7 Healthy Instant Pot Freezer Meals in 2 Hours (With Printable Shopping List & Recipes)

These seven healthy Instant Pot freezer meals are perfect to help anyone trying to save time and their waste line this year.

As I’ve been playing around with my Instant Pot more and more, I’ve discovered that it can be a real time saver! Especially for gals like me who are busy all day long, and then dinner time sneaks up…and I am not prepared at all. Then it’s chaos, kids are crying, I’m getting hangry, and not wanting to spend a lot of time figuring out what to make. So when I make up a bunch of Instant Pot freezer meals ahead of time, I can just take one out of my freezer and pop it into the instant pot. Then Bam! The dinner time problem is solved.

That is why I came up with these 7 healthy Instant Pot freezer meals! And then I decided to create a free printable for you guys with all the recipes, grocery shopping list, pre-prep directions and making the freezer meals plan!

 

Here are the recipes included in this 7 healthy Instant Pot freezer meals plan.

1. Light Chicken Pot Pie – This is a low-fat recipe that has all the flavor and creamy goodness of a classic chicken pot pie recipe.
2. Instant Pot Thai Yam Soup freezer meal – What a beautiful soup this is. Bright colors paired with vibrant and exotic Thai spices make this dish so decadent that your family will be convinced that you literally flew to Thailand just to bring this soup home to them.
3. Instant Pot Shredded Beef Fajitas freezer meal – I am not sure if it gets any easier than this recipe…so much flavor too!
4. Instant Pot Light Country Lemon Chicken with Pasta freezer meal – Have you ever walked through a lemon grove on a warm summer day? This dish tastes like that walk feels. Warm, light, breezy, and fresh!
5. Instant Pot Turkey Bolognese freezer meal – It’s easy to impress guests with this amazing, light version of an Italian-American Classic.
6. Instant Pot Winter Warmth Soup freezer meal – This soup warms your heart like a cozy blanket warms the body. It has all the flavor depth of a rich, decadent soup, but with none of the heavy sauces and guilt that go along with them.
7. Sausage and Spinach Soup freezer meal  – filled with healthy and delicious vegetables and herbs, you will love this soup!

Tips for using the Instant Pot for freezer meals.

Freezer Bags or Round Containers?

Freezer bags are still one of my favorite ways to do all my freezer meals. They take up hardly any room since they can be frozen flat. And they are fairly inexpensive too. But for those of you who want to take your Instant Pot freezer meals out of the freezer, and pop the frozen meal right into your Instant Pot without defrosting or thawing, a lot of people are using these 64 oz freezable plastic containers with lids. Some people like to freeze the meals right into each bucket and use Sharpie peel-off markers to label the lids.

Others like to freeze the meals in the freezer bags using the bucket “shape” then remove from bags and stack in the freezer. You can use whichever method you prefer. The buckets may take up more room in your freezer so keep that in mind.

Instant Pot or Slow Cooker

One thing I need to mention right away is that these Instant Pot freezer meals can also be placed in your slow cooker!  I’ve included the slow cooker directions in these recipes that that way if you don’t have an instant pot quite yet you can still make these delicious recipes. In my recipes, I am using a 6-quart Instant Pot and a 5-quart slow cooker.

Thawing Overnight or Adding to Instant Pot Frozen

Thawing recipes by placing in refrigerator overnight usually produces the best results in my opinion for flavors and textures. However, if you choose not to thaw or you forgot you can still have a delicious meal!

If using freezer bags, just run your bag under water until you can break it apart enough to place into the Instant Pot or slow cooker. Or if you are using the containers you should be able to pot them right into the pot! Sometimes running bucket in water for a minute can help if it seems stuck in there too.

If your meal is frozen when placing into Instant Pot you need to turn on saute setting and cook for 5-6 minutes to get some liquids before sealing and cooking (around 1/2 cup (125 mL) worth of liquids minimum needed). If you don’t have liquids it’s a big problem in the Instant Pot.  Having liquids is not necessary for slow cooking though; you can just add your frozen meal to the slow cooker and start cooking.

**Note: If cooking from frozen you may need to add a little more time to my recipes (usually 2-3 minutes on Instant Pot, up to 1 hour on slow cooker). If you cook the recipes and open it up to see it’s not fully cooked you can re-seal it and cook for an additional 5-10 minutes usually and that should finish it. Or you can use the saute feature to cook it until it’s done.

 

For more of my freezer meal recipes and awesome tips for freezer cooking get my cookbook:  Seriously Good Freezer Meals.