Because I’m a teacher, I try to spend a good amount of my summer making and freezing meals. Between work and school and football practice and homework and everything else, there are just nights during the school year when it’s nice to have something already cooked that I can just pop in the oven or microwave and heat up. I have several casseroles that I do this with. In fact, I have an ever-changing post that I continuously add new casserole recipes to. Most of them freeze and reheat well. It’s called 21 Casseroles for Healthy Appetites, but the number of casseroles is subject to change! I also like to precook meals in my crock pot and freeze them for the future. This is one of those recipes.
Slow Cooker Swedish Meatballs – Big Batch
- 5 pounds of frozen, precooked meatballs, don’t thaw
- 3 cans of cream of mushroom soup
- 1 32-ounce box of beef broth
- 1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce
- 2 envelopes of dry onion soup mix
- 1 pint of sour cream
- Egg noodles
In a large crock pot, pour the mushroom soup, beef broth, Worcestershire sauce, and onion soup mix. Whisk until everything is combined. Add the meatballs and stir until all are coated with the sauce. Cook on low for 8-10 hours. Before serving/freezing, add the sour cream and stir to combine. If eating some of the meatballs immediately, boil egg noodles in salted water according to package directions. Serve meatballs and sauce over noodles.
Well Duh #1: You can choose to freeze these over noodles or just in the sauce. I had leftover noodles after our meal, so I froze some of ours over noodles. I found these great foil pans with cardboard lids at KitchenDance.com:
They are great because you can write on the lid. You can write what’s in the pan as well as directions for reheating. They have every size imaginable.
I also use these containers:
You can find these on Amazon.com. They are reusable and are great for freezing soups and stews, red beans and rice, etc.
The quart-sized ones are here.
The pint-sized ones are here.
Well Duh #2: I used an 8-quart slow cooker. If you don’t have one that big, you can use two slow cookers or just divide the recipe in half
Well Duh #3: Another alternative is to mix everything together in a big bowl and then divide the sauce and meatballs equally among 3 big zippered bags without cooking it and freeze them. On the night before you want to cook it, place a bag in the refrigerator to thaw a bit. The next morning, pour/squeeze the contents of the bag into your slow cooker and cook it on low all day long.
We enjoyed some of these for dinner last night and then, after everything had cooled, I divided it among the storage containers, put the lids on, labeled them, and popped them in the freezer. Over the summer, I usually try to double every casserole I make and freeze one. It makes long days at school and work a LOT easier!
Recent Comments