Why I love frozen vegetables and why you should too!

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Today was another day that I needed to cook dinner once I got home from work. Though again, thanks to my sketched out Sunday meal plan I knew exactly what to do and was able to get started right away.

Our menu tonight was:

1. Roasted beets
2. Pierogies
3. Sausages

How to defrost meat while you are at work

First, I should tell you that I should have taken the sausages out of the freezer on Monday night and put them in the fridge to defrost. But I forgot. Fortunately, I remembered in the morning.

My go to trick for safely defrosting meat during the day while I am at work is to submerge the meat in a bowl of water and put it in the fridge. This helps to keep it food safe by keeping it cool but is faster than putting the meat in the fridge with out the water.

We always buy meat in bulk (largest packages) because we find it cheaper than buying meat in the smaller packages.

Once we get it home, we separate it out into the right amount for our family (for example 6 sausages or 6 chicken thighs or about 1 pound of ground beef). We always freeze them in freezer-grade plastic bags – as I actually find that this helps prevent freezer burn better than the non-freezer grade plastic bags.

The other great thing about having them in a bag, is then we can submerge it in water and the bags are water tight.

Why I love frozen vegetables

When I was a kid, I swear the only frozen vegetables we had were corn, peas and carrots (sometimes separate and sometimes mixed). It was rather uninspiring.

But now when I go down the frozen vegetable aisle there are so many options and I totally love it. You can see here that today I was using frozen sliced beets.

The pros of frozen vegetables are:

1. They are super nutritious – just as nutritious as fresh vegetables in most cases
2. They are super convenient – for example, these beets were already peeled and sliced
3. They are shelf/freezer stable – I don’t remember when I bought those beets, but it wasn’t last week (due to not grocery shopping) but they were in my freezer waiting for me
4. They are really quick – I roasted these guys up in under 30 minutes.

How to cook frozen vegetables

While microwaving or steaming works nicely for traditional frozen vegetables like peas and corn. Roasting frozen vegetables can make them so tasty. My go-to method for preparing these beets (but this also works for frozen squash or Brussels sprouts too!) is:

1. Toss them in a bowl with oil, salt and pepper
2. Layer them flat on a cookie sheet (this helps them toast up nicely)
3. Put in them in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes
4. Flip/toss/stir them about a bit
5. Roast for another 10-15 minutes (depending on your vegetable)

How to use the oven to cook your entire meal

Ok – so once my beets were ready to go into the oven, I grabbed two additional sheet pans and laid out my sausages and perogies’ on another sheet and got them into the oven too. I recommend oiling your sheet pan for the perogies’, but didn’t use any additional oil on my sausages. Though this pan was the messiest after I was done, so some oil or tinfoil first may have made my clean up a bit faster.

Here everything is in my oven! I didn’t have quite enough space across, so I have my sausages and perogies’ kind of leaning on the side of my beets. Also, you can tell these pictures are real-life because it looks like I need to clean my oven…. (I will add it to my impossible to do list!)

What I served

In under 30 minutes I was able to get my table looking like this photo. I had my roasted beets, roasted perogies’ and sausages, the rest of the watermelon and leftovers from lunch (which included some samosas)

What did they eat

My one little guy wanted sausages with a ketchup and mustard dip to start off. My other little guy wanted some of everything – perogies, sausage, beets and samosa.

My guys totally loved this meal. One guy ate 2 sausages and left a few pieces behind. He also grabbed a few slices of watermelon.

My other little guy ate many perogies (I didn’t count) and 1 sausage. He tried the beets but said they weren’t too his taste. He also didn’t eat his samosa but my husband grabbed it off his plate and it ate before I took this picture. My husband is also is a child of the 80s, so obviously feels the need to clean his plates (and those plates around him too!)

So what

First and foremost – perogies is a super hard word to spell. I don’t think I have spelled it correctly once. Lets hope the spell check is working….

Second – this freezer to oven meal came together in under 30 minutes and was hit. I felt good because I managed to get a fairly well-rounded meal served of fruits and vegetables, starch and protein. And my kids liked it too.

Frozen vegetables can be a great way to get some vegetables on the table and there are so many choices now.

Also – if you forgot to defrost your night before but remembered in the morning – give my work-day defrost trick a try (submerge in a bowl of water in the fridge).

What types of frozen vegetables have you tried for your family? How do you like to prepare them? If you have any questions or comments send me an email at contact@kellypicard.com or leave me a comment. Thanks so much for reading!