10 Meals in an Hour™: Part 2
Tired of spending too much time in the kitchen, but still want tasty meals for your family? These easy recipes taste great and can be frozen ahead of time.
A few months ago I shared my first 10 Freezer Meals in an Hour™ plan, which included 5 great recipes that could be prepared together in about sixty minutes to make TEN separate meals. It was a huge hit, not only with my own family, but with many of your families as well!
At this point I am pretty much hooked on easy recipes that taste great and don’t take a lot of time, effort, or expensive ingredients to throw together, and that can be made and frozen ahead of time to save time on hectic weeknights. My goal is to spend less time in the kitchen, not more, but I still want to be able to provide tasty meals that my family loves!
I am excited to share this no-bake version of 10 Meals in an Hour™, which includes five awesome warm weather recipes that are cooked either on the grill or in the crockpot—no oven required! (Of course, if you would rather use the oven than the grill, that is always an option—you can generally just bake your chicken covered at 400 degrees for 25 minutes to get the same results!)
10 Meals in an Hour™: Part 2 – Easy Freezer Dump Meals for Families
In order to make the cut this time, each recipe had to meet ALL of the following criteria:
- Deemed delicious by both my kids and husband
- No pre-cooking required
- Freezer friendly
- Easy to cook
- Uses budget-friendly ingredients and pantry staples
- No oven required on cooking day
In this one post you will find everything you need to prep 10 awesome freezer meals in about an hour of hands-on time (not including grocery shopping.)
Once again, in just one quick Saturday morning session you could have almost two weeks worth of absolutely delicious, family-friendly meals all ready to go!
Before you begin, you will need to gather your tools & supplies and also make sure that you have all your groceries on hand. I find it is easiest to go grocery shopping the day before I do my cooking. To save time unloading, only put away the items that need to be refrigerated. Finally, make sure your kitchen counters are cleared of clutter and sanitized and empty your dishwasher and sink of any dishes.
Here are the five recipes we will be making:
- Coconut Lime Chicken
- Easy Slow-Cooked Ribs
- Easy Honey Dijon Chicken
- Easy Freezer Pulled Pork
- Hawaiian Chicken
Here are the supplies you will need:
- 10 gallon size zipper freezer bags
- Avery 8163 shipping labels or permanent marker
- large mixing bowl
- cutting board
- sharp knife
- garlic press
- can opener
- dry measuring cups
- liquid measuring cups
- dry measuring spoons
- liquid measuring spoons
- 12 inch frying pan
- stand or hand mixer
Here are the ingredients you will need:
Produce
- 12 cloves garlic
- 4 limes
- Fresh parsley (optional)
- 2 sweet onions
- Fresh pineapple (optional)
Bread
- Hamburger Buns or Rolls (not needed until time to serve)
Pantry Staples
- Honey
- Olive oil
- Seasoned salt
- Salt
- Black pepper
- Cayenne pepper
- Ground ginger
- Ketchup
- Worcestershire sauce
- Cider vinegar
- Garlic powder
- Ground mustard
- Barbecue sauce
- Teriyaki sauce
- Soy sauce
- Brown sugar
- Pineapple Rings (optional)
Canned/Dry Goods
- Dijon mustard
- 1 can coconut milk
- Liquid smoke (optional)
- 2 cans root beer
- 1 cup pineapple juice
Meat
- 10-12 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs or breasts
- 4 pounds pork ribs
- 2-2-3lb pork shoulders (butts)
Print this week’s recipes HERE.
PREP
- Prep your bags—either print labels using these ready-made printable labels or use a permanent marker to label each bag with the name of the recipe, date prepared, and cooking instructions. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP! While you might think that you’ll remember what is in every bag, I promise you will forget!
- Chop onion and set aside
- Peel garlic and set aside, (or mince if not using garlic press, then set aside.)
- Prep chicken if necessary
PREPARE
- Prep Easy Crockpot Pulled Pork using instructions found here. (Use 1 cup of chopped onion.) Place pork into 2 freezer bags and cover with sauce, then press out excess air and seal well. Place bags in refrigerator.
- Prep Easy Crockpot Ribs using instructions found here. Place meat into 2 freezer bags and cover with sauce, then press out excess air and seal well. Place bags in refrigerator.
