Any tips on Cooking and freezing before trip?

Ground beef/turkey is one of our favorites to take. Cook, drain, & freeze. Makes quick tacos, soup, casseroles, etc.

When using canned goods, we open can, dump into a colander, rinse, dump in pot, add fresh water. Cook. Most of the extra sodium is gone.

Cooked meat tends to change texture while frozen, so I usually freeze meats in a sauce, gravy, soup stock or hot dish. I also prefer to reheat on the stovetop rather than the crock pot. Banana bread freezes well, too.

Sagecoachdriver wrote:
Can I BBQ tri tip and either freeze whole or sliced? DW is now on a Low sodium diet and I have to rework the menu. So much of what we used before is loaded with salt. We have switched seasonings to salt substitutes and herbs.

My wife has to be on special diet restrictions as well. We do a lot of meals ahead of time for the sightseeing trips and then defrost and heat them in the microwave. The RVs stove and microwave come in handy. We've found casseroles work out the best. Cooked meats that are frozen don't appeal to us unless they're ground turkey, etc.

We have a vacuum packer. You can vacuum pack either fresh or cooked meats etc then freeze or just refrigerate. As most of us older folks know, it is difficult to buy just for two, especially meats at the food stores. We buy large portions breakdown to what we want and repackage in vac pacs. Cooked foods as well, stews, fresh veggies. have even done fresh eggs.(if they break they stay in the package until opened). Best $150.00 we have spent in a long time.

Sagecoachdriver wrote:
Can I BBQ tri tip and either freeze whole or sliced? DW is now on a Low sodium diet and I have to rework the menu. So much of what we used before is loaded with salt. We have switched seasonings to salt substitutes and herbs.

Re: the low sodium diet - switch to frozen veggies instead of canned. There's an amazing difference in the amt of sodium.

Read the labels. I used to use reduced fat sour cream, cream cheese, etc.... After DH needed to reduce salt, we started carefully reading labels. Apparently when they reduce the fat in something, they jack up the salt for flavor.

I take cooked pieces of chicken breast...several in meal size packages.
cooked crumbled hamburger meat seasoned for tacos.
2 or 3 lbs of cooked bacon..and the bacon grease in a little container.
cooked hot wings in meal size pkgs.
homemade soup.
cooked, sliced brisket in small pkgs with the broth.
I have a little 6 cup crock pot and I cook short ribs or chicken breasts, etc while we go down the road. we plug it into an inverter so we don't need the genny.
If we're out for a long time, I buy more chicken breasts at Sam's or Walmart and cook them up in my big crockpot when we're stopped and hooked up to elec.
Same with ribs or other meats in large amounts.

Here's an interesting link - this woman has meal freezing down to an art it appears...

50 MEALS TO MAKE AND FREEZE IN ONE DAY

I might have to ck this one out myself for my work nights...

I did NOT know you could can in a microwave! :S I'll for sure have to ck that out! Thanks Merrykalie!!
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I will cook chicken breasts and CAN them. It's easy to do and we have plenty of broth for a lot of recipes. Google how to can in the microwave. My freezer is too small to carry bunches of stuff.

I always cook up 1-2 #'s of turkey bacon before we leave, and freeze it (that amount depends on how many people we might be meeting up with. I also freeze hard cheeses, homemade soup bases, bread. I've frozen sm. containers of salsa too. In late summer we always BBQ up a pile of burgers and freeze them for winter use. Do a web search on food ingredients you shouldn't freeze... then get brave...and see how creative you can get by freezing your own foods.

Here was just my first hit on foods you should never freeze according to Better Homes and Gardens:

?Battered and fried foods
?Cooked egg whites and yolks, as well as icings made with egg whites
?Cottage and ricotta cheeses
?Custard and cream pies or desserts with cream fillings
?Mayonnaise
?Soups and stews made with potatoes, which can darken and become mushy when frozen
?Soups and stews thickened with cornstarch or flour
?Sour cream
?Stuffed chops or chicken breasts
?Whole eggs in the shell, whether raw or cooked

We use the bacon for BLT sandwiches, crumbled up in scrambled egg breakfast wraps, a little on soups and/or on salads for bacon bits.


You might consider investing in a good grill pan. When ever I fry/grill in our TT (which isn't often) I put up two cookie sheets to protect the two adjoining walls behind the stove. The walls are WALL PAPERED in a light color (which is insane)!!! Eventually, that will have a washable surface applied.


You'd be surprised at how much you can get into an RV freezer when it's neatly wrapped/rolled in Ziploc freezer bags or prepared with those Food Saver units. We easily held 10 days worth of food on a trip we took in August. That was just the two of us eating it.

Also, my son-in-law is a dedicated backpacker, and he makes and dehydrates a lot of his meals at home. He's real happy with that process. He found most of his ideas on the web.

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