A Saturday of Bulk Cooking

It's a little scary how excited I can get by the thought of saving money, time AND energy.  Hence my recent foray into bulk cooking (& freezing) easy meals.  I usually enjoy the prep involved in cooking dinners at home, but breakfast and lunch are a different story.  Mornings are rushed and lunches need to be microwavable.  So I decided to spend a couple hours last saturday cooking and assembling about 20 breakfast burritos and 18 veggie burgers.  I had been wanting to try a couple vegetarian burger recipes anyway, so I took as the perfect opportunity.

First for the burritos.  These were easy.  I scrambled 8 eggs, sauteed 2 peppers and 2 onions, cooked 8 links of maple sausage and roasted some sweet potatoes.  Add some cheese and flour tortillas and you've got yourself an breakfast burrito assembly line.

Collecting the ingredients. 

Assembly commence!

I flash freezed them for about an hour and then individually wrapped in saran wrap, labeled with a "V" for veggie or an "S" for sausage.  From frozen, they take about 1.5 minutes in the microwave, but for a more even heating, defrost overnight and heat for about 45 seconds.  In a pinch, we eat them wrapped in a napkin on our commute to work, but with a few more minutes and some sour cream and salsa, we have ourselves a nice breakfast together.

In an effort to move more toward a whole-foods plant-based diet (which I hear is good for you for all sorts of reasons but while cheese and I may take short breaks, I could never divorce it; even if it gives me cancer) I decided to go for a lentil and barley burger with carrots, onions and parsley.  Since I already had the produce, a quick trip to Whole Foods for the dried lentils and barley (only $1.99 per pound, by the way; maybe the cheapest thing at Whole Foods) was all I needed to get moving.

In addition to the lentils, barley, shredded carrots and onions, these burgers call for tomato paste, Panko bread crumbs, eggs and a smattering of garlic and spices.  I added some lime juice for some extra acid.  The patties were pretty crumbly and hard to form, but I flash froze them for a couple hours and then they were easy to wrap up individually.

Fresh patties on wax paper, waiting to be flash-frozen. 

The verdict on these guys is positive, although with some reservation.  As burgers, they were difficult.  Once thawed, the patties did not stay formed while I browned them on the stovetop.  So I went with it and decided to make it a "hash" instead of a burger.  This was much more successful.  Fry up the hash in a little bit of oil and you have a hearty, healthy meal.  The flavors are great (although I'd add a dash of salt and pepper before serving) and the texture, once fried up, is nice and slightly crispy. I've even been eating them for breakfast lately.

Here's the original recipe, from All Recipes, which I followed pretty closely.

Also good to note: 20 breakfast burritos doesn't actually last you that long, as I had hoped.  When your husband eats two in the morning most days of the week, your stock will quickly be depleted.  Maybe next Saturday will be another bulk cooking day.  But this time I'll double my recipe.