I love quick weeknight meals. To make everything easier, I make a whole bunch at once and then pull it out of the freezer when I’m too busy to prep a big meal. This freezer stir fry recipe is one of my favorites – it freezes so well, and is super healthy! Plus the kids love it.
It’s even better with my homemade stir fry sauce.
What I love about this recipe is that I can make it with any veggies I want. It’s perfect for using up some things that might go bad, accommodating picky eaters, or taking advantage of whatever’s on sale or in season.
If you’re not already on the homemade frozen dinners bandwagon now’s your chance. Frozen stir fry is one of the easiest to make!
This one also is great for all family sizes. You can easily separate it into bigger or smaller portions depending on how much everyone eats.
It’s also one of the few freezer meals that doesn’t require forethought.
That’s right – you can pull it out right before cooking and run under warm water in a pinch. Or thaw the chicken in the microwave. Dinner crisis averted!
1 point for you – take out, 0.
Although I do recommend taking the chicken and marinade out to thaw ahead of time.
Even though this is technically a chicken stir fry freezer meal recipe, you can actually make this with anything. I’ve used chicken, pork, and beef. Or go full vegetarian!
So good.
Serve it over rice, or eat this amazing stir fry on its own.
Ingredients
This recipe is super simple! All you need is 4 cups of fresh vegetables (your choice), 2 large chicken breasts, and 1 batch of marinade.
If you use my homemade marinade (and I highly recommend it!), you’ll also need soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, sesame seeds, ginger root, garlic, chicken or vegetable broth, and cornstarch. For a bit of heat, hot sauce can be added, but it’s optional.
How to Make Freezer Stir Fry
First, wash and prepare your vegetables by chopping them into bite-sized pieces.
Blanch the veggies in a pot of generously salted water.
Once they’re done cooking, remove the blanched vegetables from the water with a slotted spoon or fine strainer.
Spread out the veggies on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and let them cool completely.
Once they’re cool, place the vegetable trays in the freezer for 2-3 hours or until they’re frozen solid.
Remove them from the freezer and break up the frozen veggies with your hands. Place in a gallon-sized freezer-safe bag.
If you haven’t already, prepare the marinade by whisking together soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, sesame seeds, peeled and minced ginger root, minced garlic, hot sauce (optional), chicken or vegetable broth, and cornstarch.
Chop up the chicken breasts (or meat of your choice) into bite-sized pieces.
Place the meat, along with 3-4 tablespoons of marinade, in a sandwich-sized bag. Seal the bag up and place it inside your gallon size bag with the frozen veggies.
Pour the remaining marinade in a sandwich-sized bag and place it in the gallon-sized bag with chicken and veggies. Remove as much air as you can and seal the bag. Put the bag back in the freezer until you’re ready to cook your stir fry.
To cook your freezer stir fry:
Remove the frozen chicken and the marinade from the bag and allow them to thaw completely.
In a wok or large skillet, heat up a bit of oil. Then stir fry the meat for a few minutes until it’s cooked through.
Add in the frozen veggies and the marinade, and cook on high, stirring frequently. Heat until the vegetables are heated through and the meat is no longer pink in the center, about 3-5 minutes.
Serve on its own or with a side of rice.
How long can you freeze stir fry ingredients in the freezer?
As long as you follow the freezing directions in this recipe and use a good quality, sealed contained (or freezer bag) you can freeze stir fry ingredients for up to 3 months.
If you’re using a deep freeze, you could safely freeze it for longer, but it’s not going to be as fresh. Make sure you date anything that goes into the freezer and rotate regularly so the oldest stuff gets eaten first.
Should I cook first, then freeze? Or freeze in uncooked state and cook up on cooking day?
I prefer my food cooked fresh, so I freeze everything uncooked and then cook before eating. The directions in this recipe are for prepping and freezing uncooked stir fry.
That being said, you totally can cook it all up and then freeze too. Separate your pre-cooked stir fry into portions and add in rice. That way you have your very own homemade frozen meals ready to go! These are great when you have insatiable teens in the house, or for quick lunch ideas.
Pro Notes/Tips
If you’re in a hurry, you can defrost your meat and sauce by running them under warm water. Meat can also be thawed in the microwave – just put it on a microwave-safe plate first!
You can use any vegetables you want but Asian-style ones like carrots, peppers, broccoli, onions, beans, and snap peas are always a hit.
Instead of regular oil, you can fry your stir fry in sesame oil for a more authentic taste.
You can also pre-cook and freeze the rice. Follow your rice package cooking instructions, and let it cool. Then freeze rice in freezer bags. When you’re ready to eat, microwave the rice to warm it up, or add it to your skillet with the rest of the stir fry ingredients.
Love Stir Fry? Try These Recipes Next!
