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Video Summary
Good morning everyone! Today I’m doing a massive freezer meal prep session because life happened and we went through all our freezer meals – we only have two left! I’m planning to make cornbread sloppy joes, Asian meatballs, chicken alfredo bake, spaghetti gnocchi bake, chicken pot pie gnocchi bake, cottage pie, and a minestrone-inspired soup. I start around 7:30 in the morning with my decaf coffee and work my way through multiple recipes simultaneously, using my Instant Pot for the chicken alfredo, the oven for meatballs and cornbread, and the stovetop for multiple ground beef mixtures. I’m using lots of home-canned ingredients like turkey stock from Thanksgiving 2021, canned chicken, and home-grown carrots and celery from my garden. I also make homemade gnocchi from scratch using instant potato flakes (which I’ve been trying to use up) and demonstrate how to shape them with a fork. I use smaller pans than the typical 9×13 because we’re just a family of two and I don’t want us eating the same meal three or four times in one week. After about five hours of straight cooking, I end up with 16 large meals plus additional individual servings – probably around 20-some meals total including four individual chicken pot pies, three cornbread sloppy joes, three cottage pies, two gnocchi bakes, two Asian meatball dishes, two chicken alfredos, three additional gnocchi portions, and a modified Tuscan soup. This feels fantastic knowing we’re stocked up for many meals to come!
Video Transcript
Good morning everyone, welcome back to another video. My name is Kari and this is Keep It Simple DIY. Today I’m going to be making a bunch of freezer meals. Now you might be saying, “Kari, didn’t you just tell us that you had enough freezer meals to last for months?” Yes, so I guess I did, but life happened and we went through them. We only have two left in the freezer, and so it’s about time to restock.
So what we’re going to be doing today is, let me grab my list. I’m going to be making some cornbread sloppy joes, Asian meatballs, chicken alfredo bake. I want to do a spaghetti gnocchi bake, a chicken pot pie gnocchi bake, cottage pie, and potentially a mini minestrone with turkey meatballs soup type of thing. I don’t have minestrone noodles and I’m not sure I want to make the meatballs, so we’ll see how we go with that.
I’m ready for the morning. I have my decaf coffee with sugar-free syrup and I have my water. And so the first thing that I want to do is get our alfredo cooking in the Instant Pot. I did something like this recently just because I had not much time and I just wanted to throw everything in. It worked perfectly, so I’m going to do it again. Let me bring you in close.
To get this going, I’m going to do some ziti. Last time I used, I don’t know, some other kind of noodle. I’m only using probably about, I don’t know, 12 ounces or so. I’m not using a whole box. So what I’m going to do here is add enough water just to cover the noodles.
All right, I’ve got our noodles just barely covered, and I just realized I think I wanted to use turkey stock to do that. So let’s drain the water. We’ll use turkey stock instead. Now what I’m going to do is add enough turkey stock just to cover those noodles. I canned this turkey stock in November of 2021. I think this is my last jar that is using a wide mouth.
All right, turkey stock in. I need a little bit more to be able to cover. Okay, I’m gonna add another one. I want to move the noodles around to make sure I’m not putting too much. Yes, I use my hand. It’s fine. They’re going to be cooked and any bacteria will be cooked off, but I did wash my hands really well. Okay. Okay, I still have a little bit left. I’m just gonna set this back. We’ll use it for something else.
And I have canned chicken. Gonna dump this in as well. That was one good pint of canned chicken going in. Break apart the chicken. And I’m going to add a whole jar of alfredo sauce, and then I just added some water to get the rest of the alfredo sauce out. And I am going to add a little bit of salt and pepper. You probably don’t need too much. Now the broth isn’t salted, so I did need to add a little bit there.
And then I am going to also add some peas. Typically you would want to add, well nope, they actually are good. I will add peas towards the end, so I’m actually just going to set them next to it. I thought my peas were going to need to be cooked for a long time because I didn’t pre-cook them, but it looks like once they’ve thawed they’ve gotten soft. So let me set these over, and I’m going to actually put this on the other side of my counter so I still have some working room.
