Well, I had to cook up the last of a large purchase of ground beef last night. I went out at the end of last week and bought 3 family packs (4lbs ea) of 85% ground beef when the Great American grocery store in town had it on sale for $1.69 lb. I wanted to divide it up, because if I stick it in my large freezer in family packs it takes FOREVER to defrost when I want to use it.
So how do you use up 12 lbs of ground beef? Well, I practice a sort of modified form of Once a Month Cooking (OAMC or Freezercooking) called batch cooking. When I find a good sale, usually on meat, I prepare a bunch of entrees or partial entrees for the freezer from just that type of meat. So here is what I did:
#1-Made 2 meatloafs on monday. Used up a bag of semi stale corn chips, crushed up, instead of breadcrumbs. Ate 1/2 of one meatloaf for a dinner and had the other 1/2 for lunch. Put the rest raw into a loaf pan and froze it. Took it out last night and wrapped it in tinfoil and labeled it. Frozen meatloaf will make 1 1/2 to 2 meals. (can either place back in pan to defrost for a day before cooking, or cook frozen for about 30-45 extra min-use a meat thermometer to check the center!)
#2-Tuesday, made about 50 meatballs from 1/2 raw ground beef and 1/2 reconstituted TVP (Texturized Vegetable Protien) Baked them in the oven for 30 minutes. Used about 15 in a mock stroganoff over rice for dinner and lunch the next day (actually there is one portion left over for my lunch today). So that is about 2 1/2 meals. The remaining 35 meatballs I’ll vacuum pack with my Foodsaver into packages of about 11 each-so that is 3 more meals.
#3-Last night boiled the last pkg of ground beef (easier than frying such a large quatnity, provides broth and reduces fat) with bullion, soy sauce, worchestershire sauce and kitchen bouquet. Saved the broth and set it outside in the 20 degree weather (when it is cold enough this is better than putting hot stuff in your fridge and raising the internal temp of the fridge, causing it to work harder to cool back down) The fat quickly came to the surface and was skimmed off. I then used the broth to reconstitute TVP. I had about 10c of beef and 7c of TVP. I used 1c of each to make a double batch of Sloppy Joes-ate one for dinner last night, froze one batch in a ziplock bag. Then I mixed the remainder of the TVP & beef together and froze it in 4 2c portions. Those will be used in any recipe calling for fried crumbled ground beef in the future (hamburger stroganoff, shepards pie, hamburger gravy, quick stirfry, tacos, spaghetti sauce, chili, hamburger casserole etc etc etc)-great for quick meals! I also froze 3 1c portions of beef broth to use in future cooking.
I got about 13 meals worth of meat out of 12lbs of beef. I probably will actually get even more, because those 2c portions of beef/tvp will probably make 1 1/2 to 2 meals each, and the meatball meals will probably have leftovers that will get used up in lunches. All in all it was very productive and cost effective-not to mention the fact that by having quick easy meals (or portions of meals) ready in the freezer I will be less tempted to spend money by ordering takeout or buying convenience foods.
You are really getting into this blog aren’t you ? its very good..well done from rinty at frugal living in england