UKC

I’ve treated myself to a vacuum sealer from Lidl, and fancy knocking up some homemade boil-in-bag meals with it, mostly to save a few quid on buying ‘proper’ ones. 

Is there anything to try or avoid doing when making them? I’m guessing wetter foods will do better than dry concoctions, but is it just a case of chucking some leftover chilli or similar in a bag & sealing it up? 

How are you going to store them? Freeze and let defrost, keep in cold box? 
 

It’s fairly standard process if you live alone to make a meal for 4 and split portions for freezing. 
 

It saves time on preparation but you need to plan ahead and take your evening meal out of the freezer in the morning or the time you save in preparation will be spent walking backwards and forwards to the microwave and swearing at a semi defrosted mass of something unrecognisable as food. 

Watched an interesting  video on You Tube of a Sheffield guy Patrick Dickinson who dehydrates meals, freezes them  and them uses for camping, apparently a lot tastier than the ones you can buy , and also a lot cheaper

I often do this. I suggest some experimentation at home to find what you like. Here are some tips I have found out:

- Ensure you use freezer proof / boil in the bag bags and do not overfill them, you want a really secure knot / fastening.

- I have found that chopping vegetables or meat into chunks works really well. Too small and things are more likely to go mushy. 

- Yes, think wet foods. 

- In the initial cooking phase go al dente rather than fully cooked through.

- Store a variety in the freezer at home and just take what you fancy, ten bags of chilli in a row tends to be less appetising.

- I tend to highly season the food ( garlic, salt, pepper, chilli, curry etc. )   so that even if the appetite is low the food seems tasty. Obviously this is antisocial but usually leads to a warmer night! 

- I will often make up bags in the valley when alpine climbing and take them with me - obviously no freezing involved.

- Use a long handled spoon to eat out of the bag and take a separate bag to seal all your dirty / used bags in so you can bring them home, wash and reuse without making a mess of your rucksack.

- Personally I use a Jetboil to heat the food in the bag through, just the right size for a meal bag and the hot water is also a brew...

Cheers. I’ll probably get some Mylar bags to use for them, as they’ll fit in my little Ti pot on top of the Pocket Rocket. 
I hadn’t considered al dente or bigger chunks, but makes sense as it’ll stew in its own juices anyway when sealed, and I’m not a big fan of ‘hot mush’ dinners. 
I’ll try knocking a few up as testers and see how they get on. I’ve got a reasonable suspicion that BBQ venison fajitas (carrying tortillas & cheese separately) may well work a treat. 

Speaking from experience with freezing bait for fishing......

pre-chill a metal baking try and flatten the contents of the bag out when you put it on the tray to freeze. You want to freeze the food as quickly as possible as slow freezing results in large ice crystals growing in the cells of the food and rupturing them. Ruptured cells = mush when defrosted. Fine if you want that, but not otherwise. The metal tray helps conduct the heat out of the food faster.  Check the freezing capacity of your freezer, trying to freeze a massive batch of chilli will result in slow freezing and potential warming up of the already-frozen food.

'Flat' bags defrost much quicker than ball-shaped bags due to the larger surface area:volume ratio and will save time and fuel in the re-heating process.  If you're freezing for home consumption and have time to leave them out to defrost then it might be a good idea to freeze bags in tupperware containers or similar to create block-shaped bags that pack better in the freezer.