MAKE-AHEAD FREEZER-TO-OVEN SLOW-COOKER BRAISES

Who doesn’t love a deep, flavorful braise on a cold night? So here’s comfort-food magic. Make a no-cook sauce mixture, then freeze it in a 1-gallon plastic freezer bag. When you’re ready, empty the bag straight from the freezer into a slow cooker, then add the protein right on top of that frozen base. The protein requires no additional prepping: no browning, no slicing.

Each of these recipes was developed for a 5- to 6-quart slow cooker. If you don’t have a machine that size, use our instructions for making the braise in a Dutch oven on the stove.

And we’d be remiss not to note that these are not “instant” dinners. They do need to cook for quite a while in the slow cooker. Of course, you can set one to cook at the start of the day and it’ll be ready when you get home in the evening. Or you can plan on making one of these stews on the weekend.

Test Kitchen Notes

• Some of these no-cook braising sauces get mixed in a bowl before they’re put in the freezer bag; some are just dumped straight into the bag. The difference is how important it is to get certain ingredients even throughout the mixture—thus, mix in the bowl first for those recipes.

• It’s best to freeze the braise base flat so it’s easier to work with.

• Better: Freeze the base in its bag that is set inside the removable insert of a 5- to 6-quart slow cooker. It’ll then be the shape of your cooker.

• Even better: Stack several bags on top of each other in the insert to freeze them all to the right size.

• To get the braising base out of the bag, tear and peel away the plastic. If desired, use a pair of kitchen shears to make a few initial openings in the bag.