Easy Homemade Healthy Freezer Meals

A while ago I came across a way to make your own Frozen Dinners! This really appealed to me, because frozen dinners from the store have some drawbacks (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11992264/ns/health-fitness/):

1. Not Big Enough – Most “healthy” or “Diet” frozen meals are tiny and do not fill me up. But the “Regular” ones are filled with Fat.
2. Not Enough Veggies – Most frozen meals contain very small amounts of vegetables. When trying to eat the recommended 5-11 serving of vegetables and fruits a day, these meals do not contain enough.
3. High In Sodium - If you are trying to watch your sodium intake, having 700-1,800 mg of sodium from one of these meals is a good chunk of the recommended max of 2,300 mg per day.

By making your own Frozen meals, you can control the portion size to fit your own dietary needs. Also, you can really cut down the amount of sodium, while still have a convenient frozen meal.

So, what do you need?

First you need to get some Steamer Bags. Glad and Ziploc are a couple of the name brands, but I hear some stores are now carrying “Store Band” bags as well. These can be found near the sandwich bags at your local grocery store.  I prefer the Ziploc brand, but here are what the Ziploc and Glad boxes look like:

How to Make them:

To make one individual meal, take a portion of Protein (3-4 oz of Chicken, Pork, Lean Beef or Fish). Marinade and/or season with your desired seasonings. Place the portion of Protein into a Steamer Bag. Now add 2-3 cups of your favorite veggies to the bag. Optionally, you can add a bag of 60-90 Second Ready rice to the bag as well. Seal up the bag and toss it in the Freezer. You can spend 20 minutes over the weekend and make up enough for the whole week.

When it comes time to eat, take the bag out of the freezer and microwave your meal for 5-7 minutes, depending on your microwave and your portion size. I suggest starting out with 5 minutes then check the protein. If it isn’t cooked, you can seal the bag back up, and nuke for another 30 sec. Repeat until you everything is cooked to your liking. Then note this time for the next time you make this meal.

NOTE: If you use liquids (sauce, etc.) for flavoring in the bag, try to keep the bag up right until frozen, so that the liquids does not leak out of the vents in the steamer bags.

Have I tried this? 

Yes! I normally take these for lunch everyday. I take a frozen chicken breast and 2 cups of veggies (I like the Cali blend from Hy-Vee - broccoli, carrots and Cauliflower) put them in a steamer bag and add a dash of olive oil and some seasoning in it. To mix it up, I use different seasonings and spices. Some that I use are Cookie's, Lawry's, McCormick's "Kicken' Chicken", etc Basically what ever sounds good at the time. Since I use a whole chicken breast, it takes 7 minutes to cook in my microwave.   Here is what it looks like:

If you look closely, you can see how juicy the Chicken is!

What if I want to know the Nutritional Facts of the meal?

Knowing the nutritional facts of the food you eat is very important to any Healthy Lifestyle. To figure out the nutritional facts, will take a little work. First, you can read all the labels of the items you use, the add up all the numbers to come up with the Facts of the meal. However, this can take some time.

I personally prefer just entering in the individual items into MyFitnessPal.  By entering the ingredients for my Chicken and Veggies meal I make (this does not include the little bit of seasoning I use), MFP calculated that the nutritional facts for one serving (one bag):

463 Cals 

55 Grams of Protein 

10 Grams of Carbs 

20 Grams of Fat 

NOTE: 119 cals & 14 grams of fat come from the olive oil. You could leave that out and save the cals and fat if need be. However, I feel you need some healthy fat in your diet, so that is why I add it.

If you do not use MFP, you could use a Recipe Calculator, like the one found at http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp. 

I hope these tips were helpful! If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Matt