If you’re on an Asian food kick, why not make Teriyaki Beef and Broccoli your next meal? You might also love this Loaded Miso Soup recipe! Stir fry-style foods can also be super healthy, especially served on lettuce like these Sesame Chicken Lettuce Wraps and Freezer Meal Asian Lettuce Chicken Wraps. If those don’t work, you can always change things up with this Red Coconut Curry Chicken Recipe.
Did you make some amazing stir fry? I’d love to see how it turned out – tag me in your picture on Instagram @happymoneysaver and use the hashtag #happymoneysaver!
Homemade Freezer Stir Fry
Ingredients
- 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts sliced into bite sized pieces
- 3/4 cup chicken broth
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 2.5 tbsp Brown Sugar
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp sesame seeds
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 2 tsp minced fresh ginger
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 pinch red pepper flakes (optional)
- 4-6 cups fresh or pre-frozen vegetables
TO SERVE
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- cooked rice or noodles
- sesame seeds (optional)
Instructions
- In a medium bowl whisk together chicken broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, sesame seeds, cornstarch, ginger, garlic and pepper flakes if using.
- Wash and prepare vegetables by chopping into bite sized pieces.
- Place chicken, along with only 4 tablespoons of marinade in separate bowl or bag and let marinate for 15 minutes.
MAKE IT NOW
- In a wok or large skillet, heat vegetable oil over high heat. Add marinated chicken, and cook, stirring contantly for 3-4 minutes or until meat is no longer pink inside. Remove meat from wok and add vegetables . Cook, stirring constantly for 3-4 minutes until vegetables are tender-crisp. Add cooked chicken and remaining marinade and cook until sauce is slightly thickened and bubbly. Serve over cooked rice or noodles and garnish with extra sesame seeds if desired.
MAKE IT A FREEZER MEAL
- Place marinated chicken in a small quart sized freezer safe bag, seal bag removing air. Place remaining marinade into another quart size freezer safe bag, seal bag removing air.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Blanch vegetables (see directions in post). Spread out veggies and place in a freezer for 30-45 minutes or until frozen solid. Remove from freezer and place in a gallon sized freezer safe bag. Seal bag removing as much air as possible.
- Place all three bags into one gallon sized bag. Remove as much air as you can and seal bag. Place back in freezer until ready to make.
THAW AND COOK
- Thaw chicken marinade bag.
- In a wok or large skillet, heat vegetable oil over high heat. Add marinated chicken, and cook, stirring contantly for 3-4 minutes or until meat is no longer pink inside. Remove meat from wok and add vegetables. Cook, stirring constantly for 3-4 minutes until vegetables are tender-crisp. Add cooked chicken and remaining marinade and cook until sauce is slightly thickened and bubbly. Serve over cooked rice or noodles and garnish with extra sesame seeds if desired.
Do you have to blanch the vegetables? Or could you freeze them raw?
Certain vegetables need blanching for best results. Peppers and onions don’t need any blanching though.
I made this for a freezer meal group I am in, and it turned out great!! I will make it again and again. So easy. I used low sodium soy sauce, and low sodium chicken broth, and I think I WON’T do that again, and I felt the sauce needed a little more flavor. One thing I found that worked really well, is that Costco sells a big bag of frozen stir fry vegetables that are delicious! One bag was enough for 6+ freezer meals. An easier option if your doing a lot of vegetables. It has carrots, snap peas, green beans, red peppers, mushrooms, and more.
Could I cook up the chicken and marinade portion in a crockpot?
You could, however the textures would be less stir fry (crisp) and more soft and soggy.
This looks so healthy and delicious. I’m going to make up some fried rice and freeze it from your other recipe and then make up a few of these and have some quick meals. Our 2017 budget cuts out some of the eating out we’ve been doing, so looking for simple meals to have on hand that don’t require a ton of work. Thanks for all the great ideas.
Greetings from Scotland. Love your web pages. I’m a vegetarian (many many years now) and like the sound of your lovely recipe which I will try tonight. I’m a lazy old thing: i.e. I buy ready prepared stir fry concoctions in my local Tesco Store and usually end up binning around a quarter of the packet as it’s just too much for one person – I’ll now try freezing half and eating half – love saving pennies. Next time I buy fresh vegetables I’ll try your recipe exactly and am positive I’ll thoroughly enjoy it (I’ll leave out the chicken of course!). Thank you for all your helpful information and handy hints. Best regards, Marilyn, Kingoodie Village, Perthshire, Scotland
Hello Marilyn from Scotland! You will just love making freezer meals and I’m so happy you found my site. Let me know if you have any freezer meal or make ahead and freeze meals questions and I’d be glad to help you out.
How long can I store the food in the freezer?
