Muffin Your Lunch

Now before you write this off as a party trick for homemakers with time on their hands, consider the freezer. We have a whole post on Food Republic recipes that freeze incredibly well. What would you rather have: a freezer full of foil wrapped bricks of something you hopefully labeled, or a freezer full of freezer bags of fully cooked food in single-serve muffin form? Ever peeled little shreds of foil off hunks of something previously frozen because you didn't defrost it correctly? It's kind of humiliating. I now declare my argument strong enough to continue on to how to make lunch muffins.

• Step 1: Procure bacon.
• Step 2: Layer 3-4 slices in an asterix shape in the bottom of each mold.
• Step 3: Bake at 375 F for 15 minutes or until fully cooked and crisp, then allow to cool and carefully remove from tin.
• Step 4: Fill with your favorite bacon-friendly food, a.k.a: anything. Try sandwich filling, veggies, or any kind of chicken salad you can dream up.

Plenty of freezer-friendly foods lend themselves to the muffin application, too: simply construct your dish in muffin tins (the large kind — nobody wants six mini lasagna muffins for lunch, that is also humiliating), bake, cool, pop out and freeze in a freezer bag. Eat within a month to keep freezer burn at bay. Check out some of these recipes and just replace the word "baking dish" with "muffin tin." (You may want to adjust the measurements accordingly.)

• Lasagna
• Shepherd's Pie
• Eggplant Parm
• Pizza Rustica
• Chicken Meatloaf with Sun-Dried Tomatoes
• Pancetta and Cilantro Quiche
• Macaroni and Cheese

Pop your frozen muffin into a container and by lunch it should be thawed and ready to microwave. Before you know it, you'll be baking all kinds of thing in muffin tins unnecessarily. Like cupcakes.