This week I've been very busy browning 20 pounds of ground beef! Our local Food 4 Less grocery store usually has great deals on meat! I get ground beef for $1.78/lb when I buy it in a 10 lb. roll. It's a ton of meat but it's so worth it!
We used to take the meat and cut it into about one pound sections, wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze it that way. It worked well but I still had to defrost it and cook it when I wanted to use it. We did that for about a year and now we make it just a little bit easier! I take half of the meat and make "spaghetti meat" with it. I brown it with some garlic and chopped onions and seasonings. It's seasoned for things like shepherd's pie, spaghetti, strogenoff (sp?), and anything else that uses meat like that. The other half I do as taco meat. I use the taco seasoning packets and it comes out great! After I've drained all the grease from it and it's cooled down a bit I put the meat in ziplock sandwich baggies. Some bags I fill rather full and others I put like 1/2 a pound in. Zip them up and then they go in the freezer.
It takes a little bit of time but it's not hard at all and then when I'm running late it helps my meals cook faster! I can make a shepherd's pie in under 10 minutes plus the time to bake it as opposed to like 30-40 minutes plus baking time!
Another good thing to cook and freeze is chicken. We get the boneless skinless chicken breast when they're on sale (this week at Food 4 Less I found them for $1.75/lb!) and we grill it, slice it, and freeze it. We have a George Forman grill so it makes it pretty easy. Daniel likes to marinade it but I don't know the recipe for how he does it...I don't think he does either, it's just a little of this and a little of that. We put it in little sandwich baggies like the beef so it's perfect for one meal. We use it in chicken pastas, casseroles, lots of salads, tortilla wraps, pizza, or whatever else we feel like throwing chicken into.
As I posted in an earlier post I LOVE cookie dough! So this week I made a batch of cookie dough, rolled it into balls, and froze them on a cookie sheet. When they were hard I put them into sandwich baggies and froze them together. Freezing them separately first helps them not stick together. Now I have a snack whenever I want them!! :
I do both of those too!
ReplyDeleteI get free meat from my parents (they own a cattle ranch) and they come frozen in 2 lbs packages. We only use .5 pound in each meal so I'll cook it all anyway and then pop the rest in the freezer for latter :)
I make a double batch of cookies (10 dozen!) and freeze them so that whenever Todd wants fresh cookies all he has to do is take out a dozen and pop them in the oven :) That way, we don't end up with a gazillion cooked cookies that we feel obligated to eat!
My cousin is a butcher and he told me the most economical chicken is a whole chicken at least 5 pounds. So we by the whole chickens when they are on sale and bake them two at a time. We then pick all the meat off and put in ziplock bags & freeze for the same types of recipes you listed; salads, casseroles, sandwiches, etc.
ReplyDeleteTandra M