Lindsey Baumgren shows how to make three beef freezer meals: Italian quinoa bake, Szechuan stir-fry, and crock-pot stew. Cool everything before freezing, use glass or Ziploc bags, and label for three months. Thaw overnight in the fridge, then reheat on the stove, oven, or crock-pot.
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Hi, I'm Lindsey Baumgren of Nourish Move Love, and today I'm showing you how to make three easy beef dinners. Italian beef, quinoa bake, a Szechuan beef stir fry, and a crock pot beef and veggie stew. We're gonna have all these meals prepped and ready, and I'm gonna show you how. I'm stocking my freezer for maternity leave, so let me show you how to put these meals in the freezer for the next three months. Let's get started with the Italian beef. Quinn, you can see I have the whole dish prepped and ready. Here we have a layer of uncooked quinoa followed by a bunch of veggies. And then I did brown the ground beef, and I let it cool completely before I put it in the dish because we don't want to have any heat in the dish. We want it to be completely cool before it goes into the freezer, topped with some marinara cheese and some basil. So this is ready to go in the freezer. It's in a 3 quart Pyrex glass dish. And this is how I'm going to store it in the freezer. I'm simply going to take this lid, put it on nice and tight, and this bad boy is going to go in the freezer for up to three months of safe storage. I pull it out, pop it directly in my oven for about 60 minutes, and it's going to be an amazing family dinner. Next, we have a Szechuan beef stir fry. So I have this all prepped and ready in a gallon Ziploc bag. And what we have here is stir fry veggies along the bottom, and then my sirloin steak chopped into smaller chunks along the top with a little minced garlic on top. I'm also going to add the sauce before I throw this in the freezer, so then marinades, and it'll all freeze together. So it'll freeze just like this for up to three months in this gallon Ziploc bag. Again, I choose this gallon Ziploc bag because it's an easy way for me to fit it into my freezer. I'm limited on storage space, but you could always use a glass dish if that's better for you in your freezer. Then from here, we're going to pull this out. When we're ready, let it on, thaw in the fridge for six to eight hours overnight. And from there, I'll simply toss it in a skillet on the stove for about 15 minutes. And I got dinner ready to go in less than 15 minutes. Minutes. So that is our Szechuan beef stir fry and easy freezer meal prepped and ready to go. And finally we have crock pot beef and veggie loaded stew. So here again you can see I have all the ingredients ready to go in a gallon freezer Ziploc bag. Again, I'm using the freezer bag because it's just more storage savvy for my small freezer. But you could always use a glass container if that works better for you. And so what we have here is all of our stew veggies, plus our stew meat which is still raw on top. And then I'm also gonna add my diced tomato to this mixture and I'm gonna throw this whole thing in the freezer for up to three months and it's gonna freeze up and be nice and ready for me. When I'm ready, I'll grab it from the freezer, throw it in my fridge to thaw for about five to six hours or overnight. And then I'm gonna throw it in a crock pot for another five to six hours. So throw it in in the morning. And then once you throw it in, you're also going to have to add a couple more ingredients like beef broth, maybe some herbs, spices, garlic, and then use a little cornstarch or a little flour to thicken up the mixture. So that's all in the post below, but those are the ingredients you're going to add. And there you go, you have beef and veggie stew. And that's how I'm stocking my freezer with protein packed beef and veggie meals for maternity leave with hopes I can feed my family with little hassle. You can find all these recipes in the blog post below and you can get more recipes@mnbeef.org.
