Make to Freeze Recipes before Baby - Peachy BBQ Chicken

(UPDATE:  I ACTUALLY GAVE BIRTH BEFORE I WAS ABLE TO FULLY STOCK MY FRIDGE SO THIS POST IS THE ONLY ONE IN MY INTENDED SERIES.  I STILL THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA IF YOU PLAN AHEAD THOUGH.  FOR LOADS OF "MAKE TO FREEZE" RECIPES, CHECK OUT THIS SITE.)

I love to cook and usually do most of it in our house. I love my kitchen and I love spending time in it creating yumminess. So I'm trying to prep as much as possible and avoid going the take-out Chinese food route at the end of a long day (though I'm sure that will happen quite a lot!) after Baby comes. I also like that this helps me stay in control of what our little family is eating (ie. what I am eating after delivery and trying to shed those post-baby pounds!) I'm not necessarily focused on just low-fat/low-carb meals or anything but more actual food vs. processed frozen food or fast-food that we might resort to without these meals.

To that end, I am trying to dedicate the month of September to putting together as many "make ahead and freeze" meals as I can. Sometimes this means marathon cooking sessions on the weekends (4 pans of baked rigatoni last weekend) and sometimes it just means making a double portion of whatever I'm making for dinner and freezing half.

After doing the latter last night I realized I might be able to help other mamas-to-be out there if I shared some of these recipes, techniques and tools. So this is a new little series I'm trying out called Make to Freeze Recipes before Baby. Not a super creative name, I recognize but I found myself popping some combination of these words into Google when I was seeking out recipe inspiration so hopefully other preggars will find my series using similar searches.

First up, Peach BBQ Chicken. We had this last night and it was yummy served with some wild rice but I think it would be great with jasmine rice or even couscous as well.



I wish I had taken a photo of this on the dish because I promise it looked much more appetizing than it does here in a Ziploc. But this is the finished, about to be frozen product.

Peachy BBQ Chicken

Ingredients:
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
8 boneless chicken breasts
1/4 cup canola oil
2 cups peach preserves
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup bbq sauce
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1 green bell pepper, julienned
2 8oz cans of water chestnuts, drained

1. In a resealable bag, combine flour, salt and pepper. Add chicken halves and toss to coat.
2. In a large skillet, heat canola oil. Brown chicken halves in batches, returning all to skillet when they've all been browned.
3. In a large bowl, combine preserves, chopped onion, bbq sauce and soy sauce. Pour this mixture over the chicken in the skillet. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, covered for 15 minutes.
4. Add julienned peppers & drained water chestnuts to chicken. Resume simmer and cook uncovered for 5 minutes.
5. Let cool and freeze in whatever portions work for your family.

TO USE:
Thaw in refrigerator overnight. Remove from fridge 30 minutes before cooking. Place contents in a baking dish, cover with aluminum foil and back at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes, removing foil for last 5 minutes of baking. Make some rice or couscous to serve this with. {NOTE: I recommend writing these on the Ziploc as I have above or printing it up on an index card and taping it to the bag}

STORAGE:
I am a fan of storing things with sauce in large Ziploc bags like you see in the image above. I feel like you can get a nice, flat frozen bag that you can stack in the freezer, thus maximizing freezer space. I'm a fan of the reusable, plastic baking pans too but they take up quite a bit of freezer space (save these for casserole/lasagna type dishes I think).