Stock Your Freezer with These Reheat-and-Eat Dinners

You know those nights when you really cannot fathom cooking dinner or even venturing out for takeout? Your freezer wants to help you on those nights by being well-stocked with some heat-and-eat dinners from your past self.

Stocking your freezer doesn’t have to a weekend-long affair with lots of pre-planning, though. Instead you can just double up on staples, eat them once, and then stash the rest away as a gift to your future self. These are 10 of my favorite meals that freeze well and reheat like a dream.

Pasta fagioli is a rich stew of beans, tomatoes, and pasta. For this slow cooker version, hold off on adding the pasta before freezing and just add some quick-cooking noodles when reheating on the stove.

Get the recipe: Slow Cooker Pasta e Fagioli

This recipe is specifically designed for freezing, but you can cook all the components for dinner one night and freeze the leftovers too.

Get the recipe: How To Make Stir-Fry Freezer Meals

This might actually be my favorite freezer meal, because Bolognese seems to develop even more flavor when frozen and reheated. Don’t feel like you need to serve this over pasta, either — it is great over polenta or even baked potatoes.

Get the recipe: Slow Cooker Bolognese Sauce

This ziti is another great recipe to divide in half — one for dinner now and one for dinner in the future. I like to grab aluminum foil pans for freezing, but you can also line a baking dish with foil, freeze the casserole solid, then remove and store long-term.

Get the recipe: All-Star Baked Ziti

Slow-braising beef makes it taste better, and freezing slow-braised beef in sauce keeps it moist. So it’s a win-win all around here.

Get the recipe: Easy Slow Beef Stroganoff

Just like proteins are better frozen with sauce, your vegetable dishes will absorb all this saucy tikka masala flavor in the freezer. Keep a few bags of frozen rice on hand and you can have dinner in less than 10 minutes.

Get the recipe: Veggie Tikka Masala

Soups, chilis, and stews freeze extremely well. This is one of our favorites for being quick and easy to cook before and after freezing.

Get the recipe: One-Pot, 30-Minute Chicken Taco Soup

If you’ve ever cooked a pork shoulder, you know it makes a ton of meat for very little effort. Freeze these carnitas in 1-pound increments and you’ll be well stocked for months to come.

Get the recipe: Slow Cooker Carnitas

This recipe is designed for freezing everything, from the beef to the tortillas. All you’ll need to add at the end is some cheese and salsa.

Get the recipe: Freezer Taco Kits

If you love to buy freezer burritos, then these freeze-and-reheat burritos are going to be your new budget BFF. You can reheat them in the microwave or use a skillet to crisp and reheat them any time.

Get the recipe: Freezer-Friendly Roasted Vegetable Burritos with Black Beans and Rice