Freezer Friendly Recipes & Freezing Tips

Although I could eat tahini with a spoon and have a heavy hand with sesame seeds, I’d always dismissed black sesame as a fleeting Instagram-fueled trend. But when I tried the flavor firsthand (in a cookie, no less) I immediately understood the hype — and gained a newfound interest in the black sesame treats that had taken over my feed. Its deep, nutty flavor adds a slight savoriness to baked goods, making these pinwheel cookies suitable for brunch or a mid-morning snack.

Around the World in 30 Soups: This month we’re collaborating with chefs, cookbook authors, and our own Kitchn crew to share a globetrotting adventure in soups from countries and cuisines around the world. Today’s stop: Vietnam. When it comes to Vietnamese food at home, there is no one we look to as much as Andrea Nguyen. Here she shares a simply ingenious recipe for pressure cooker pho that is both practical and satisfying. We’re so thrilled to be able to reprint this recipe.

Do you see the photo of a casserole above? Filled with lots of vegetables, tofu, and topped with flaky sage biscuits? The miso-tofu casserole with sage biscuits from The Tassajara Cookbook is yours for the making. And trust me, you’re going to want to make it. But before you get started, you have a bit of a choice to make: Will you take the grocery store shortcut and opt for pre-made stock? Or make your own? If you have the time, the DIY way is the way to go with this recipe.

It feels like money in the bank when you’ve got this herb salt in your freezer. It’s a great way to put stray herbs to use — adapt the quantities of each to whatever’s available in your fridge or garden — and you can use it to deliver fresh herb flavor to everything from salad to roasted vegetables to meat.

Prep now, enjoy later.

Last year we hosted family at our house on Christmas Day — all with a brand new baby. After a few moments of minor stress and lots of pacing, I’ve decided that the only way to have an easy, effortless day that I can truly enjoy is to do much of the food preparation in advance. So I started playing around with interesting, festive waffle recipes and landed on this incredibly tasty, fragrant eggnog waffle dressed up for the occasion with spiced whipped cream and a dusting of cinnamon.

When the perfume of gingerbread floats through the air, and you catch a first glimpse of gingerbread men and houses, you know that holiday season is here for real. Gingerbread, in some form, has been a European holiday staple since medieval days, when using prized spices meant that it was a very special time of year.

Taking food to friends, whether they are under the weather, renovating a kitchen, or welcoming a new baby, shouldn’t be limited to soups and casseroles. One of my favorite things to take to new parents is fixings for sandwiches because a sandwich can be breakfast, lunch, or dinner and requires only one hand to eat. Freezer club sandwiches take that concept and make them hot and satisfying and available on demand from the freezer.

This is the very definition of a #miraclemeal: beef and veggie kabobs that go straight from freezer to grill. These absolutely delicious family favorites are made with affordable beef sirloin that is coated with a spice rub, and threaded onto skewers along with veggies. The whole kabob is frozen, skewers and all, so you can make these two at a time or 10 at a time. The best part is you don’t even need to thaw them; when you’re ready to cook just fire up the grill!

If you’ve ever been overambitious and purchased too many juicy summer peaches at the farm stand or farmers market, preserving them in the slow cooker is just the answer. Making peach butter requires no peeling, no pots to stir on the stove, and none of the canning equipment you need when making peach jam. Slow-cooker peach butter is the easiest, hands-off way to make sure your peach haul is turned into something tasty. Fruit butters get their name from their thick but spreadable texture.

Summer desserts should feel easy and carefree, but that doesn’t mean they should be thoughtless. Sure, there are nights when reaching into the freezer for that pint of ice cream is just the thing to top off a hot, steamy night. But sometimes, something just a little more fancy, that involves just as little effort, feels more appropriate. This pie is the answer. Made with a few store-bought ingredients, it comes together fast yet still feels elegant.

Even if you’ve never been to a Disney theme park, you know the lure of Dole Whip. This sweet and creamy frozen pineapple treat is a delicious hybrid of soft-serve and pineapple sorbet — but even better. No wonder it’s so often associated with a place where dreams come true. Here’s the good news: There’s no travel required for our Disney-inspired pineapple whip. You just need five basic ingredients and a blender.

