The Freezer to Slow Cooker Cookbook: 80 High-Protein Dump-and-Go Meals — Prep Ten Bags in an Hour, 30 g of Protein or More per Serving

The problem with a slow cooker is not the cooking. It is the twenty minutes of chopping at seven in the morning, on a weekday, before work. That is the step that stops people using the machine they were given, and it is why so many of them end up at the back of a cupboard. This book moves that twenty minutes somewhere else. You do it once, on a Sunday, for ten meals at a time — one chopping session, ten bags. Each bag goes flat in the freezer. The night before you want it, one bag moves to the fridge. In the morning you tip it in and press a button. The whole weekday interaction is: open bag, tip, switch on. Nothing to chop, nothing to measure, nothing to decide. WHAT'S INSIDE 80 freezer bags across five chapters: chicken and turkey, beef, pork, soups and stews, and vegetarian and beans. At least 30 grams of protein in every single serving. A slow cooker is one of the few appliances that makes cheap, tough, high-protein cuts genuinely good — chuck, shoulder, thighs, dried pulses. Those are the cuts that reward eight hours. Two ingredient lists on every recipe: what goes in the bag, and what you add on the day. This is the part other freezer-meal books leave out. Dairy, coconut milk, pasta, potatoes, fresh herbs and anything green all behave badly if frozen and slow-cooked, and each recipe tells you exactly which of its ingredients to hold back. A prep-day plan that makes ten bags take an hour rather than three, by working through the ingredients rather than through the recipes — all the onions, then all the carrots, then all the garlic. A full chapter on what freezes and what does not, and a troubleshooting chapter for the real problems: watery sauce, dry chicken, split cream, flat flavour, mushy vegetables. Safe internal temperatures, how long each kind of bag keeps, and a suggested first fortnight of ten bags chosen to share almost all their vegetables. IMPORTANT Every bag in this book is thawed in the fridge overnight before it goes into the slow cooker. Cooking from frozen in a slow cooker keeps food in the temperature range where bacteria multiply for far too long. A great deal of freezer-bag content online skips this step; this book does not, and the instruction appears on the first page and again in every recipe. Slow cookers vary between makes, sizes and ages. Treat the times here as a starting point, follow the manual that came with your machine, and check that food is cooked through rather than trusting the clock. Protein and calorie figures are estimates that vary with cuts and brands. This book is for general information and is not medical or nutritional advice.