Smithy

First attempt at making and using the House Dressing from Samin Nosrat's Good Things (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). I didn't bother trying any of her salad suggestions, as such: the salad is spinach, olives, tomatoes, a hard boiled egg, mushrooms and croutons. The "House Dressing" is a honey/mustard sherry vinaigrette. One of the interesting steps about it is that you finely dice a shallot, rinse it, then soak in the vinegar and a bit of warm water for a couple of minutes before whisking in the rest of the ingredients. I think the soak helped tame the shallot a bit. When I tasted the dressing by itself to adjust seasonings, I thought it would all be a bit much (too much vinegar, too much shallot) but atop the salad it tastes wonderful. I'll have no trouble using this batch. Edited to add: @blue_dolphin links to the dressing recipe in this post.

Do you think the squid ink pasta brings more than color to the dish?

@Shelby, I have to laugh about the boudin. I've tried it a few times, purchased in Cajun or Cajun-adjacent territory, and will admit that I've never really taken to it. When I saw your photo above I thought, "hey, that looks pretty good!" Now I know it doesn't count. 😄 (Edited to add: your disappointment is probably like mine the few times I've tried chorizo made in northern Minnesota!)

I wish I'd remembered (or looked for) this topic last October, when I received a 5-gallon bucket of russet potatoes! My DIL and her family had been out to a potato patch after the harvester had gone through, and they quickly scooped up buckets and bags of the things. I've been working away at my stash since then and marveling at the sturdiness of the potatoes. I didn't think to try burying them in sand, though. They're just in the same bucket they came in. Since I'm in northern Minnesota, they're quite frozen now. There may be some degradation in quality, but as long as I wash and process them from frozen they're holding up pretty well.

They're sitting in a 5-gallon bucket in an unheated garage. Here, at this time of year, it means they're all frozen. I mean, really frozen. When I bring some in to wash them I get a glaze of ice on the exterior when the water hits them! There's some degradation in texture -- that is, as I scrub them some of the peel comes loose as that layer thaws -- and there may be some loss of flavor by now, but it's an interesting experiment. They're certainly edible. Incidentally, these are russets. I've no idea whether more waxy potatoes would behave the same way. Edited to add: I've just rediscovered a topic on potato storage, here. I wish I'd thought of it last October!

I'm still trying to work through the bucket of potatoes given me last October. Sometime last week I boiled a bunch and mashed them, peels and all. I had the idea of making potato madeleines (see this old topic) but decided I didn't have the energy for such fussiness. Besides, they probably aren't smooth enough with all that peel. So...potato ball fritters! I rolled them in a mixture of bread crumbs, corn meal, garlic salt and oregano, then deep fried in my Fry Baby. I know I've shown this before but I'm showing it again. The "dipping sauce" that's working out best is mayonnaise and Boursin with garlic and cheese. The pictures aren't pretty, but the flavor is good. Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, and not nearly as watery as the original mash.

This is a paraphrase of Mario Batali's Molto Italiano (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). The recipe name is Red Cabbage Braised in Vinegar (p.424) and I have a note on it that it's "Excellent!" although I confess I'd forgotten all about it. Cut a medium head of red cabbage into 1/2" strips. Thinly slice a medium red onion. Saute the onion and 2T caraway seeds in hot olive oil until the onion is soft. Add the cabbage, 2T sugar, and 1/2c red vinegar; stir; cover, and cook until the cabbage is tender. He says that's about 20 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. He says it can be eaten warm or cool. I have no idea how well it would take to being frozen.

That does look good. I wonder how it would fare if frozen and then thawed and reheated sometime during the recovery from surgery? Edited to add: @blue_dolphin, you and I posted at the same time, so I'll ask you why you think it would be amenable. (I may try it myself!)

Welp. It's another bust, as far as I'm concerned. I bought this with a mixture of misgivings and hope. On the plus side: citrus! garlic! chicken! easy cooking and disposal! On the misgivings side: black beans and plantain...not that I actively dislike either, but they aren't on my list of favorite flavors. I'm sorry to report that the entire dish was on the gummy side. Did I simply overcook it, so the rice was overdone? I don't know. But I didn't especially like the plantains, and black beans are my least favorite of the legumes, and there was the gumminess of the overall dish. Any pleasure I might have gotten from the chicken and garlic was lost. Oh, and I neglected to gussy it up with cilantro as shown in the box photo, even though I just came from the grocery store and have some fresh. I ended up salting it, to drown out the sweetness of the plantains. I'm sure the sweetness would appeal to a lot of people, but it doesn't to me. On the bright side: here's another dish I tried once, for not much money, and won't need to try again. And hey, cleanup is easy!

I suspect you're very good at making sauces! Matching a sauce to the dish in question may be an issue, and I'm not sure I can help much with that. I need to explain that I'm on a crunchy cabbage slaw kick right now, thanks to @blue_dolphin and to my best friend, so cooked cabbage isn't really at the top of my mind. I think I could cheerfully live on a nice, crunchy slaw (cabbage, celery, carrots, radishes, peanuts or walnuts thrown in) with a good dressing for many days. That said, and given that you're looking at cooked dishes to freeze, thaw and reheat, I'd give some thought to flavor compatibilities and personal tastes. Would you like beef and cabbage together? I don't find the idea especially appealing, but if you do then the demi-glace might be an idea. Is the cabbage supposed to be the star, or a supporting actor? If the star, then I think the first two sauce ideas sound like good ways to gussy it up. I do think the potatoes and Gruyere sound more like a way to hide the cabbage than to celebrate it. There are recipes also for braised cabbage, with or without chicken. If that appeals, I'll post the one I have. It takes the dish into the acidic region thanks to vinegar.