All right, we’ll put the lid on, set it to sealing, and I’m going to use the rice setting and hit start. I never use the plus minus minutes. I know a lot of people only use those, but I have no idea how long anything takes, so however long rice takes is how long I’m going to cook that.
While I’m at it, I’m going to preheat the oven. Whoa, not bake time, not self-clean either. Goodness, you’d think I’d never used my oven before, right? Bake. I think it’s, I’m using my other hand. I usually use my right hand. I’m using my left hand. Anyways, okay, 400.
I have some water back here. I am going to get the water going. All right, moving right along. I have the first recipe down, so now we’re waiting for that one to cook. I’m gonna get the cornbread going. I do need two eggs. I have all the ingredients out here. And you know, I didn’t grab a spatula. We’ll grab that in just a second. I also didn’t mention it’s about 7:30 in the morning, hoping to get this done in just a few hours.
Break these up a little bit before I add anything else. I need a quarter cup of vegetable oil and three quarters cup of milk. And for the milk, I have powdered milk. For something like this, a baked good, powdered milk works great. About just about three quarters of water. I’ll add the other part of that three quarters of milk. And the milk is three tablespoons powder to seven eighths to seven eighths cup water for a full cup. So this is a quarter cup. Probably don’t need the full thing. Okay, we are cruising this morning.
Half a teaspoon of salt. Do I have the salt? Nope. Well, that’s all of that. And half a cup of sugar. And then how much cornmeal do we need? Three quarters of a cup of cornmeal. Whoa, so I’m gonna do a half a cup and a half my half a cup. I really like my measuring cups because all of them have a little like half guide. Let me show you. So this is my half cup, but inside there’s like that halfway mark, which is fantastic. It makes it really easy for measuring.
Okay, so we did that, and then now we need to add flour. Did I get everything? Nope. Three teaspoons of baking powder. Let me grab my, excuse me, flour. Baking powder, three teaspoons. One, almost two, and we’re gonna call that three. I will refill this one too. We’ll double, let’s double check. Let’s see, eggs, flour, baking powder, cornmeal, salt, sugar, vegetable oil, and milk. We got it all.
So this cornbread mixture, what I’m going to do for the cornbread sloppy joes, I’m going to put the cornbread down first and then we’re going to bake it. And then once it’s cooled, I will add a sloppy joe mixture on top and then top it with cheese. And it’s delicious. I’ve made it quite a few times. I don’t typically repeat recipes very often, so if I am repeating recipes, you know it was a good one, or that I’m trying to use things up, or both.
These are the trays I’m going to use today. You know, I thought I was just looking at it from the back side because I couldn’t tell what it said. And then I can tell it says Jet Foil and like a number below it, but I’m pretty sure everything in this stamp is not in English or like letters to begin with, a different language that I don’t know.
So I’m going to be using these today. These are smaller than like your typical 9×13 pan because we are just a family of two. And if I make a whole 9×13 pan, I find that we then have to eat that much of that same thing, which means we’re eating it three or four times in a week, and that’s just too much. So I like to make these, make them smaller, and then I can take like two of these out so that we have enough food for a 9×13 for the whole week, but we don’t have to eat the same thing over and over again.
I’m just going to bake them right in here. So let’s evenly distribute this batter. And I think it’s gonna make three, but I will just watch as I pour and see if I think I only need to do two. I’ve never used this specific cornbread recipe, so I’m hoping it turns out well.
I actually think it might only be, well, thing is I don’t want to put too much down because if I put too much it’ll puff up a ton. So I’m gonna actually, yeah, I’m gonna do three because I want to have enough room to put the sloppy joes on top. I don’t just want to make a big tray of cornbread.
