If you haven’t been introduced to the idea of batch cooking yet, you are going to love it! The idea is that you make things in large batches portion them out into amounts that you would use for a meal and then store them for future use. I’ve been doing this for a long time not knowing that it had a name. I’ve mostly done it for meat because who wants to have to thaw and brown ground beef every single time a meal calls for it? Why not just do the work once?

Sometimes though you just need guidelines on how to do something. No one wants to waste food and hard work so making sure you are doing it right is ideal. I’ll be sharing a series of posts about batch cooking to help everyone out. Each post will focus on just one food item. It will include directions on making and storing the food, and ideas for recipes to use them in. With this method I’ve cut my dinner prep time in half and that is awesome!

When I mention that I do this, a lot of people ask me if I set aside a day to make a ton of food. NOPE! I like cooking, but not when I feel like I have to, or when I know I am going to be doing it all day. If I tell myself I am going to cook all day, I find literally anything else to spend my time doing and nothing gets done. Usually I batch an item as I run out of it and need it for a meal. So if I am planning on having tacos for dinner tonight and I go to the freezer and find that I am out of prepped taco meat, I pull out 3-4 pounds of ground beef, thaw it, cook it, use it in our meal for that night, then prep and store the rest for a future meal. It’s a lot more manageable for me that way, but I am also a work at home parent, so I am at home to take frozen meat out of the freezer and thaw it. (Rule of thumb for me, know what we are having for dinner and make sure all ingredients are available by 10 am. It just makes my life better!) If doing a ton of prep in one day is the only way that you have time to do it, go for it!

So onto more specifics. scrambled eggs. Cooked scrambles eggs freeze incredibly well, making them a prime candidate for batch cooking. Scrambled eggs are easy to make so why batch cook them? Despite the ease of making them, I am often deterred from doing it because of clean up. I also stink at staying put and stirring the scrambled eggs so they don’t burn. I’m probably just incredibly lazy, but lazy people are the ones you want to talk to when you want to save time!

How To Batch Cook Scrambled Eggs

1. Spray a 9×13 glass dish.
2. Scramble all 12 eggs in the dish.
3. Add about 1/2 C. milk and stir in with eggs.
4. Bake in 350 degree oven until eggs are almost cooked through
5. If you are adding cheese sprinkle on top and return to oven until melted.
6. When cooled I use a round cookie cutter to cut out the eggs in the pan.

How I Use The Scramble Eggs

1. Line a pan with foil and lay the scrambled egg circles in a single layer so that they do not touch. Place in freezer overnight. Remove and store in a ziplock bag. When I want to use them I’ll heat them in the microwave. We have them on toast, or bagels or all on their own.
2. Make your own ready to eat fast breakfast sandwiches. We like ours on English muffins but you could also use biscuits or buns. Just put one circle of scrambled eggs with melted cheese and some turkey or ham and wrap in plastic wrap. Store in a ziploc bag in the freezer.
3. With the egg portions leftover from cutting out the circles we make breakfast burritos (usually for dinner after batch cooking the eggs, cause who wants to cook even more). We usually have our breakfast burritos with sausage, tomatoes, lettuce and rice (see the post about batch cooking rice).
4. Egg filled crescents are another favorite. We use the canned crescents and fill them with the scrambled eggs and bacon crumbles and cook according to the package directions.
5. Breakfast pizza! You can’t go wrong with pizza and breakfast rolled into one. We make our own pizza dough using a breadmaker. This is our favorite recipe:

We top it with pizza sauce, cheese, scrambled eggs and sausage or bacon.

All of these ideas are usually super fast and perfect for easy dinners on nights when we might otherwise be tempted to eat junk or cereal.

Any other ideas or suggestions for ways to use scrambled eggs? I’m always interested in hearing new ideas!