Collard greens need a gentle, slow, luxurious braise in fragrant liquid (rather like a spa treatment), which makes a slow cooker the perfect vessel and method. With a little work up front and a thoughtful finish, a large slow cooker can yield many servings of velvety greens and brilliant potlikker — plenty for immediate feasting and plenty to freeze for later.

Ice cream cake is, hands-down, my favorite kind of cake. The thing I’m picky about, though, is that it must actually have cake. Ice cream cakes consisting of only ice cream are just a gallon of ice cream in disguise. Now that we’ve established what must go into an ice cream cake, here’s a fail-proof way to make them in the summer: in a trusty muffin tin to make cute, single-serving sweet treats. Making mini ice cream cakes in a muffin tin is all about layering.

Lately cacio e pepe, a humble Roman pasta dish, has been getting quite a lot of praise — and for good reason. The simple pasta dish that’s tossed with nothing more than black pepper, olive oil, and Pecorino Romano cheese is a lesson in just how flavorful basic ingredients can be. So why limit this powerhouse of flavor to just pasta? These inspired croutons just might rival the original.

I firmly believe there are few places where everything bagel spice can’t go — and croutons are certainly no exception. Studded with tiny nooks and crannies, these crispy, toasted cubes are ideal for catching every last bit of flavoring. If you have 10 minutes, you have more than enough time to make these croutons a reality. If everything bagel spice has a regular place in your life, and you already have the pre-made spice blend handy, go ahead and use that.

Whether you’re putting the finishing touches on the ultimate taco salad, or just trying to pretend your leafy green salad is a plate of tacos, these crispy, flavor-packed croutons will help get you there. Any type of bread will work to make these seasoned croutons a reality.

This slow-cooker sauce is the ultimate answer to the overabundance of summer fruit. Whether you went crazy at the U-Pick or just got too excited at the farmers market or grocery store, turning your excess into a warm, sweet sauce is an easy solution — especially when all that’s required of you is dumping the fruit into the slow cooker with a little water and sugar and letting the appliance do its thing. Cooking fruit low and slow in the slow cooker is a little like magic.

This Riesling rhubarb crisp cake has it all: tender white cake, rhubarb-strawberry compote and matching buttercream, a crispy oat crumble, and a fanciful, ruffled finish. It’s the perfect cake to bake when you’re feeling like showing off your cake-baking skills or looking for a weekend project to tackle when you want to spend the day in the kitchen.

This recipe is a bit of a departure from the usual Chinese wonton. Pork and shrimp are far more common fillings for wontons than turkey, but substituting turkey for pork makes these dumplings leaner and healthier, without any great sacrifice in flavor. The trickiest part of this recipe is the folding of the wontons, but it is easy to get the hang of it in a couple of tries. After that, the process moves quickly.

This barley bowl did not initially elicit excitement — my husband later described it as “unassuming”— but like so many grain bowls before it, this meal is more than the sum of its grains and vegetables. The details make all the difference.

Chicken tamales drenched in mole are a staple of the Christmas season. They are a little time-consuming (but not hard), and best when made with friends and family. In fact, the making of the tamales is almost as important as the eating of the tamales. Gathering together to create this beloved food has become one of my favorite traditions of the holiday season. I like to break the process up over a couple of days.

You can ditch the plate and fork for this version of spanakopita. The spinach and feta filling you know and love from this Greek dish is tucked inside whole-wheat pizza dough, then wrapped and baked into portable hand pies. This recipe is a riff on the traditional Greek pie, spanakopita, that sandwiches a spinach and feta filling between layers of buttery and flaky phyllo dough. Here I traded the phyllo for whole-wheat pizza dough.

So you have some leftover rice from your week of awesome “serve with rice” dishes. Know what that means? It’s time for fried rice — the perfect vehicle to use up any and all leftover rice in your fridge. In fact, it’s time for one of our simplest, most flavorful fried rice dishes: bacon and egg fried rice.

Adopting a Paleo lifestyle doesn’t mean that fried rice is forever off the menu. You just have to get creative. Years ago, when I went Paleo, I experimented in the kitchen until I developed an Asian cauliflower fried “rice” that easily trumps the greasy, soy-drenched stuff peddled by your local Chinese restaurant. As long as you prep the veggies the night before, it’s a cinch to throw this one-wok meal together on a weeknight.