“What’s for Dinner?”
It is perhaps the most common—and for some, nightmare-inducing—question posed in households everywhere seven days a week, 365 days a year. If the sound of those three words sends you reeling, or worse, straight to the nearest fast-food chain or take-out joint, we’re willing to bet that two words—Dream Dinners—will change all of that forever. It certainly did for us.
It all started with that timeworn working-mother strategy familiar to the more organized of the species: double or triple a recipe, cook it in one afternoon, then freeze what you don’t use for later on in the week. The result is one or two nights off from take-out, frozen pizza, and chicken nuggets. And that was how Stephanie—a working mother of two—achieved her goal of eating dinner with her children every night. But she took the age-old method and gave it a smart twist. Instead of cooking each entree—meat loaf for eight, say—and then freezing it, a method that is efficient but cuts down on taste, she did all of the prep work and then froze the mostly uncooked entrées so they’d be ready to complete later as needed. The result was a freezer full of full-flavored ready-to-cook meals—and liberation from that most dreaded of daily chores: scrambling home after work to pull together a wholesome dinner for the family.
Stephanie’s surefire method for always having a good meal on the table had become legendary among her friends, who had been angling (and angling and angling) for years to get in on her “cook and freeze” days. Finally, she gave in to the begging and invited a dozen friends to come into her kitchen with their own pans and dishes and a few bottles of wine. She provided the recipes and enough ingredients for everyone to make twelve freezer-ready dinners, each in proportions to serve six. Soon friends were calling in hopes of making their dinners, too.
Stephanie and Tina had been friends and coworkers for years and were the perfect fit to start this business. Stephanie has a culinary background and Tina a financial and accounting background.
Stephanie and Tina started Dream Dinners because they wanted to make it easier for people to get to the dinner table and enjoy a healthy balance of food and relationships. They wanted to make people’s lives easier and encourage them to eat together as a family at least three nights a week.
Dream Dinners is the innovator in the home-meal-solutions industry, originating the concept of hosting small-group assemble-and-freeze meal sessions. The first to introduce this time-saving dinnertime solution nationwide, Dream Dinners invented the concept that offers convenience and a fun interactive environment. Now franchised, Dream Dinners helps busy families in over two hundred stores across our nation save time and money, and makes it easier for them to share healthy, home-cooked meals at the table. Visit www.dreamdinners.com for the location nearest you.
What Are Dream Dinners?
Dream Dinners are healthy, delicious, fuss-free meals made with easy-to-find ingredients that you assemble in multiples and freeze. No more hassles planning and preparing meals, no more hectic postwork, predinner, mid-homework chaos in the kitchen.
A freezer full of meals may be the obvious benefit to preparing food the Dream Dinners way, but there’s another—no less important—advantage to having dinner at your fingertips, or at least in the freezer. Dream Dinners encourage families and friends to reconnect around the dinner table. Eating dinner together provides benefits for the whole family, including forming stronger family bonds, sharing important family values, improving communication and problem-solving skills, and saving money.
Indeed, research on the eating habits of families and especially children and teens underscores the impact sitting down together to share a meal can have not only on your family’s health but also on their emotional well-being.
Making Mealtimes Matter
Apart from alleviating the stress that comes with racing to get dinner on the table every night, our hope is that the Dream Dinners in this book will make the dinner table much like a round table—for discussion, laughter, debate, and real, uninterrupted conversation. If food is essential for nourishing the body and love is the main ingredient for feeding the soul, where better than the family dinner table to get your fill of both? Throughout the book, you will find Let’s Talk, our strategies for making mealtimes the most comfortable time to engage in meaningful conversation. First and foremost, we use tactics other than raising our voices to get everyone to the dinner table. Once everyone is sitting around the table, there are further strategies for encouraging them to engage.
Getting Organized the Dream Dinners Way
The best cooks, whether they are making a single meal or many at one time, have a system or strategy for preparing breakfast, lunch, and dinner that is high on efficiency and low on stress.
Dream “Times Three”
When you assemble a recipe, it is just as easy to make three batches as it is to make one. Assemble the ingredients, step by step, into three containers. Serve one tonight and freeze the others for up to three months.
