Clean Freeze Holiday Prep

54 freezer recipes for the holiday table. Every one prints how long it keeps and exactly what to do on serving day.

Make-ahead holiday books tell you to cook early. The hard part is knowing how early each dish can go in the freezer, and what is left to do when guests arrive. This book prints a freezer time on every recipe, from 2 to 6 months, and a When to Cook What table that counts back from your serving date. Each recipe then has a Serving day line: how to thaw it, how to reheat it, and what to finish, such as a glaze, a topping or a gravy to thicken.

What every recipe prints:

• Calories, protein, fat, carbohydrate, fiber and added sugar per serving, with the serving size stated
• How long it keeps in the freezer at 0°F, and the date window that follows from it
• A Cook it line, a from-frozen method, and a Serving day line
• The safe internal temperature, on every recipe with meat, poultry or egg
• A Contains line for milk, egg, fish, tree nuts, wheat and soy wherever a recipe has any, and a Vegetarian tag on 27 recipes


Here is where the 54 recipes land. The 9 holiday mains run from 297 to 559 calories and from 26 to 51 grams of protein a serving. 13 recipes go from the freezer straight to the oven or pot with no thawing, and 11 make 16 or more servings for a crowd. Most dishes make 8 servings, and every Makes line says what one serving is, so you can work out how many batches your guests need. Three recipes keep 2 months, 31 keep 3, 15 keep 4 and 5 cookies and bars keep 6.

Six chapters of nine recipes: Appetizers & Party Bites, Holiday Mains, Casseroles & Make-Ahead Sides, Gravies, Sauces & Soups, Rolls, Breads & Bakes, and Holiday Sweets. You will find sausage-cheddar pinwheels, sliced turkey breast in herb gravy, maple-mustard pork loin slices, braised beef pot roast, a double-crust turkey pot pie, rosemary roast beef in au jus, Brussels sprouts gratin with Parmesan crumbs, turkey gravy base, pumpkin and sage soup, soft dinner rolls, Christmas morning cinnamon rolls, pecan pie, classic apple pie and gingerbread cookies.

Then the planning that gets it all into the freezer. 13 cooking sessions group all 54 recipes into cooking days of 3 1/2 to 6 hours, each with its equipment, shopping totals and an order of work. Four holiday menus come with timetables that give each dish's start time and oven temperature: Christmas Dinner with 10 dishes, New Year's Day Roast Dinner with 7, Christmas Morning with 6, and an Open House Party Spread with 11. A Find Your Recipe table sorts the book by course, meat, vegetarian, no-thaw and crowd size.

Starting late is fine. The date tables work for any serving date, and a recipe cooked later is simply fresher.

Know before you buy: some holiday foods are not here. There is no stuffing, no potato dish, no whole turkey, no baked ham centerpiece, no cheesecake, dip or cranberry sauce, because they freeze unevenly, lose texture or have no reliable freezer time, and Freezer Basics explains each choice. The recipes are not gluten-free or dairy-free, and ingredient swaps are not checked. A kitchen scale makes the printed weights easy to follow, and every ingredient also has a cup or spoon measure.

The numbers are calculated from the weights printed in each ingredient list and standard published reference values, then recalculated by a second program. They are not lab-tested. Fiber is rounded down and added sugar is rounded up. Freezer times are quality guidance for food kept at 0°F, and a few pastry appetizers with no published time are marked as estimates. This book is not medical advice.

Choose your serving date, count back, and cook once. Know what every dish holds before it goes in the freezer.