Think your web site is fantastic.. and getting some great ideas..
One thing you may want to consider is maybe addressing the heavy-use of both zip-lock plastic bags and aluminum foil that I see in many pictures on your website. There are some potentially serious health issues associated with this — especially if your diet regularly relies on putting hot foods in plastics as they cool down — and it might be worth it (and in fact wiser) to consider future articles that look at a potential investment of a **glass** or other metal food storage container for many of the freezer meals — that can then be re-cycled over and over again (and thus also become more environmentally friendly too!). There are also plastic products that have less of a health risk associated with them too. It might mean a high-price tag up front in terms of storage product price tabs — but if you are someone that will routinely do this type of cooking (and freezing) for yourself and other family members, it’s something I would suggest for health-conscious moms and other out there reading your truly AMAZING website!!
Cutting up veggies to make my stir fry freezer meals now! So excited to cook this up for my fam. As I was prepping to blanche my veggies, I noticed the your link for blanching only shares the benefits of blanching/steaming. It does not share any information regarding for how many minutes each veggie should be blanched. Here’s a link by the National Center for Home Food Preservation, which does include a chart for various types of vegetables.
http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/blanching.html
Hi, just a gentle note that those of us who live in drought (San Diego can’t/won’t run warm water to help thaw anything!
I am making veg stir fry tonight and decided to do a trial run on the sauce. Smells wonderful! Thanks for the recipe!
I am glad you like it as much as I do! đŸ™‚
I tried this recipe and failed horribly. After doing some thinking, here is where I went wrong: (1) I’m horrible at reading comprehension because I used wax paper; even after reading the comment to not use it, but somehow I thought it meant to use wax paper (lol). (2) My chicken tasted very bland and was very thick. The next go around I will probably use a mean tenderizer to flatten out the chicken breast (or just cut it thinner )and soak them in salt water (this always seems to make my chicken taste better for some odd reason). (3) It’s always hard for me to determine how many teaspoons or tablespoons some ideas are as far as ginger and garlic gloves but next time I actually need to take my time to Minch and measure the contents. (4) my veggies were really soggy
My failure was at no fault of the recipe itself; probably just some weird stuff I was doing.
Try it again! I bet it will taste better next time. đŸ™‚
I’m looking for recipes I can cook, freeze, and microwave for lunch at school. Is there any way to adapt this recipe to be able to do that? It sounds delicious, and I’d love to have it at school to mix it up a bit. Any links to recipes you think would work for this would be nice too!
Hmmm… not this recipe unless you dont mind soggy peppers. Its best to pan hot fry this fast. But hmmmm… I will have to think on your idea. Soups work really great as well as pastas for that method.
This sounds like a winner! It should work well with chicken, beef or pork. The only thing I questions is the blanching process. The directions do not say specifically to remove from the blanching liquid and immediately submerge in cold water to stop the cooking process.
Hi, this looks delish, one of my favorite types of freezer meal, though a little different than I’ve made, can’t wait to try it, wish I already had a few bags of this ready for tonight!!
how much veggies & chicken total? is it 4 cups veggies per bag? if so, how much veggies would I need to buy in order make this meal for a few nights a week for a month..
Yes, it is 4 cups per bag. Most of the time I just buy fresh veggies and then fill the bags up. I am not sure exactly how many veggies you would need for your family for a few nights a week. I would buy veggies for one meal and then calculate it from there. đŸ™‚
Best recipe ever!!! Thank you so much for sharing. I make this at least every other week.
Glad you like it!
Has anyone tried this with beef or pork? Just wondering if it was good with other meats as well.
I haven’t done different meats in this specific recipe but I bet it would be good!
I love the recipe, but sure wish you included a shopping list. A head of cauliflower will make more than one batch, but how much more? I love the concept, but need more information to really appreciate what you are offering.
Sometimes the best way for us to learn to appreciate something is to take the time to learn and develop it for ourselves.
Happy Money Saver left the amount of specific vegetables up to us. She can not tell you how much of each vegetable, just the total, which is four cups. I just made it and one bunch of broccoli is four cups all by itself. I used that bunch of broccoli as well as two carrots and 3 stalks of kale. I had 1 1/2 times the whole recipe, so was doing 6 cups of veges. After having made it the way I did, I would use more carrots than I did. In my experience, a whole head of cauliflower will be way more than 4 cups. The purpose of this recipe is to make a whole bunch at a time for later use. I agree with TJ. Just try it and adjust as necessary, them come back and let us know what you found out!
This is so bloody clever…kudos!!!
Delicious!
Just as a note: wax paper is NOT the same as parchment paper… Made homemade fries once and froze them on cookie sheets with wax paper and the paper stuck to the fries. Yuck.