Libby's mini sessions pt 2

1 servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
See part 1

Directions

remember to do this, and sometimes, if I have done this I forget, end up eating out, or change my mind. In this case, I just thaw in the microwave.

The rigid plastic goes straight in. One minute on medium-high heat, and three or four minutes on defrost. Then I either transfer to a saucepan or to a small casserole dish (open augratin type or Corning makes some covered mini casseroles). These can then either be finished in the microwave or in the oven. If it's a casserole like tetrazzini, you may have to do some more thawing in the microwave to *squish* it down into the casserole dish.

The metal and foil pans can be thawed overnight, or in some cases cooked from frozen (but this takes a long time). If you need to thaw in a hurry, remove from the pan­use the warm burner trick again. Place in a small oval casserole or augratin dish sprayed with non-stick coating. Thaw in the microwave­about 8 minutes or more on defrost cycle. As it thaws, you can press down into the dish without losing the layers of the dish. Transfer to the oven to bake. If you planned ahead and thawed in the loaf pan, you can just bake in that pan.

If you do this three weeks in a row using different meats, you'll have a freezer full of a wide variety of foods. I've done as many as seven different dishes without too much of a problem (that takes closer to four hours).

Think chicken session, ground beef session, pork session, ham session, soup session, beef session. Before you know it, your freezer will be *very* full!!! Mine is, and I know that I could never go back to cooking every night.

What to do about *BIG* casseroles? Well, you can do that too. Specifically, lasagna, but you can do other things too. Prepare and bake until almost done. If recipe calls to add cheese or topping the last 10 minutes or so of cooking, just cook up to that point. Remove the casserole from the oven.

Let set about 15 minutes and then refrigerate for at least an hour. This should allow the dish to set up enough so that you can cut into portions and remove to a wax paper lined cookie sheet. Place the cookie sheet in the freezer and freeze at least 2 hours or even overnight. Remove from the freezer and wrap, label, and return to the freezer. Reheat as for above loaf pan recipes.

from the Friendly-Freezer Mailing-list by Cindy Greene <cindyg@...> on Oct 31, 1999, converted by MM_Buster v2.0n.

Posted to MM-Recipes Digest by Petra Hildebrandt <phildeb@...> on Nov 01, 1999

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