One of my goals for the new year is to do more freezer meals for my family. In looking over my spending habits for 2011 I can clearly see that our family spent entirely too much money eating out and I need to bring that down in 2012. So the plan is, to make more meals at home and have items in my freezer ready to be warmed up or cooked for easy meals that don’t cost me a fortune.
Even though I have a stockpile of food there are many days where I look and say “we don’t have anything to eat”. What that really means is that I didn’t thaw out any meat or plan something for dinner or I just don’t want to cook. I am a lucky girl in that my husband cooks 50% of the meals for our crew. We switch days on who cooks and who cleans the kitchen. That works for us. We both work a full-time job. It was not always this way however because I have been a stay-at-home/work-at-home mom for 20+ years and I used to do all of the cooking and cleaning. It took my husband some time to get around to the notion that I now work a full time job, often longer hours than he does at his job outside of the home.
So, back to the goal….do more batch cooking and have options in my freezer ready to go for those days we don’t feel like cooking and are tempted to going out for dinner or grabbing a donut or muffin at the store.
I hate cooking breakfast. I am not a morning person. I dislike the smell of food cooking first thing in the morning. And I don’t want to eat breakfast until after 10 AM. The problem is, I am the only person in my household who is like this. Everyone else wants to eat as soon as they wake up and on the weekends they all want home cooked hot breakfast and not cold cereal. So in our first freezer meal project my husband and I whipped up some yummy breakfast burritos.
Breakfast Burritos – Freezer Meal
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs. bacon, diced
- 2 lbs. breakfast sausage
- 1 large onion, diced small
- 1 cup diced bell pepper (I used frozen diced bell pepper)
- 20 eggs
- 36 fajita sized flour tortillas
- 1 (8 oz.) bag shredded cheddar cheese
Directions:
In a large skillet (I used my electric skillet) cook the bacon until browned. Drain grease from bacon and set aside on a plate with a few paper towels to absorb the grease.
In the same skillet brown and crumble the sausage until cooked through. Drain grease from sausage and set it aside on another plate with a few paper towels to absorb the excess grease.
Using the same skillet saute the onion and bell pepper till the onion is translucent and the peppers are soft yet a little crisp.
While the onion and bell pepper are cooking, crack and scramble the eggs. For large quantities of eggs like this, I like to scramble them in my blender.
Once the bell peppers and onion are cooked add the eggs and cook just as you would for scrambled eggs, stirring the egg mixture while cooking until they are cooked through, being careful not to over cook the eggs. Then add the cooked bacon and sausage to the eggs.
Turn off the heat to the pan and sprinkle egg mixture with cheese. Cover pan and let it sit for about 5 minutes to let the cheese melt.
In a frying pan (or Comal if you have one) warm your tortillas one at a time and proceed to make your breakfast burritos. Always warm your tortillas first to prevent them from cracking while folding your burritos. Use about 1/4 cup of filling for each burrito (I did not measure this).
Continue making burritos until you run out of either filling or tortillas (or if you do it right…both at the same time)
Once all of your burritos are made, wrap each one in plastic wrap and place into labeled freezer bags and seal, removing as much air as possible. Frozen burritos will store for 2-3 months in regular freezer bags. For longer freezer storage you can seal them with your Foodsaver and they will last 5-6 months easily.
To eat, unwrap a burrito and place on microwave safe plate. Cover loosly with the plastic wrap and microwave for 1 minute, flip over and cook one more minute. Serve with Tabasco or salsa if desired.
*Note – you can stretch this recipe even further by cooking up some shredded potatoes or frozen hash browns after cooking the bacon and sausage (set aside and add back in at the end). Potatoes are a inexpensive filler to make even more breakfast burritos. You can also add ham, tomatoes, change up the type of cheese you use (pepper jack?), add some spinach or other veggies.
I used coupons for most of the ingredients for this recipe except for the eggs, which we usually buy by the flat, and tortillas, which I didn’t have any coupons for. But I figured the cost for me to make this was about 75¢ – 80¢ per burrito. I buy sausage, bacon and cheese when I can get it cheap and freeze it so I pulled those out of the freezer to make this. I had the frozen bell peppers in my freezer because I bought a couple of bags when they were on markdown at Albertsons for 25¢ a bag. The onion was fresh and cheap. I paid like $2 per package of tortillas. Overall it was pretty inexpensive I think for a hot breakfast I can serve my kids any day of the week. And I can warm theirs up at the crack of dawn when they want to eat, then warm mine up after 10 AM when I want to eat!
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