My oven’s actually still preheating, so I’m going to get these on a tray. Oh well, they’re put on this tray. Yeah, I’m going to put them on the tray. That way they’re easier to get out. You know, it’s still preheating, but I think we’re gonna be fine. I’m going to stick these in the oven now. I’m expecting those to only take like 10 minutes or so.
So in the meantime, I do want to start working on the sloppy joes. So let’s go over to the stove. Okay, sloppy joe recipe calls for two pounds of ground beef. There we go. There’s the oven.
All right, I’ve added some onions to our ground beef, and you’ll notice I also got two other pots with ground beef and onion cooking. I know I could have done them all in one pot, but what I’ve done is I’ve separated them by recipe. That way I can just add the other ingredients. So what I have here is, this is going to be the spaghetti sauce for the gnocchi bake, and I might need to add a little oil in there. This one is for our sloppy joes, and this one, what else am I making? This one’s for our cottage pie.
All right, cornbread looks great. Give this one a mix. Two teaspoons of yellow mustard, one, two. Garlic powder, salt. And while I’m salting here, I’m going to salt here and I’m going to salt here. Pepper, some. And while peppering there, I’ll pepper here and pepper here. And then I need two tablespoons of brown sugar, one and two. And we need to finish getting a full cup of ketchup. They’re probably good there.
Okay, I’m gonna let these flavors come together for a little bit and then we’ll give it a taste test. In the meantime, I want to stir this. And we can probably add everything there. Oh, I forgot to add the corn. There’s corn that goes in there. Okay, one can of corn going in. We did drain that corn. We’ll mix it up again. I’m going to turn this one way down.
Okay, this is just going to simmer. And for our cottage pie, we need, well, you need some garlic powder and carrots. Okay, in the carrots. There’s another home canned. And I just mentioned these carrots are home canned, but they’re also homegrown. These were my purple carrots. That’s why they’re a little funny color.
So it’s frozen celery. I actually grew the celery in the garden. A little odd, I’m thinking, to put celery in there, but we’re gonna go for it. I need some tomato paste.
In the meantime, our Instant Pot has come down in pressure. I just want to open it up, see how it looks. It does look watery. I was expecting that. So it actually works out just fine. I’m going to add the peas. The liquid will soak into the noodles after just a little bit, and once we put them in the trays and re-bake them, we’ll want that extra liquid. And these aren’t too cooked through, which is great. I’m just going to mix this together and then I’m just going to let it sit here for a little bit.
It calls for two tablespoons of tomato paste. This one, do you guys see that? I almost put it in the wrong one. I’m gonna try not to hit the side of the can too much with the metal. The extra tomato paste I’m going to use for our spaghetti.
There, thyme and rosemary. Getting not much in there, but we’ll use the rest of that. I need to refill rosemary and thyme. And you know, I’m not a big herbs and spices person. Some people go crazy putting a ton of herbs and spices in. That’s just not me. I just, I don’t know, sometimes it’s just too strong of flavors. I’m gonna turn this off. I do want to taste it, but I’m in the middle of this, so well, let’s do it.
I’m gonna let it sit for a minute on a paper towel. A cup of water, paprika. And then what I’m gonna do is I don’t have beef broth. Wait, no, not that. I’m gonna use this, the Knorr brand. So yeah, we got one in here, in here. Stir this up.
This is looking to me like it needs corn or something else, maybe some more peas. Yeah, let me add peas. Peas sound good. We’re just going to let this one simmer for a little bit to get the flavors to combine. I’m going to mix this up. Let’s give this a taste test. It’s been sitting out for a while. It’s probably cold now.
Okay, yep, it’s gonna be good. To me, is there anything that it needs? Let me think. I feel like it usually has more of a sauce to it than what I was just tasting, but it could just be because it was cold. So let’s try a piece that’s not super cold and see if I don’t burn my mouth. Yep, that’s good, but maybe a little more ketchup.
