As fall begins, and the weather gets colder, home cooks tend to start trotting out their favorite cold-weather meals. Cooks turn to foods that would be too warm or heavy for the summer months, but ones that they’re excited to try again as soon as autumn turns cool.
Of course, as soon as you start making those meals, you’ll realize that you have months and months of cool weather ahead and will probably want to revisit those meals in the coming months. So why not take advantage of that now and make some of these meals early?
Here are four meals you can prepare in advance for the winter months that will make it so much easier to just come home and enjoy a delicious low-cost dinner. No takeout, no delivery, no expensive foods — just delicious, low-cost dishes you’ve made yourself.
Before you start cooking, you might want to get a few containers to store this stuff.
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Chili. Everyone has a favorite variation on chili. Some like it with beans. Others insist it isn’t chili if it has any beans. Some require that it has meat of various kinds while others prefer vegetarian chili. Regardless of the variation, chili is a wonderful cold-weather meal, and it’s easy to prepare in advance.
Just find a cool fall day and make a giant batch of chili — triple or quadruple your normal amount. Save your extra chili in some soup containers and toss them in the freezer. Thaw them and reheat them when you need them — it takes almost no time at all on a winter evening. It’s as easy as that.
Tomato soup. This is relatively simple to make, but as with the chili, nothing beats the simplicity of warming up a container of it on a cold winter’s night. So, again, make a giant batch of it in the fall, store it in those containers in the freezer and thaw them as needed.
What’s a great basic tomato soup recipe? Mince two onions and three garlic cloves, saute them in a bit of butter, add them to a large 28-ounce can of stewed tomatoes and three cups of your favorite stock (chicken or vegetable) and a small can of tomato paste. Let it all simmer for 15 minutes, then blend to a puree in a blender. Add some salt and pepper to taste. That’s it. Just multiply that recipe as needed.
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Chicken strips. These are easy to make and easy to customize to your tastes. One method is to take a pound of chicken breast, slice it into strips, marinate them in a few cups of buttermilk and a little salt and pepper for half an hour, then dredge them through gently crushed corn flakes and Parmesan cheese. Bake them on a wire rack at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 12 minutes until done.
Once you have this assembly line set up, just make a ton of the strips and freeze the extras (try freezing them all on a sheet, then adding the frozen strips to a bag or another container). Then, all you have to do is microwave them or bake them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for five minutes or so when you want some chicken strips.
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Taco bake. This make-ahead meal is really easy to prepare, really tasty and really filling. It’s warm and delightful, even in the winter months. All you need is the normal stuff you’d use to assemble a taco, minus the lettuce. Whatever you like in a taco, use it here. Just stick with soft tortillas instead of hard shells.
Take those ingredients, pull out a 9-by-13-inch pan with a lid (Glad OvenWare is great if you’re making meals to stick in a freezer), spray it down with a nonstick spray of your choice, then add layers of the stuff you like. Add a layer of tortilla shells, a thin layer of salsa, a layer of hamburger, a layer of black beans, a layer of cheese and repeat. Add or subtract those layers as you wish. Keep the layers pretty thin so that you can have more layers, and keep the liquid to a minimum. If you fill up a 9-by-13-inch pan, and it’s fully thawed at refrigerator temperature, it’ll bake in about an hour. All you have to do is pull it from the freezer a couple of days early and let it rest in the refrigerator to thaw, then bake it when you need an evening meal.
These four options make it easy to load up your freezer with warm, hearty meals you inexpensively made yourself that are really convenient to put on the table on a cold winter evening. Good luck.
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Make These 4 Prepare-Ahead Meals to Save You Money All Winter originally appeared on usnews.com