If you assemble a “times three” dinner twice a week, at the end of the month, you’ll have sixteen dinners in the freezer, ready to serve to your family or guests, or to bring to others as house gifts. Cooking “times three” saves time, money, and cleanup!
A few advance tips will make this simple method even easier: first, remember to use larger saucepans and mixing bowls when cooking “times three.” This will reduce the number of bowls and pans you have to clean later. Second, invest in good-quality freezer bags, heavy-duty foil, plastic wrap, and perhaps even foil pans. This will keep your regular baking dishes available and eliminate worries about losing your dishes when delivering frozen dinners to new moms or new neighbors. While cooking, make sure you get time-intensive processes started first (for example, browning meat and cooking rice or noodles) and group similar tasks together for efficiency: chopping vegetables, grating cheeses, browning meat, and so on.
HOW TO AVOID IMPULSE SHOPPING
Buy only what’s on your shopping list, nothing else.
Grocery shop only once each week to save time and money.
Get in and out of the store quickly. We spend an average of forty-seven minutes per trip to the grocery store, according to the market research firm Insight Express. Aim to beat the average.
Visit big box and warehouse stores only once each month. Buying in bulk is great, but most of us can’t resist purchasing at least one impulse item on these excursions.
Shop alone. Spouses tend to toss unnecessary items into the cart. Children may plead for junk food incessantly!
Never shop when you are hungry. That cholesterol-loaded, jumbo-size bag of chips is harder to resist when your stomach is growling.
Shopping in advance with a specific shopping list is key if you want to prepare meals in the Dream Dinners fashion. Also make sure to keep your pantry well stocked with staples, including canned goods such as chicken; beef; and vegetable broths; whole and crushed tomatoes; white, black, and kidney beans; favorite oils and vinegars; and herbs and spices, to name a few. And for all of those ingredients that are not in the pantry, create a shopping list.
Begin with the Right Tools, Dishes, and Equipment
We created Dream Dinners with busy cooks in mind. None of the recipes on the following pages requires fancy equipment (where did that special attachment to the stand mixer go?) or special tools for assembly. And while we always aim to freeze as much as we can in space-saving, convenient resealable plastic bags, some dishes require sturdier storage, such as plastic containers. Review each recipe that appeals to you before you determine what kind of baking dishes and mixing bowls will be necessary. When dinners are frozen in these dishes, they all need to be wrapped in plastic wrap and/or heavy-duty aluminum foil. We recommend wrapping them in a layer of both. Skimping on foil can mean the difference between a delicious meal from the freezer and one that tastes subtly of other dishes. Double-bag soups and marinades to prevent accidental spilling as they freeze and thaw. Keep a supply of gallon-size resealable freezer bags at your fingertips and clear space in your freezer, too (twelve family dinners occupy about the same amount of space as a case of soda). If your dishes can’t go from the freezer to the oven to the table, here’s a tip that is especially useful for casseroles. Line the baking dish with foil, prepare the casserole in it, and freeze. Remove the frozen casserole from the dish in the foil, wrap another layer of foil around it, and return it to the freezer without the dish. When you are ready to thaw and bake it, remove the foil, place it back into the original baking dish, thaw, then bake.
Making the Best-Tasting Meals
If you follow a few general preparation and cooking rules, you can successfully prepare every dish in this book—for dinner tonight and for later, too.
Stumped by what wine to serve? Use our simple and general rules. Seafood loves Chardonnay; red meat and Cabernet are good partners; poultry is pleasing with Zinfandel; pasta with Merlot can’t be beat; and most Asian and Mexican dishes taste best with a Chenin Blanc.
RECIPE RESCUE: WHEN A DISH DOESN’T SEEM QUITE RIGHT
|
IF THIS HAPPENS… |
TRY THIS: | |
|
Too dry |
Add ½ cup chicken stock; cover with foil and steam. | |
|
Too soggy |
Remove the foil and raise the temperature 50°F. | |
|
Check for doneness every 10 to 15 minutes. | ||
|
Still frozen |
Place the dinner in a glass dish or plastic bag and defrost in the microwave. | |
|
Fish tough and chewy |
Next time cook over the highest heat your stove offers and cook fast, 5 to 10 minutes per inch of thickness, just until it flakes with a fork. Cook shellfish, such as shrimp and scallops, just until they are opaque. | |
|
Cooking time is longer than instructions state |
Cooking times vary from oven to oven and can fluctuate based on the temperature of the precooked dish. If any portion of the dinner is not completely thawed, the cooking time will be longer. |
What Can You Freeze?