I’m going to turn this, oh I just did. I turned the stove off without even thinking about it, because these will go on top of our cornbread. So I’m actually going to take this off the stove in just a second so it can cool down. Let me add some garlic powder and onion powder to this. Oh, I did add something. I don’t remember, but you can never go wrong with more garlic.
I’m going to add the rest of the tomato paste in here, and then I’ll grab the tomato sauce. Okay, in goes the sauce. And I know that that sauce is a little on the bitter side, so I’m gonna do two things. Going to add a touch of sugar, just a little, and a pinch of baking soda, or two pinches. That was one and a half pinches. There’s two. Let’s see, mix that up, see how it goes.
And I didn’t have anything to really drain on any of these ground beefs because it is the 93/7, it’s the super lean kind. Oh yep, that’s good. Does it need anything else? Maybe a little onion and garlic powder, or not. There’s something that, oh, you know I’m gonna add Worcestershire sauce. Not on the recipe, but that’s what it’s missing. There we go. That’ll probably do it.
Here, sloppy joes have cooled down. I’m going to put them on top of the cornbread. Then I’m going to top it with some cheese. Okay, this is a mild sharp, mild sharp, look at that, mild. This is sharp cheddar cheese. I’m only using sharp cheddar cheese because that’s what’s in my fridge.
Okay, so it’s been sitting for just a little bit, and that soaked up beautifully. So I am going to get this dished up and we’ll see how many pans I need. Okay, we got two out of this one. I’m going to start writing on the lids. And then we also have, what do we got? That sloppy joe cornbread, SJ cornbread.
Okay, we are making some great progress. I think I’m gonna take a minute to reset, clean everything up. All right, just ran into the window. I’m gonna take a minute to clean up and reset.
All right, I’ve tidied up a little bit. We still need to make the turkey meatball minestrone soup, the Asian meatballs, and the gnocchi to go with the chicken pot pie gnocchi and gnocchi bake. The gnocchi bake sauce is already ready, but I am going to make the mashed potatoes for our cottage pie. And I have just these instant mashed potatoes that I’ve been needing to use up for a long time, so that’s what I’m going to use today.
I do have a ton of potatoes from the garden still, but I’ve been kind of slacking on using these, so I’m gonna just dump all of them in there. We’ll see if we have enough liquid. I do have some butter already in there. And you know what I want to do? I want to add some onion powder and garlic powder and some milk. I already added the water. That would be the milk. And then I also want to add some cheddar cheese, make them cheesy potatoes, and then we’ll add cheese on top. That’s just, mix this in. Whoops, and probably make a mess.
I did put my towel down, not because of the spilling, but because, that’s not gonna be nearly enough water. Gonna need a bigger bowl because it was hot. We’ll see how much liquid we actually end up needing. I wonder if I’ve made way too many. I think this could still use quite a bit more water. I’m not too worried about this being extremely hot water. I mean, everything that I put in so far has been boiling water, and these are going to go in the freezer and then re-bake. So I just want to make sure to get them hydrated enough.
Salt and pepper it. Oh, that was almost too much salt. That’s all right. It’ll be fine once it’s put on top of everything else. Let’s grab this. That’s another, I probably would prefer to have a little bit more meat in each of them, but I feel like if I were to make two, it would be just too much because there’s also got to be room for potatoes and room for cheese.
All right, I’m on to the Asian meatballs. I’ve added two pounds of ground beef and one egg in there. I’m going to also add some salt and a tad bit of nutmeg, some white pepper, some ginger, some parsley. And I did get out my bigger thing of parsley, homegrown parsley. They said quite a bit. And then last thing is onions. And I used up all of my fresh onions, so I’m going to use some canned onions. I didn’t use up all my fresh onions. I just used up the ones that I had pre-chopped.
I did also check the heat on my oven and I did have to move it up to 425. So let’s let that mix. All right, that looks good. We definitely don’t want to over mix this. And let’s go roll out the meatballs.
