Tips to a Quick Summer Meal
First let me say that having one of our children graduate from High School, becoming a grandmother, and starting a new full time job has really been time consuming the last few months. But as I was using one of my favorite tips to make my lunch today, I though I’d share.
Whenever we use our grill, I grill an extra piece or two of whatever meat we are grilling - like salmon, chicken, or steak. I wrap and freeze those extra pieces to use later to make a quick meal. Then I can have all the flavor from the grill on a day I didn’t spend any time grilling outdoors!
For example, I had some leftover roasted red potatoes in a little butter, garlic, rosemary, and parmesan cheese from last nights dinner. So, I thawed one steak that was in the freezer from some other nights grilling. I thinly sliced the medium rare steak and set it aside. I warmed a serving of the potatoes in the microwave and topped it with some of the sliced steak. After sitting for a minute or two, the steak had come to room temperature, but was still perfectly medium rare. It was really delicious. There is still enough steak to top the remaining two servings of potatoes for some of the other lunch-seekers at my house. So, we had three gourmet, grilled lunches ready in minutes on a day I didn’t even go outside!
I regularly move pieces of grilled salmon or chicken from the freezer to the fridge overnight. I often go ahead and crumble or slice the meat prior to freezing to make it even quicker to use when thawed. You can use thawed, crumbled, grilled salmon on top of a romaine salad with cucumbers, parmesan cheese, and a tangy vinaigrette with fresh cracked pepper; or on a sandwich with fresh spinach leaves, canola mayonnaise, spicy brown mustard and lemon pepper. You can use thawed, sliced, grilled chicken to top a spinach salad with chopped hard-boiled egg, thawed frozen green peas, cheddar cheese and ranch dressing made with canola mayonnaise; or add it into whole-wheat tortillas with canned black beans, salsa, 2% milk cheddar cheese, Daisy light sour cream and a few sprinkles of chili powder.
You get the idea, there are so many possibilities. And, of course, this trick is not limited to the grill. I often freeze an extra piece of meat we broiled or pan cooked and use it the same way. So the next time you are buying meat, go ahead a get a package with one or two extra pieces, grill it, and feed your freezer. You’ll have a head start to some really quick, delicious meals!
