Ten Freezer Dinners From Four Pots in One Afternoon

Quick answer: Don't cook ten recipes. Cook four bases (beef, chicken, meatballs, beans), split them into ten dinners for a family of four, and freeze them flat. Budget about four and a half hours, plus dishes.

Six pounds of ground beef is where this starts. Brown it once, in two batches, and it becomes two pans of chili, a bag of taco meat and a shepherd's pie. One pot, one mess, four dinners.

That's the whole method. Most freezer days fail because somebody picks ten recipes off the internet, buys forty-one ingredients, and runs out of burners by 2 p.m. Four bases means fewer cans to open and fewer cutting boards to wash. And the afternoon actually ends.

The one rule that saves the food

Freeze the sauce. Cook the starch fresh.

Pasta, rice and noodles turn to wallpaper paste after a month in the freezer. Boiling spaghetti takes eleven minutes on a Tuesday, and you're standing in the kitchen anyway. The one exception is mashed potatoes. With plenty of butter they freeze fine. They come back a touch grainy, and nobody under twelve will notice.

The ten dinners

Beef base (6 lb ground beef, 3 onions, 2 bell peppers)

1. Chili, pan one: beef, kidney and black beans, crushed tomatoes, chili powder, cumin, smoked paprika.
2. Chili, pan two. Chili is the one recipe you always double.
3. Taco meat: beef with cumin, chili powder, oregano and a little tomato paste. Freeze it flat in a gallon bag.
4. Shepherd's pie: beef, carrots, peas and corn in a quick tomato-paste gravy, topped with butter-heavy mashed potatoes.

Chicken base (6 lb boneless thighs)

1. Honey-garlic chicken: raw thighs, soy sauce, honey, garlic and grated ginger in a bag. It freezes raw and marinates while it thaws.
2. Salsa verde chicken: raw thighs, a jar of salsa verde, sliced onion and cumin. Also frozen raw. On the night it goes in a slow cooker or a 375°F oven, then over rice.
3. Chicken and white bean soup: thighs simmered in broth with carrots, celery and cannellini beans, then shredded. No noodles.

Meatball base (3 lb ground pork or turkey, eggs, breadcrumbs, Parmesan)

1. Meatballs in marinara, in a foil pan, for pasta night.
2. Meatballs in marinara, in a bag, for subs.

Bean base

1. Black bean and sweet potato enchiladas: roasted sweet potato, black beans, cumin and cheese rolled in flour tortillas under red enchilada sauce.

The afternoon, hour by hour

0:00 Clear the freezer. Label every pan and bag before your hands are wet: name, date, reheat instructions. Oven to 400°F.

0:15 Chop every onion, pepper, carrot and celery stalk at once. Cube the sweet potatoes onto a sheet pan and roast them. Peel the russets and get them boiling.

0:45 Mix the meatballs, roll them, and bake on two sheet pans for about 20 minutes. Start browning the beef in your biggest pot.

1:15 Split the beef. Half goes into the chili pot with the onions, peppers, tomatoes and beans to simmer. Season the taco meat. Drain and mash the potatoes with a full stick of butter.

1:45 Build the two raw chicken bags. Start the soup with the remaining thighs.

2:30 Simmer the meatballs in marinara for 10 minutes. Assemble the shepherd's pie. Shred the soup chicken back into the pot.

3:15 Roll the enchiladas and pour the sauce over them.

3:45 Cool everything fast. Spread it into shallow pans, or set the pot in a sink of ice water. Get food into the fridge within two hours of cooking, then into the freezer once it's cold. Ten hot pans in the freezer at once will warm everything else in there.

4:15 Dishes. Put on a ballgame. You've earned it.

If you only have the freezer on top of your fridge, cut this to six dinners. Ten meals take real room. Freeze bags flat on a sheet pan, then stand them up like files. For a shorter session, Two Hours On Sunday That Covers Every Dinner This Week is the scaled-down version.

Grocery list

Meat: 6 lb ground beef, 6 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs, 3 lb ground pork or turkey

Produce: 6 yellow onions, 2 heads garlic, 1 knob ginger, 2 lb carrots, 1 bunch celery, 3 bell peppers, 5 lb russet potatoes, 3 lb sweet potatoes, 3 lb bananas, 6 apples, baby carrots

Canned and dry: 4 (28 oz) crushed tomatoes, 1 small can tomato paste, 4 cans kidney beans, 4 cans black beans, 2 cans cannellini beans, 2 (16 oz) jars salsa verde, 2 (15 oz) cans red enchilada sauce, 2 (32 oz) cartons low-sodium chicken broth, soy sauce, honey, breadcrumbs, rice, spaghetti, old-fashioned oats, peanut butter, popcorn kernels, spices (chili powder, cumin, oregano, smoked paprika)

Dairy: 3 dozen eggs, 1 lb butter, 2 lb shredded cheese, 4 oz Parmesan, milk, Greek yogurt, string cheese

Bakery: 20 flour tortillas, bread, sub rolls (buy them the week you need them)

Frozen: 1 lb peas and corn, 2 lb mixed berries

Supplies: 4 disposable 9x13 foil pans with lids, gallon and quart freezer bags, a marker, masking tape

Rough cost: a ballpark of $130 to $170 for all ten dinners plus the week's breakfasts, lunches and snacks. That swings a lot with region and store, so price it against your own receipt. Meat is most of the bill. Buy it in family packs.

The week after cook day

Eat seven of the ten. The other three are next week's insurance.

• Monday: Oatmeal with banana and peanut butter. Turkey sandwiches and apples. Chili. Popcorn.
• Tuesday: Eggs and toast. Leftover chili. Honey-garlic chicken over rice. Baby carrots.
• Wednesday: Yogurt with berries. Leftover chicken and rice. Meatball subs. String cheese.
• Thursday: Oatmeal. Sandwiches. Chicken and white bean soup. Apples with peanut butter.
• Friday: Eggs and toast. Leftover soup. Enchiladas. Popcorn.
• Saturday: Pancakes, made fresh, because Saturday. Leftover enchiladas. Taco night. Yogurt with berries.
• Sunday: Eggs and toast. Sandwiches. Shepherd's pie. Baby carrots.

Still in the freezer: the second chili, salsa verde chicken, and meatballs over spaghetti. To fit this into a calorie target, Portion Sizes Without a Scale shows you how to plate it.

Freezer rules

Keep the freezer at 0°F. Thaw in the fridge overnight, never on the counter. Reheat until it's hot all the way through, and cook the raw chicken bags to 165°F. Frozen food stays safe at 0°F, but it tastes best within about three months. That's why the dates go on the labels.

Swap any dinner you don't love. Delicious.com (delicious.com) has thousands of recipes, and anything sauce-based slots right into a base. Buying low-sodium canned goods is an easy upgrade. If you're managing diabetes, heart disease or kidney disease, are pregnant, or follow any medical diet, check this plan with your doctor or a registered dietitian first.

Pay it forward, too. Make the shepherd's pie in two smaller pans and take one to the family with a new baby, or the neighbor home from surgery. Write the reheat instructions on the lid. One afternoon of your work becomes a night off for somebody who really needs it.

And on some Thursday in three weeks, when you're wiped out and somebody asks what's for dinner, you'll open the freezer and take out the answer.