All right, the next few things that I have to do, luckily I can do sitting down. So we’re going to, well, maybe I’ll halfway sit. I’m first just going to get them to the right sizes, then I’ll go shape them after. This recipe doesn’t call for breadcrumbs, so we’ll see how that goes.
Also, if you are not making meatballs with a cookie scoop and your mixer, this is like the only way I will make meatballs because it just makes them so quick and easy. Now I don’t want to do too much handling of the meat so I don’t want it to get tough, but I do want them to be meatball shaped.
These are actually quite large. I thought I was choosing a kind of small scoop. That’s my second largest scoop. It’s the largest in the set that I have though. That’s all right. We will have large meatballs.
Okay, I am going to get my hands washed and throw this in the oven. It’ll be in for about 20 minutes. I’m going to start on the sauce for the meatballs. I put some frozen green onions from my garden into my measuring cup there already, and now I’m just finely dicing up some water chestnuts. I need some minced garlic. It said freshly pressed. This is as freshly pressed as I’ve got. So garlic, I also have minced ginger first. And you know, ginger’s not my favorite flavor, so I’m not going to add too much of that. I like ginger, but not a ton of it.
It says a quarter cup of garlic chili paste and origami chili sauce, and that’s a lot. So I’m just gonna do maybe two tablespoons, and I think two tablespoons actually might even be more than I’m happy with, so we’ll see how that goes. And then soy sauce, three tablespoons. One, two, three. And then a cup of hoisin sauce. All right, looks like a cup to me. Let’s see. Okay, that’s good. That is definitely spicy enough for me. Luckily not too spicy.
All right, it’s time to get working on the gnocchis. I have one cup of cold milk and two eggs in my bowl. I am going to break the eggs a little bit. Okay. And then I also, I’m going to need one and a quarter cups water. I am doubling this recipe, so I’m doing two and a half cups of water. And I’m going to put the potatoes in first. It says I need one cup of potato flakes, which means that I need two cups.
These are also instant potato flakes that I’ve been needing to use up, so I’m doing really well getting through them. These ones are like a thicker instant potato flake, and I just don’t love the texture for making potatoes out of them, but putting them in gnocchi works just fine. And I want to give them just a few seconds to hydrate, I guess.
I’ll still need this. Oh, and I need some salt. What else did I miss? That’s it, just salt. Some salt. We got one and two and a little more. I did get the water boiling again so that we can get these on the stove once we’re ready with them.
Now we need eight cups of flour. There’s one, two, little over three, and that one’s a little under, so we’ll make that four. I’m gonna start with four and mix it in. I haven’t made gnocchi in years. I’m very happy to be doing this today. I’m gonna cook some of it up fresh and probably end up freezing some because I think I’m gonna have a ton here.
Stand up and let’s add the rest. And of course the flour measurements, it’s kind of just go with the flow, see how it feels. Everywhere that you are, you’ll have a different result with your flour just because of humidity in the air. I mean, heck, from day to day you could have different results.
All right, I think I’m to the point where I can no longer use this, so I’m going to set this aside. And one more cup. Let’s do a heaping cup. That’s all a little over seven, and I will fill just this much in case I need it. Turn it out, stop. I need to check on the meatballs.
Meatballs were done. I just took them out of the oven. Want them to cool. I don’t think this is going to need that additional flour. Yeah, I’m gonna say we’re not gonna need that. Well, I might take some and just flour this tray.
Okay, I think what I’m gonna do is work with just a little bit of this at a time, set the rest down. Let’s see if we can fold just a little more. I think I’m going to use this extra flour just to dust down here and we’ll roll it out. It’s not perfectly smooth. You know, it might need a second to sit. It’s not perfectly smooth, but I’m okay with that. That’s as much as I can do. It’ll be fine.
Now the glutens probably need to rest. I’m gonna try to roll it out anyways. Okay, I’ve got this down to a thickness that I like. Let me just add a little more flour. I am going to just cut this into strips. From this point you have a lot of options on how you want to shape them. I am just going to roll it over my fork.
