The Pioneer Woman Recap: Freeze!

Ree has returned after a few week break and she’s sharing one of my favorite kitchen tricks: freezer meals.

Making and freezing meals ahead of time is a great time saver when your schedule is packed. It also happens to be a great way to show someone that you care. Think about it: when a friend is sick or is having a baby, what do you do?

Make them some food and take it over to their house. When a friend is moving and is up to their ears in moving boxes and the stress of getting their lives transferred from one house to another, what do you do? You make them dinner and take it to their house.

I’ve never heard of someone who doesn’t appreciate the gift of a hot, home cooked dinner. 

This week on Pioneer Woman, Ree is making all sorts of freezer friendly meals to take to Ladd’s grandma’s house. Edna Mae lives by herself, and Ree wants to bring her some individually portioned meals that she can easily pull from the freezer and heat up whenever she wants.

Everyone could use some fantastic freezer friendly recipes and Ree is sharing a few extremely scrumptious options

Probably the most classic freezer meal is lasagna and Ree’s Veggie Lasagna Rollups are great for making individual portions. Instead of a meat sauce, this lasagna recipe has a hearty vegetable sauce that gets spooned over cute little lasagna rolls.

The sauce is made with sautéed onion, garlic, summer squash, zucchini, mushrooms, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, white wine and crushed red pepper. To get this lasagna ready to freeze, Ree is using disposable foil loaf pans.

She adds a scoop of the veggie sauce to the bottom of each pan. She then spreads cooked lasagna noodles a mixture of ricotta, eggs, parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and parsley. The noodles get rolled up and placed on top of the veggie sauce. Each little pan holds three rollups which is pretty perfect for one person. The rollups get a second scoop of sauce over the top and then topped with a generous amount of mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese.

Then Ree covers them in foil and pops them in the freezer. The best thing about these rollups is that they can be baked directly from the freezer. Easy peasy.

Next up on this freezer friendly cook-a-thon is Ree’s Perfect Potato Soup. Soup is probably a close second to lasagna when it comes to freezer friendly favorites. Most soups freeze beautifully, and this potato soup recipe is no exception.

Ree starts the soup by browning up bacon that will be the topping for this soup. To the same pot that she cooked the bacon, she adds carrot, onion and celery. Next she adds diced potatoes and seasons it with salt and pepper.

Vegetable or Chicken stock act as the liquid for the soup and after a bit more seasoning and simmering time, Ree blends up her soup in her trusty Blendtec before adding a bit of cream. Ree divides the soup up into plastic pint containers for freezing and even portions out the crispy bacon and shredded cheese for garish.

The soup can be thawed in the fridge over night and then reheated, or even added to a sauce pan frozen along with a bit of water to reheat. This soup looks creamy and extremely satisfying.

For a little freezer friendly snack or side dish to a bowl of soup or salad, Ree is making a bunch of Cheese Toast for Edna Mae. It’s pretty much what it sounds like a loaf of french bread that is spread with a mixture of three different cheeses, mayonnaise and softened butter. The bread gets cut into portions and wrapped in foil and frozen.

To heat the cheese toast it can go straight from the freezer into the oven. Super simple, right?

Last on the list of freezer foods for Edna Mae, Ree is making some basic waffles that can be frozen and reheated in the toaster - just like the store-bought kind, but better! Her waffle recipe is just flour, baking soda, salt and sugar that get sifted together. Then she mixes milk, egg yolks and vanilla.

The wet ingredients get stirred into the dry ingredients before adding melted butter and whipped egg whites. The resulting waffles look golden brown and heavenly! What a great make ahead idea that can be used for breakfast or topped with fruit for dessert.

When Ree arrives at Edna Mae’s with her truck full of food, it’s obvious that Edna Mae and Ree have a special relationship. They are so sweet together as Ree loads up her freezer. Edna Mae seems particularly excited about the lasagna. Can you blame her?

Thanks for reading - and be sure to visit our section of Pioneer Woman recipes today!