- Prep Honey Dijon Grilled Chicken using instructions found here. (Use only 1 cup of the already chopped onion.) Divide meat into 2 freezer bags, cover with marinade, press out excess air, and seal well. Place bags in refrigerator.
- Prep Hawaiian Chicken using instructions found here. Place chicken into 2 freezer bags and cover with marinade, then press out excess air and seal well. Place bags in refrigerator.
- Prep Coconut Lime Chicken using instructions found here. (Add any leftover onion to marinade, if desired.) Place chicken into 2 freezer bags and cover with marinade, then press out excess air and seal well. Place bags in refrigerator.
i love this!!! i can’t wait to try it! thank you for sharing 🙂
Adding this here because I can’t figure out how to add comment , duh.. Anyway how do you think this would do cooking and then splitting into freezer bags to serve on a boat? I have an oven.
wow, this is such a great idea. I can’t wait to try it!!
Do each of these serve a family of 4?
Thanks!
The servings are indicated on each of the recipes but generally they can each feed a family of four a pretty healthy serving. I hope that helps! 🙂
Great post!
I just noticed under the Prepare section for #1 (pulled pork) it says: “Place chicken into 2 freezer bags and cover with barbecue sauce”.
Thanks for the inspirational recipes!
I have never done a mass meal prep like this but every night we are faced with the decision making process of what we are going to eat for dinner. This would seriously make everything so much easier!! Maybe I will go to the grocery store in the morning and do the meal prep on Sunday and see how all of this goes!! The recipes sound delicious and I know my husband would have a smile on his face every night if he came home to a meal already cooked for him!!! Thanks for sharing in so much detail!!!!
Love your site! Any reason I couldn’t make the grill recipes in the crockpot? We live in Az where it is hot until November, the grill isn’t so fun, nor the oven! I appreciate your thoughts!
This is wonderful, thank you! Where is part 1?
Hi Katie,
Here is the link to part 1: https://www.livingwellspendingless.com/2014/05/12/ten-freezer-meals-in-one-hour/
Hope that helps! 🙂
We’ve had 3 of these recipes so far and each was a hit. The coconut lime chicken is definitely a keeper.
Love these recipes and you give great steps to make it easier to follow along.
Freezer meals have become a staple in my household and love finding new recipes.
Would you mind letting me know what you serve with each of these dishes? Thanks!
I have looked through these and love them. have tried a few but my major ? is these are just meat dishes. Nothing i have seen is mentioned about the whole meal? I love following your blog and there is always something that helps me but for me in my busy family scheduled these don’t really help cause its only meat dishes. Is there another part that goes with these. My other ? is do you cook all these and freeze them? or you just prep them all put in Refrigerator and then each night pull out a bag of meat and cook it and then come up with ideas for the sides? I am a huge fan of Freezer meals and yes most of them are for crock-pot but still so easy i pull out a whole bag and it has my veggies and meat and sauce all in dump in the pot and when i come home its done. on thinking an prepping and i usually spend one weekend really only half prepping and freezing a months worth of food. Sorry this went on a bit. I was trying to show I am not just complaining. I do love and do Freezer meals. Just not getting these.
Hi Angi,
Most all of the recipes require no cooking ahead of time. You prep the recipe and then freeze it and take it out when you need it. I usually come up with sides depending on the time of year and what vegetables are in season. I hope that helps. 🙂
This is my second week of trying these, and I just finished the prep work on this batch! I haven’t quite figured out how you rock this out in an hour, but maybe it just takes practice. Hubby helped and we were able to get it done in a little over an hour. We actually made 12 meals b/c our pork butt was huge, so we made 4 of the BBQ bags! I love these…they have really been a great way to save money and time on weeknights. I’m making them pretty much verbatim right now but am making notes to adjust to our tastes and lighten up where we can. Can this be your next book? Preferably with laminated pages? 🙂
So, I have a question…. What do you serve all of this with?
Thanks,
–Lynn
Thanks so much for these awesome freezer plans, but before I shop, am I missing something? Are there ingredients on the shopping list that aren’t used in any of these recipes? yogurt, romano, gruyere, and the frozen vegetables?
Thank you for the wonderful recipes, they are delicious! I also appreciate that there aren’t too many ingredients that are off the wall. I’m going to use your site regularly when meal planning.