Hello! I’m new to this so please be patient. First off, I’m a single person with a service dog. My issue is when I cook a recipe it is usually enough for a family of 4. Way too much for me to eat before it goes bad no mention of being sick of it and forcing me to waste perfectly good food. I want to freeze the left overs for another day or when I don’t have time to cook. I want to pre-grill chicken quarters, beef stew, and pot roast. Any tips to doe this will be hugely appreciated
I’m not sure I understand the relevance of the fact that you have a service dog.
You do know you don’t have to cook that much food at one time, right?
Freezing leftovers is easy. If you’re freezing them for a relatively short amount of time (no more than a month or so) just put them in a zip-lock freezer bag, squeeze out as much air as you can, seal and toss in the freezer. If you want to keep them for a longer period of time then you’re better of vacuum sealing them.
I’m not sure what you mean by "pre-grill"ing in this context, and how something like that relates to preserving large amounts of already cooked foods…nor how one would go about grilling stew.
Welcome Danny, you will soon be glad you decided to embark on your Anova culinary adventures, - but don’t expect too much patience here.
As i understand your post, your need is to cook 4-portion batches of proteins in advance and store unconsumed items frozen for future meals. Right?
I suggest you can either pre or post-grill / sear your chicken quarters. Just enough to give them some colour. Then vacuum package in single meal portions, and SV cook to your desired doneness. After cooking, chill in an ice bath for 30 minutes, date and label, and freeze for future enjoyment.
Beef Stew and Pot Roast are a lot more challenging to cook SV if you want traditional outcomes. You can first thoroughly brown the meat for those menu items, cool and then vacuum package and cook to desired doneness. Then later combine with other components and reheat just before service. That technique usually won’t be convenient.
The challenges begin when you want to incorporate a sauce or gravy to cook with your meat. Adding vegetables compounds your challenge by several times. Unless you have had substantial recipe development opportunities i suggest you get more SV experience before attempting them. It can be done successfully, but is usually too complex for the home cook and best done in large quantities to make your efforts worthwhile.
Consider batch cooking your stew and pot roast meals conventionally; portion, date, label and package while very hot. Seal, and thoroughly chill in a large ice bath. Tumble the food packages in the ice bath to speed chilling. This technique works best with one or two-portion size packages. The chilling is important because you want the meals to freeze quickly for safety and the preservation of colour and texture. Try to flatten packages as much as possible for freezing, keep the packages separate, and freeze just a few at one time.
You need to be aware that roux-based sauces and gravies tend to separate when frozen. Corn starch or potato starch thickened sauces keep frozen much better.
Please share your results with your Community.
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Hey there!
Welcome to the community and to the wonderful world of sous vide cooking. Like you, when I cook, it’s usually for just myself or one other person. I actually find it super easy to cook smaller portions of food sous vide.
@chatnoir pretty much covered what you need to know.
If you have any other specific questions about batch cooking or reheating precooked meals, definitely let us know.
Happy cooking! 
Thank you for the feed back. The issue with stews and roast is the recipes make waaay to much for me to eat. I was wondering how to reheat those items so they are safe to eat I bought a chamber vac and the anova to eliminate wasted food. By freezing left overs and then rewarding them latter. If frozen, what would be the rule of thumb to rewarm it
Thank you. Great advice I’ll avoid the roux type gravies. Now, if I have a one serving package of roast beef and gravy, what. Temp and time would you recommend to bring it back to an edible temp?
im a cook book chief most recipes are for 4-6 people so I always have too much to eat I’m simply trying to save money by not being forced to eat the same thing every day or throwing it out A terrible waste of money
@DParker I think you know this already, let’s remember to be respectful in here and provide meaningful answers to our fellow members. Guidelines are here.
You don’t consider…
“Freezing leftovers is easy. If you’re freezing them for a relatively short amount of time (no more than a month or so) just put them in a zip-lock freezer bag, squeeze out as much air as you can, seal and toss in the freezer. If you want to keep them for a longer period of time then you’re better of vacuum sealing them.”
…to be a meaningful answer? Or are you complaining about the fact that I asked questions about things that didn’t make sense, or that were of unclear relevance?
Which part of…
"[quote=“DParker, post:2, topic:14726”]
Freezing leftovers is easy. If you’re freezing them for a relatively short amount of time (no more than a month or so) just put them in a zip-lock freezer bag, squeeze out as much air as you can, seal and toss in the freezer. If you want to keep them for a longer period of time then you’re better of vacuum sealing them.
[/quote]
…did you consider to be bad advice?
What he actually said was…
He’s not saying that he has a need to cook 4x as much food as is immediately required, but simply that he usually cooks that much and so he needs a way to preserve it. Hence my question that seems to be causing so much angst.