I don’t generally freeze the whole meal, only the most laborious steps that still freeze well. Such as:

• milanesa/schnitzel - you can bulk prepare them, deep-fry them, and freeze after they cooled down. Then when you want to use them just reheat on a pan.
• Bolognese sauce - scales well, freezes well, and damn versatile to use.
• cooked beans or chickpeas - bonus points if you mix random pork in either, and freeze it in individual portions.
• kibbeh - ideally frozen raw, to bake or deep-fry as needed, but you can do it with them already cooked too.

I don’t usually recommend to prep and freeze the staple carbohydrate. Two reasons: 1) it’s easy and fast to prepare it in situ, and 2) it gives you a bit more room for variation. For example you can serve the same Bolognese sauce over pasta, or polenta, or even in bread, for three different meals using the same ingredient.

I really like this recipe. Pressure Cooker Chile Verde It works great as a meal prep recipe and a lazy night/don’t feel like seriously cooking recipe. I have made it with chicken thighs as well with great results.

Beans & Greens - infinitely flexible by varying your choice of legumes, liquid, greens, and seasonings

Spaghetti sauce or Sloppy Joe meat can be made in almost any quantity and is at least a few steps up from McDonalds

For more formal recipes, we enjoyed these two:

• Slow Cooker Red Lentil Curry with Sweet Potatoes
• Crock Pot Chicken Thighs

This week I made about a gallon of ramen broth and the all fixin’s. I’m just throwing soba noodles at it. Very easy and it’s getting tastier as week goes on. I think I started with this recipe but liberties were made.

Curries! It’s easy to make a huge pot that will last several meals. They freeze and reheat well; in fact, I actually find curries to taste better after the first day as the flavors have had time to mingle. I’m Thai and my favorites to make and freeze are yellow, red, and green curry. I don’t follow any recipes exactly and tend to use different veggies depending on what I have on hand but this author has some great ones to get you started. Some things to note: 1. it’s not necessary at all to make the curry paste from scratch (I use the tinned/boxed paste 99% of the time), and 2. keep an eye on any ingredients that are at risk of getting mushy (potatoes and eggplants for example) and consider setting aside the freezer portion before it’s all the way done.

Another favorite make ahead meal for me is five spice braised stew. This is another one that works really well because the eggs are so much more flavorful after having absorbed the liquid over time. Here’s a recipe, it’s more involved than the curries imo but you can simplify it by purchasing five-spice packets instead of the individual spices and skipping some of the sauces. You can also sub other meats for the pork or even skip the meat. Bamboo in particular tastes really nice braised.

I do a rice, veggie, protein bowl. I’ll fill a container with some rice, some veggie like broccoli, carrots, etc, and change which one it is each meal, and have some protein in there. I’m vegan, so I usually do tofu or beans, but you can do sauteed chicken, shrimp, etc. Also, I’ll put a sauce (usually sriracha) on top of everything to give it more flavor.