The best freezer friendly dinners are the ones that taste like you made an effort on a night when you genuinely did not, because you made the effort three weeks ago instead. These six recipes were picked specifically because they freeze and reheat well, from rich, slow-cooked stews to a properly good curry, so a stocked freezer means a proper dinner is always closer than a takeaway menu.
A comforting vegan curry built around tender potatoes and sweet peas in a creamy coconut sauce, this one-pot dish freezes beautifully thanks to the potatoes holding their texture well through freezing and reheating.
It is worth doubling the batch specifically for this reason: make it once, eat it twice, weeks apart. Freeze in individual portions so you can defrost exactly what you need.
Tender meatballs and colourful vegetables simmer in a rich, aromatic coconut curry sauce, and the sauce only gets better after a spell in the freezer, as the spices have more time to properly settle in.
It takes about fifty minutes to make from scratch, but a defrosted portion reheats in a fraction of that, which is really the whole point of having it stashed away. Reheat gently on the hob rather than in short blasts in the microwave for the best texture.
A proper one-pot wonder, this stew brings together tender meatballs and creamy beans in a rich, spicy tomato sauce, built for exactly the kind of chilly evening where you will be glad you have some tucked away in the freezer already.
It freezes and reheats with almost no loss of flavour, since tomato-based sauces tend to hold up particularly well. Let it defrost fully in the fridge overnight before reheating for the best result.
Tender meatballs and al dente penne meet a luscious tomato sauce, all finished under melted mozzarella, and this one is worth making in double batches specifically to freeze one before baking.
Assemble the whole dish, freeze it unbaked, and you have a proper oven bake ready to go straight in from frozen on a night when cooking from scratch feels like too much. Add a few extra minutes to the bake time if cooking from frozen.
A classic for good reason: tender beef and root vegetables simmer together in a rich, flavourful broth until everything is meltingly soft, and it is hard to think of a dish more suited to a big batch and a stack of freezer containers.
Stews like this genuinely improve with a little time, so a defrosted portion a few weeks later can taste even better than it did on day one. Leave a little headspace in the container, since liquid expands as it freezes.
Saving the richest dish for last: lamb braised slowly with butter beans, tomato and rosemary until the sauce turns thick and the beans go beautifully creamy. The long, slow cook is exactly what makes it such a good freezer candidate, since all that depth of flavour is already locked in by the time it goes in the container.
It takes about eighty minutes to make, almost all of it hands-off, so it is a good one for a lazy Sunday spent batch-cooking. Portion it into meal-sized containers before freezing for easy weeknight defrosting.
A well-stocked freezer is one of the kindest things you can do for a busy future version of yourself. Remy makes it easy to save these freezer friendly dinners, plan a batch-cooking session into your week and get every ingredient onto one shopping list.