I’m going to bring you in, let you see them, and then we’re going to get these cooking and we’ll finish up a few of the items and I’ll finish these.
All right, my water was actually on for so long that it like boiled down. So here’s the meatballs. I’m going to get them in with the sauce.
Okay, we’re just about to boil. I have my gnocchi ready to go in. And what I’m going to do is, I’m reheating the sauce just a tad bit, and I’m going to make our last thing, which is the chicken pot pie portion for the gnocchi. We’ll throw some gnocchi in it as well. So let me find a pot. I’ll just use this one.
And you know, I think we’re just about boiling, but I want to get this in here first. I’ve got, I have a chicken pot pie quick filling. We’re gonna make it easy today. Okay, give that a little bit of a mix so that they hopefully don’t stick.
Yeah, I’m gonna add the chicken and the broth and salt, garlic and onion powder. I’m debating on adding another thing of chicken. Probably, let me do it. Some of them are, nope, gnocchi started floating up. When they float, they’re done. So I’m gonna take the ones that are done and stick them in the sauce.
That looks great. This is hot. This is pretty hot. I’m gonna let this cool a little bit, and I need to make up another batch, or another portion of that batch of gnocchis for the chicken pot pie gnocchi bake.
All right, here is the chicken and gnocchi pot pie. I’m going to put this in different kind of containers, actually ones that I can just microwave and have them be single serve. And then I did get the gnocchi bakes over here. It’s currently 11:17, so we’re doing well.
There’s one more recipe left to make, and I’ve also done a lot of the cleaning already too. I like having these individual meals because they’re just so easy to just go warm up in the microwave or bring them on the go. I guess I don’t need to fill them up that high. Think about how much I can eat at a time. Not a whole thing.
When I’m using these glass containers, I really like to use wet erase markers on them, so that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to note on them. I’m just gonna say pot pie, 3 of 23, May 5 of 23.
All right, last but not least, turkey minestrone without the minestrone. Let’s get our spices in there. We’ve got some parsley and some red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, garlic, onion. Adding basil as well, and some onions.
All right, this recipe calls for a little bit of lemon juice. Says fresh squeezed. This is as fresh as it gets over here. Carrots, lots of celery because that’s how much I have thawed. So is that where, that’s going in the rest of the peas. Okay, we’ll give that a mix. I’m gonna let this come up to a boil and then I will add in the pasta, and then we’ll give it some taste tests.
All right, I’ve got our minestrone soup. It’s not really very soupy, but I’m trying to get the noodles cooked. I did add a little bit of nutritional yeast, and I’m gonna back up and show you. I’ve gotten the kitchen totally picked up aside from that pot, and then I’ll use those towels to wash the pot, or to dry the pot, and then I’ll just clean this thing out once we’re done. But everything is basically done. It is currently 11:52, and I’m just waiting for that pot with the noodles to finish cooking, and then we’ll be ready to wrap it on up. So what a productive morning it’s been.
All right everyone, we did it. We got pot pies. We have four individual servings and one double serving. I got three sloppy joe cornbreads. I got three cottage pies, two gnocchi bakes, two Asian meatballs, two chicken alfredos, three gnocchis additional, and then I did get our Tuscan soup, which I turned into not a soup, that I will package up as soon as it cools down.
So this was highly successful. I want to say thank you so much for spending time with me this morning. This was a busy day. This was probably, what was that, five hours straight of cooking. But now we have two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, I’m counting there, 16 large meals plus these additional three, and over here, gosh, there’s probably 20-some meals for us.
So this feels fantastic. I’m going to get these all in my freezer and I’m going to get the lids on all these and get them in the freezer.
All right everyone, that’s a wrap. I am very excited about this. I am going to get these in the freezer and they will be here for many meals to come. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe, and I will see you next time. Bye!