Some foods freeze better than others. Raw meat and poultry, for example, maintain their quality longer than their cooked counterparts because moisture is lost during cooking and even more during freezing. Never freeze food in cans or eggs in their shells. However, once the food is out of the can, you may freeze it.
If you freeze food at a consistent 0°F, it will always be safe to eat, though the quality will suffer with lengthy freezer storage. Each recipe in Dream Dinners gives a suggested freezing limit.
Freshness and Quality
Freshness and quality at the time of freezing affect the condition of frozen foods. If frozen at peak quality, foods emerge tasting better than foods frozen near the end of their useful life. So freeze items you won’t use quickly sooner rather than later. Store all foods at 0°F or lower to retain vitamin content, color, flavor, and texture. The freezing process itself does not destroy nutrients. In meat and poultry products, there is little change in nutrient value during freezer storage.
Packaging
Proper packaging helps maintain quality and prevent “freezer burn.” It is safe to freeze meat or poultry directly in its supermarket wrapping but this type of wrap is permeable to air. Unless you will be using the food in a month or two, overwrap these packages as you would any food for long-term storage, using airtight heavy-duty foil, (freezer) plastic wrap, or freezer paper, or place the package inside a freezer plastic bag. Use these materials or airtight freezer containers to repackage family packs into smaller amounts. It is not necessary to rinse meat and poultry before freezing. Freeze unopened vacuum packages as is. If you notice that a package has accidentally been torn or has opened while food is in the freezer, the food is still safe to use; merely overwrap or rewrap it.
FOODS THAT FREEZE BEST
Uncooked proteins, such as chicken, pork, fish, and beef.
Fresh carrots, zucchini, onions, and celery. Fresh potatoes do not freeze—they turn black. Yuck.
Starch-based dishes dry out more quickly than protein-based entrees when frozen.
Myth: You can’t refreeze cooked meat. Fact: You can refreeze raw meat if it is in a sauce or marinade. Refreezing meats can cause them to lose moisture and become tough, but when used in a casserole or marinade, meats will cook up with more flavor and will usually be more tender.
Butter and yogurt-based spread will freeze but cream cheese, unless blended with other ingredients, will dry out.
Heavy cream and mayonnaise do not freeze. Substitute cream cheese or sour cream if a recipe calls for mayonnaise as a base for sauces. They both freeze better than mayonnaise.
Safe Defrosting
Never defrost foods in a garage, basement, car, dishwasher, or on the kitchen counter, outdoors, or on the porch. These methods can leave your foods unsafe to eat.
There are three safe ways to defrost food: in the refrigerator, in cold water, or in the microwave. It’s best to plan ahead for slow, safe thawing in the refrigerator. Small items may defrost overnight; most foods require a day or two.
COOKING FROZEN FOODS
Raw or cooked meat, poultry, or casseroles can be cooked or reheated from the frozen state. It will take approximately one and a half times longer than the usual cooking time for food that has been thawed.
For faster defrosting, place food in a leak-proof plastic bag and immerse it in cold water. (If the bag leaks, bacteria from the air or surrounding environment could be introduced into the food. And tissues can absorb water like a sponge, resulting in a watery product.) Check the water frequently to be sure it stays cold. Change the water every 30 minutes. After thawing, cook immediately.
When microwave-defrosting food, plan to cook it immediately after thawing because some areas of the food may become warm and begin to cook during microwaving.
Refreezing
Once food is thawed in the refrigerator, it is safe to refreeze it without cooking, although there may be a loss of quality due to the moisture lost through defrosting. After cooking raw foods that were previously frozen, it is safe to freeze the cooked foods. If previously cooked foods are thawed in the refrigerator, you may refreeze the unused portion.
If you purchase previously frozen meat, poultry, or fish at a retail store, you can refreeze if it has been handled properly.