I have 10 pounds total
I put a little more than half in my 14 quart and then more of the chicken breast over here in my eight-quart then I'm gonna add in a cup of barbecue sauce and we're gonna do marmalade I got my OJ all those wonderful ingredients that are gonna all come together to make orange sesame chicken One cup of barbecue sauce going in and then one cup of orange juice and this is funny I only got a gallon of orange juice and this morning I just had a little bit left and I got it to make this recipe so I said I need rest for recipe I didn't even say the rest but they got the point and saved me just a little bit so I could get this chicken made Next I'm adding in one cup of marmalade into each pressure cooker and not that I'm being such a health conscious perfect person
So there's a sense I just put marmalade and barbecue sauce and orange juice with this chicken but I do have some of this natural soy sauce alternative I'm going to use a half a cup and each pressure cooker if all you have is regular old soy sauce, I've done that too Use what you have and then we're going to add in two tablespoons each of sesame seed oil and you still need to put in a little bit of minced garlic and then I'm going to do a tablespoon in each of this ginger paste I'm gonna just be a lazy instant pot user and use manual I had it up high for frozen meat I was cooking last night
I was doing a whole bunch of ground beef but anyway with the frozen chicken and everything else, 30 minutes on manual Okay Benjamin is making everything sound like a pet shop in the background now He's making all kinds of cute noises but sealing this pressure cooker I'm gonna set it to pressure and it is locked So again on this one pressure time it is just manual high to 30 minutes
So here's the aftermath I have to clean up now and then next we'll be working on those baked egg rolls So I'm getting my Dutch oven here going with my various filling for the baked egg rolls I just put one can of bean sprouts in there, getting ready to put another can in and also some sliced water chestnuts These are not my absolute favorite but it's a good egg roll filling and other people in my house like them So I take one for the team
Here is the egg roll filling I'm going to put a lid on this so that the vegetables soften I ended up putting in the two cans of bean sprouts, a small can of water chestnuts This is eight cups of ochita This is just the matchstick carrots
Let's see what else is in here About four tablespoons of minced garlic, also four cups of green onions I had a whole lot of green onion I wanted to use it up and I don't think anyone is really gonna know whenever this is all cooked down So again gonna put my lid on this now and work on some other steps
So a lot of the vegetables have reduced down I just put in six cups of shredded chicken and I'm going to stir this back up and then get the lid on So here is the complete filling, our egg roll mixture and now I'm going to get the egg rolls out and we're gonna start wrapping and rolling and baking them up So I just took this first pan of egg rolls out of the oven and ma'am they look good I've got another pan in the oven
Now I'm going to show you how I'm wrapping them I started to just wrap them then just put them on this little platter here and then I'll probably lay some wet paper towels over them until I get another baking dish available or another baking pan or whatever So while I'm doing this I'm just keeping some wet paper towels here These little egg roll wrappers are very thin I'm just laying one of those out
The directions on the back of the wrapper say three tablespoons of whatever you're filling I just eyeball it of course I'm doing like three spoonfuls Yes large family-style egg rolls So then I'm just pulling up the bottom part and wrapping it tight
Pulling in both of my sides and then wrapping it this way Of course it's all real delicate but it works Here's another pan that we just pulled out So over here bagging egg rolls but I wanted to stop and show you this is the 10 pounds of orange sesame chicken I put all the chicken in here and then with the broth we'll call it that was in one of these pressure cookers
I added about another five tablespoons of cornstarch with the lid off of course I put the pressure cooker on saute I actually did this over here in my instant pot and then I thickened up the broth that was left in this instant pot and then I poured that as the sauce on all of the chicken I sprinkled some sesame seeds on it I'm gonna let it cool now, we'll get it bagged up for the freezer and then if you go over to largefamilytable
com I'll show the thawing process and what it looks like Hot over rice Several of you have asked to see like before-and-after pictures of my meals I don't always get those on YouTube but also on the blog any recipe that I do is going to have actual like before and after and during the process pictures That's part of why I do that for you guys because hard for me to get my mouth open about all the things over here
So little update where we are now where actually it is late and the kids are in bed and let's see what have I gotten done Well I got the orange sesame chicken done, I got 60 of the chicken baked egg rolls Right now I have another filling made where I'm going to do 60 more sausage and teriyaki egg rolls I have decided to not do the sausage and rice bake in favor of using that sausage for these egg rolls I thought that's fine
There always there always seems to be one that I end up skipping So that's the one I'm skipping for this time Right now I've got noodles boiling for the baked chicken spaghetti and what else am I working on? I need to back up put the orange sesame chicken that has been cooling and then I'm gearing up to do trying to decide okay Jamerrill brain, which one of these four? Which one of these four? Well I guess we shall see what I find myself working on here in a few minutes So what I am working on now I just got done mixing together the filling minus the noodles for the baked creamy chicken spaghetti So this was three of the family size cans of cream of mushroom soup that will be my sin that will get me in trouble
So cream of mushroom soup we have three cups of sour cream, I have six cups of mozzarella, have a seven ounce can of green chilies and then I have about four pounds of shredded chicken Now I'm going to drain the noodles and get that mixed up in here then we're gonna put in our baking pans and also top it with chits Here are the four pans These are 10 by 15 deep dish of the baked creamy chicken spaghetti Four of those done so crossing that off
