Introduction
“How can I get dinner on the table tonight?”From our experience feeding our own families, writing a food blog, and teaching freezer-cooking seminars for many years now, we know this is a looming question you’re asking almost every day. Hey, we are, too!
We’re guessing you understand the benefits of eating at home. You get just how important it is to look your kids and loved ones in the eye over a meal and talk about your day. You know that home-cooked food with whole-food ingredients is always better for you than eating out or grabbing processed junk from the store. You want to watch your budget and cook from scratch and/or in bulk to save money. ’Cause you’re smart like that.
But we also know that no matter how well any of us plans, getting a healthy dinner on the table on a weeknight can be a struggle. Life happens. You leave work later than usual. There’s a whiny toddler hanging on your leg. You forget to throw dinner in the slow cooker that morning or to thaw a freezer meal in advance. You’re ferrying children to baseball practice or piano lessons all evening. Maybe you’re just bone-dead tired.
That’s
exactly why we created this cookbook. With the use of your slow cooker or Instant Pot and your freezer, we’re going to help you get a nutritious and delicious dinner on the table each night
despite what life may throw at you.
This cookbook is truly one of a kind. Out of the thousands of cookbooks on the market, there is nothing—
and we mean nothing—like it. Every recipe in this book can be made in the slow cooker or the Instant Pot. In addition to that, every recipe includes freezing instructions, and most can even be cooked straight from frozen in the Instant Pot. With our recipes in hand, you can prep meals ahead in bulk for virtually hands-free meals down the road.
With two years of recipe development for this book and five hundred volunteer recipe testers on our team (seriously!), we are thrilled to teach you everything we’ve learned about freezer cooking for the slow cooker and Instant Pot. We truly believe this is going to be an incredibly valuable resource for the busy parent (or college student, or working adult) who values eating wholesome meals at home.
Our recipes are all about versatility. Let’s take a look at how our cookbook concept works to help get dinner on the table.
About Our Recipes
When we dove into creating recipes for this book, we had no idea we had signed up for one big tasty science experiment. Using our meat thermometers as our guide, we honed in on the perfect cooking times for all of our freezer-friendly recipes that your family will be making in the slow cooker or Instant Pot over and over again.
As we created and developed an arsenal of amazing recipes, we worked hard to make sure all of them met these five goals:
Goal #1 DELICIOUS.
We aren’t here to waste anyone’s time. If a recipe wasn’t one that our own families and our recipe-testing team enjoyed, it simply didn’t make the cut. Like you, if we’re going to spend time cooking, we want some yummy food on the table! So deliciousness was our first and most important goal.
Goal #2 CAN BE MADE IN BOTH THE SLOW COOKER AND THE INSTANT POT.
Every recipe in this book has instructions for cooking the dish in the slow cooker and the Instant Pot (or another electric pressure cooker). We worked hard to perfect the cooking times for each of these cookers to ensure you aren’t overcooking (or undercooking) your food.
Goal #3 FREEZER-FRIENDLY.
Although every recipe in here was created and tested as a fresh meal, it also had to pass the freezer-friendly test. That means it must freeze, thaw, and prepare successfully, with no major textural or taste changes along the way. To make it easy for you, we’ve included simple freezer meal instructions at the bottom of every recipe.
Goal #4 WHOLE FOODS.
What makes our recipes stand out from freezer meals you might find elsewhere is that they are primarily made with whole-food ingredients. Each one reflects our commitment to the “whole-foods philosophy,” where cooking at home, carefully selecting all-natural ingredients, and eating a variety of vegetables and fruits, whole grains, healthy fats, and local or organic meats are the foundations of a healthy diet.
Goal #5 EASY TO PREPARE.
If you’re reading this book, we know you have a packed schedule. As much as you may love cooking (or not), your time is precious. So we’ve intentionally chosen recipes that are simple enough for anyone to make. We tried to find the shortest path to the best result in every single one.
Copyright © 2020 by Polly Conner and Rachel Tiemeyer. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
