Frozen-meals-from home ideas

There’s been a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of traveling with frozen meat. We’ve been doing it for years and plan to bring 50 pounds in February. Without re-instigating the merits of packing frozen goods in from the upper 48, my question is this: what are some of the pre-cooked, gourmet-style offerings you have brought with you and would suggest?

Last trip, we brought chicken marsala, beef bourginon, spaghettti, and chili sauce for hot dogs. together hamburger patties, sausage, bacon and lunch meats.

Left the cooler behind as a donation on the way home.

Shifty.

Our two Polarbear soft-sided coolers will have the following next month for our two week sail:

Ribeye steaks 2 meals
duck breasts
corned beef
pork back ribs
beef stir fry
beef stroganoff
Italian sausages
1/3 lb deli hamburgers
pre-cooked chicken marsala, pulled pork, sloppy joes, tacos, chicken chunks for pasta salad
Canadian bacon, bacon, sausage patties, little smokies
ham chunks for pasta salad or omelettes

Will be taking Polar bears home!

Kevin

Anyone with any "dry ice" experience on this? We are flying out early am > SJU airport that night > don't get to the boat until evening day #2. Are they still hitting you with a "tax" at BVI customs on meat, etc? thx

Everything you bring in is subject to Customs duty. They may choose not to charge you. Not declaring it could get a lot more expensive.

Several times, we went door-to-door 36+ hours with no thawing, food was frozen solid with no dry ice. The key to so pack the cooler with high density items that are VERY well frozen and make sure that cooler is packed tight.

We've brought frozen vacuum sealed filets, bolognaise sauce, tune, swordfish, and hamburger. Never used dry ice and went great for about 16 hours. Just enough to cook on our own then we went to the many great restaurants on VG fo90r lunch/dinner.

Marinated Tri Tip!

We bring ice. Much better water in Ohio.

We go the other way and ship wine back to Sonoma..

We’ve brought taco meat, premade burgers, steaks, shredded cheese, cooked chicken breasts (for salads), bacon precooked. Heck our first trip down we brought 3 quiches!
As for customs we always declare what’s in the cooler, estimate it’s value at $100. Once we were asked to pay $10.

Like above, I have been 24 hours with Polar Bear cooler (24 can size) fully packed with frozen items and stayed frozen . A few items with minimal thawing.

I have done 2 pounds Dry Ice , same cooler /items and at 24 hours solid frozen. I am sure it would have been fine with 36 hours. Flying, each passenger, can have up to 5 pounds.... so 5 pounds MAX in a single cooler. I would not do more than 2-3 pounds in this size cooler.

Only did the cooler thing on one of 3 trips. Saved $$ but it was a PITA schlepping it and our luggage.

That said we did Toronto to CLT to STT to Tortola over 2 days. Stayed overnight in STT and ferried the next day to Tortola. I watched the CLT-STT baggage handlers load our cooler and noticed that the extra luggage straps i added were gone. TSA in Toronto or CLT had left a note in the cooler ("kilroy was here") but they kept the straps. On the return leg I duct taped new luggage straps to the cooler. ( I had taken extra straps to test as a "ladder" to get back into the dinghy after snorkeling...FAIL)

Once on our boat we found all food was still rock solid. In addition to our frozen goods I had packed 2 sheets of Techni-Ice (http://www.techniiceusa.com/ice-packs.html) that I had kept in our freezer for about 1 month. The theory is that somehow these sheets get colder than ice and stay frozen longer. That was our experience after a 2 day journey.

I gave away most of the 12 sheets that I bought. Subsequent usage saw me cut 2 cubes out for my step-daughter's post nose-job cooling.

Our group has been coming down for about 30 years. We bring a cheap cooler filled with meat. We use the cooler for beer during the charter and leave it. Yes there is a savings,but most of all can prep meals and is a huge quality difference. We are a group that are very good cooks and enjoy cooking. We also use sheets of techni-ice. We leave home 0 early and get to our charter for a sleep aboard at about 6 in the evening
. The meats are all rock hard frozen.

High quality, soft-sided coolers have treated me and my crew well for years. As mentioned, all items should be frozen rock-solid and packed tightly. Have gotten 30-hours out of them before thawing. The only food issue we ever had was in 2016 when the C&I folks wanted to have a long chat about the chicken breasts we brought down. They even wanted to see the receipt! Had the receipt; was a non-issue, and paid $10. Quality is the big difference with bringing your own foods. We like good steaks and certain specialty foods that are unavailable there, so bringing a few things down is no big deal.

As I may have mentioned before, I usually bring some frozen steaks, chicken breasts, and gourmet hamburger patties (ask, and I will tell you the right meats and proportions to grind). Freeze solid, pack in soft sided cooler along with some frozen bottles of water. Didn't thaw on the trip down.

Since we acquired a vacuum sealer I may pre-season the steaks before I freeze them.

I do it for a combo cost savings/quality. I usually figure the last day cooking on the boat is a kind of hobo pasta sauce with all left over meats in the sauce.

We got back yesterday and used a soft sided cooler. We brought down steaks, shredded chicken, taco meat, ground sausage, and meat pasta sauce. All which I prepared and vacuum sealed ahead of time. It worked out great for us and used the soft sided cooler for ice.

None of the boats that we've chartered have had a freezer that was large enough and cold enough to keep a substantial amount of food frozen. So, those of you who take lots of frozen stuff on charter, I'm just wondering:

• Do you check in advance with the charter company regarding the boat's freezer?
• Do you charter catamarans? (always been monohulls for us)
• Is a generator required to make this work?

Dan

We have lots of freezer space on our lagoon 450 in the TMM fleet. I Often bring down 2 polar bear coolers of frozen food.