15 Recipes With Freezer Ingredients for Days and Days of Easy Meals (2024)

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Need some dinner inspiration? Crack open your freezer! Check out these easy recipes starring freezer ingredients for delicious meals all week long.

Claudia Cash

Claudia has been a contributor for Simply Recipes 2017, writing numerous articles focused on cooking on a budget, quick and easy meals, and kid-friendly foods.

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and

Robin Shreeves

Robin Shreeves is a food and beverage writer.

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Updated August 23, 2022

Now, let's put those ingredients to good use with these meals made from simple freezer ingredients. (Claudia Cash)

Spring Shrimp Scampi with Peas and Mint
Shrimp is a great protein to have on hand in your freezer because it cooks up fast. While this recipe calls for fresh shrimp, you can easily sub in frozen shrimp. Pair it with a box of pasta and frozen peas, for a complete meal on the table in no time!
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Spanakopita
Got frozen phyllo? Got frozen spinach? Then you’ve got the makings of spanakopita! It’s such a convenient vegetarian dish to serve for dinner.
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Black Bean Salad
Make a giant batch and eat it for lunch the whole week. It’s just that good! It also uses up canned or frozen beans and frozen corn which makes it even more convenient.
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Slow Cooker Taco Soup
This soup uses up chicken broth, frozen ground beef, AND frozen corn. How’s that for clearing out your freezer? Added bonus: You can freeze leftovers of this soup to use for another time. It’s the soup that keeps on giving.
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Continue to 5 of 15 below.
BBQ Chicken Burrito Bowl
This burrito bowl uses up a variety of frozen ingredients, but the one that’s the most exciting is using up frozen rice! Yes, we tend to get excited about things like that, but you can basically clear out your freezer in one swoop with this recipe!
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Chinese Orange Chicken
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Simply pull out some chicken, orange juice, a bag of veggies, and rice from the freezer, and dinner is served.
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Easy Hamburger Soup
Defrost some ground beef to make this classic soup. Add a bunch of vegetables (frozen vegetables, if you want), beef broth, tomatoes, and seasonings. This family-favorite meal will warm you up on a chilly night.
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Creamy Chicken Florentine
Any time a dish's name contains the word Florentine, it's made with spinach and a creamy sauce (traditionally a Mornay sauce). If you have frozen spinach, you're halfway on Mornay-ing your dinner. This quick one-skillet meal contains chicken (you have that in the freezer, right?), cream, Parmesan, and mushrooms.
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Continue to 9 of 15 below.
Shrimp Fried Rice
Lurking in the back of most freezers is a bag of frozen peas and carrots. This is their time to shine along with some frozen shrimp. And, FYI, if you have leftover white rice from another meal, or from Chinese takeout, you can freeze cooked rice to use for recipes just like this.
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Homemade Pizza Bagels
Kids will love this meal idea. Frozen bagels and frozen tomato sauce are a perfect foundation for pizza bagels. Top with shredded cheese, pepperoni, veggies, bacon... whatever you have on hand.
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Spring Vegetable Tortellini Soup with Pesto
Start with a bag of frozen tortellini, frozen English peas, and frozen vegetable broth (or homemade vegetable stock), and you've taken care of half of the main ingredients you need for this soup. The recipe calls for fresh carrots and asparagus, but you can use frozen, too, saving time chopping vegetables and getting this soup on the table for dinner more quickly.
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Easy Chicken Pot Pie
Store-bought frozen puff pastry and frozen vegetables are two of this pot pie's ingredients. If you make your own chicken stock and freeze it, you have another ingredient sitting in your freezer. Frozen leftover chicken would work, too, but if you don't have any, use rotisserie chicken to make light work of this savory pie.
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Continue to 13 of 15 below.
Shrimp Creole
Shrimp has shown up on this list several times, and there's a good reason for that. Frozen shimp is so quick to defrost compared to chicken, beef, or pork. You can opt for frozen vegetables, too—onions and bell peppers—use them and cut down on your prep time. If you have homemade shellfish stock in the freezer, that goes in there, too.
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Strawberry Banana Smoothie
Breakfast is an important meal, and this quick, healthy, and yummy smoothie is full of frozen banana and strawberries. It takes just 5 minutes to blend together, and you can drink it on the way to work or school.
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Chocolate Chip Pancakes with Raspberry Sauce
This is an easy breakfast or brinner (breakfast for dinner) that is made from pantry staples and frozen raspberries. Keep this recipe in your back pocket for those nights (or mornings) when you don’t have anything fresh on hand. Plus, who couldn’t use a little chocolate right now?
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