So now I'm going for a bunch of homemade chicken pot pies That's a whole lot of butter So it's a total of eight cups of butter You can see the evidence here I had some regular salted butter and then a whole bunch of Kerrygold butters had to be sacrificed for the making of these homemade chicken pot pies Also freezer cooking confessions
This is the am time not the pm time but remember, I didn't start really until after 7:00 p
m and the kids have been long gone, gone to bed and that's that So I'm just gonna cook the night away and sleep in in the morning and go team go Okay so now the butter is melted I'm going to add in the flour So manicotti is underway this early early Saturday morning
This is a 10 by 15 pan so I've got about 13 stuffed manicotti rolls in here I'm also going to put on two cups of shredded mozzarella and get another pan going So late-night freezer cooking continues We got five of these pans of manicotti that are going out in the freezer Here are my three in the morning tail end of the egg rolls
The last of the stuff is going in the freezer I'm leaving the great big freezer cooking kitchen mess till we get up late tomorrow because it's Saturday definitely gonna sleep in but my list is done So tomorrow when I am more coherent I will share the list with you guys So friends it's a couple days past my freezer cooking time I think it's like two days after we had Father's Day yesterday Went up to the Northern Virginia DC area for that
Today is a home day We're gonna bust through a lot of big housecleaning, those kind of things but I wanted to wrap up and let you know my freezer cooking final numbers for my last two freezer cooking sessions I'm gonna show you how everything turned out in my freezer So total I ended up doing it was about eight hours of cooking on both days On my Thursday freezer cooking time and on my Friday freezer cooking time which you know on Friday I was wild and crazy and I did freezer cooking from 7 p
m to about 3:23 am What I ended up with were about 40 or so large family-style meals that we will just add into our meal plan as needed What I've been doing lately is of course I plan or so my big shopping trips for a month
I freezer cook knowing that these meals are good for up to three months sometimes a little more but then I look at our life and what we have going on for each individual week and I plan what we're going to eat for that week based on what is happening Like yesterday we were up near DC, tomorrow we're going to be going to the lake all day Actually Wednesday I'm going up to DC for Zion's birthday Thursday we're going to Ikea which is another out-of-town trip and then Friday I think we're home most of the day but we're going to go see The Incredibles two that night So not all weeks have where we're buzzing in and out all day every day but summertime homeschool family we have the freedom to do that any time of year right So you just never know with our weeks
I have to kind of drill down individually All that to say if you go over to largefamilytablecom I will have the recipes for all the meals I made and any other final drill down numbers if you are interested in any recipes or I like to sit down and kind of process my thoughts and I give a play-by-play of how the freezer cooking days went over on the blog So now I'm gonna take you out to show you those freezers Okay I think with the humidity going from the air conditioning house outside I think it's like 93 and humid in Virginia today even in the wilderness you can see Travis is a backhoe behind me
So I've mentioned this in a few vlogs what we have going on is I got a new refrigerator for my kitchen My kitchen refrigerator is still yeehaw just like a country woman out on my back deck Until we get Travis's truck out of the garage we get the bookshelves from Ikea built, we get the book boxes out of the garage, see everything builds upon one another We're doing so many big projects around our house Things don't happen quick around here
It takes us a little bit to get it done all that to say it's why I'm showing you the freezer that's currently on my deck that will live in the garage until that living room project finally happens but we're gonna get our fences done and test things out if you know what I mean That way first So in this freezer at the moment all it is and here pretty much is my soups and then I have some of my meatloaf minis down there but that is all that is living in this freezer for the moment Okay so I just unlocked it So here is the state of my ginormous freezer and yes now you see all those chicken nuggets up there
That is from I had a four day speaking trip I went out of town for Sorry my dog's are barking in the background Anyway I had that four day speaking trip I had no freezer cooking done beforehand and so to make it easy on Travis I ordered him from Walmart grocery pick up a bunch of like chicken nuggets, fish sticks, just real life dad food Mom's out of town and there's no freezer meals in the freezer and they actually didn't even end up using
I think they might have used like two bags of the nuggets They ended up not needing it but that's our emergency freezer dad food for now and so here's the rest of what is in my freezer right now A lot of these meals in the glass pans and here we've got some various meat, more freezer meals in the pans, there's another one there here are some egg rolls, down here is some bulk meat that's already precooked and some more casseroles and yeah so this is how jammed up the freezer is at the moment Here's the orange chicken, down here I've got some shrimp other veggies in the door So there's the freezer that's how it turned out after these last two freezer cooking days
So there you go guys be sure to like this video If you like my large family freezer cooking videos, comment down in those comments below because I always have fun chatting with you guys down there and head over to largefamilytablecom to see the full the recipe breakdowns, all the directions, lots of pictures again I know you guys asked me like what do these meals look like when they're done I have pictures on the blog in every single recipe I have pictures of the steps I take to make it and then what they look like when we eat it I may not always get those over on YouTube
There's always hope that'll do that though I would like to film one of those like what we ate this week type videos but that's it I'll see you next time with another brand new video Bye bye
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