The (black) bear I've had has been very mild, almost sweet.

@TdeV, I have to admit I've been focusing on the hot meals, which in my book means mostly dinner (maybe lunch). But what are you planning to do about breakfast, if you're a 3 meals-a-day person? Yogurt? Cereal? Toast? Or do you need to be considering things like egg bites and muffins? I know both freeze well. Waffles?

Tomato - based (like spaghetti sauce, with or without meat and veg) Herb based - basil pesto, for instance Cheese sauce (might need to investigate how to do this without sauce breaking on reheat) Butter and garlic Soy sauce based...out of my wheelhouse but someone here can help Hollandaise (don't know if it would break) There's a peanut sauce, like you'd find in mafe, that I think would freeze well. Lemon and butter I'm freewheeling here, but I can imagine all those things over rice or noodles, with or without meat and veg, that would take the dish in very different but delicious directions.

Another topic you may find useful is here:

That. Topic. Is. Brilliant! I'd forgotten all about it! Thanks for bringing it up!

i finally tried some of these last night. The texture was a bit firmer than I'd expected: more solid than a good meringue cookie, but certainly softer than a "firm" cookie like an Oreo. The flavor is good, at least for the vanilla and chocolate. I'm no more fond of the strawberry flavor than I am of frozen strawberry ice cream! But that's just me. 😀

I confess, I didn't read far enough to see that she's putting together "meal kits" rather than reheatable dinners. Thanks for pointing that out. I think her Cheat Sheet gives the kind of information @TdeV is looking for to predict behavior of specific ingredients when frozen.

I just took a quick glance at the Freezer Meals 101 site linked above. It may be exactly what you need!

I was all set to refer you to Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) but now that I've looked at it, I don't think it's what you're after. It tells about freezing bean curd in one section, freezing milk in another section (basically, freezing ruins the fat globules) but doesn't really talk about how to account for multiple elements, combined, and which will work well frozen and then thawed. I agree with Darienne about time limits, or lack thereof, on frozen meat. In my experience the worst thing that happens to it is freezer burn. The same seems to be true for the meats I've cooked and then frozen for later, although there can be texture changes, say, to a crispy crust. There have to be cookbooks that address your questions, because commercial operations do this all the time: prepare foods that are packaged and frozen for sale. Consider the freezer aisles in the grocery store! Consider Swanson frozen dinners! But I haven't found such a resource yet. Here's hoping someone else can come up with it. In an offline discussion I've been talking about potatoes and whether or not they can be successfully frozen then thawed and remain palatable. The evidence seems to be that if you want the potatoes to hold their form -- for instance, nice chunks of potato in a soup or stew -- you'll regret freezing them. However, I can tell you empirically that twice-baked potatoes, with cream cheese and butter or cream, do very well when frozen and then cooked from frozen. I have nearly a dozen still, thanks to my DIL.

*bump* I'm sure I've done this before, but it's been a while. Tonight I cooked the Pimento Cheese Quiche. This is a VERY forgiving dish. It says to put the additions (cheese, pimentos, more cheese) into the baking dish, then pour the egg / cream / spice mixture atop it. Nope. I wasn't paying enough attention, and I reversed the order of the 2nd and 3rd layers. I admit that when I realized I should have poured the egg mixture onto the cheese, instead of the other way around, I spent some time trying to mash the cheese down into the egg mixture. I'm not sure it mattered. Will I bother trying it both ways? I dunno. This is pretty good without worrying about perfection. Mmm, good. Easy. Forgiving.

How did you get those fritters to be so spherical? They look lovely, but not easy to do.

Woe is me, I've tried to make them last as long as possible, but this is the last pear from a Christmas gift of Harry & David Royal Riviera pears. Juicy, sweet, delicious. The pinnacle of pearness. It nearly melts in my mouth, but it hasn't gone mealy yet. I wish I could have these all the time, but I suppose the ephemeral nature of this wonderful fruit makes it all the more precious.

Face it: if you're the cook in the family and you're having surgery, or if you're the cook in the family and you'l be overseeing someone else's recovery, you'd better have the food prepared in advance. It had better be easy to reheat, serve and eat. It needs to be appetizing. It needs to be easy. Of course it has to meet dietary guidelines for recovery, and that's a wild card for purposes of this discussion. We don't seem to have a dedicated topic for this purpose, although we have a couple of topics that are relevant: Batch Cooking: One large batch, many small meals. Share your ideas! ...and this old one, which takes into account feeding the entire family but got to be rather specific about the surgery in question: Food ideas for friends after major surgery? What are some of your ideas for meal prep and serving when there simply won't be time or energy for cooking? Got any favorite recipes? If you've been through this, what worked and what wouldn't you recommend? Packaging ideas are also welcome.

I respectfully think that statement is too broad. It may be that the variety matters (waxy, starchy or in between) or how much they've already been cooked. My DH and I used to freeze dinners from the leftovers of a meat-and-potatoes dish (ham, pork roast, beef chuck roast for instance, with potatoes) and had no trouble with the reheated dish. It may also be that they need to be thoroughly cooked first. I'm working my way through a 5-gallon bucket of Russet potatoes given me last fall. They've been in the garage, frozen. I bring some in, cut and cook, and haven't had bad luck with them that way -- but those that I bring in and thaw before cooking have gone off in a hurry.

@JAZ, while we wait for @TdeV' answer I'll ask about another of your recipes. I'm looking at the Pimento Cheese Quiche from your Super-Easy Instant Pot Cookbook. I have oodles of eggs and this quiche looks like it might lend itself to road trip food soon. Can you think of a reason not to make it and freeze it?