Filling My Freezer: Cooking Up the Meat
I went shopping earlier this week and scored on some meat. I found hamburger reduced to $1.21/lb and pork ribs for under $1.00/lb. I stocked up on the beef and some ribs and then came home to quickly cook it up before the expiration date.
I try to always cook up any hamburger or chicken before I freeze it. The simple reason is that when dinner time rolls around the last thing I want to do is defrost and cook up some meat to go in the meal. If I can just take out a bag of precooked chicken or beef then dinner progresses much more smoothly, and we eat a healthy, balanced meal.
Hamburger Meat
I bought 7.5 lbs of hamburger and expected to get 15 (1/2 lb) bags out of the dish. I simply dumped a package of meat in the pot, added onions and garlic and let it cook. I then drained the grease from the pan and set the meat aside to cool.
I repeated this twice more to cook all the meat. After I had all of the meat cooked, I decided to save the last two lbs for runzas.
After the meat had cooled I added taco seasoning to some of it. I divided the meat into ziplok sandwich bags and then put three sandwich bags every freezer bag. I ended up with seven small bags of taco meat and six small bags of plain meat. Somehow I had stretched the meat farther than I expected, as I still had two lbs for runzas, but I didn’t worry about it.
Crockpot Barbecue Pork
I also made barbecue pork by putting my pork ribs in the crockpot and adding garlic and barbecue sauce. I set it on low and let it cook all day. It came right off the bone and we served it in sandwiches and put the leftovers in the freezer. This turned out really yummy and next time I’ll have to be sure to buy more pork, as I only bought enough for two meals.
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Joann on Sat, 27th Feb 2010 12:02 pm
I read somewhere that you’ll only get about 12-oz of cooked meat from your 16-oz package of raw ground beef.
After cooking my ground beef, I’ll put into a colander to drain in the sink, but will run hot water over it as well. I figure it’s best to get as much fat off as possible since when we cook, I saute the veggies (whether onions, carrots, celery, etc) in bacon grease and/or olive oil.
Sometimes I’ll make a package of 1/2 ground beef and 1/2 bulk sausage (for Italian dishes). Or a chorizo-ground beef mix for Mexican food.
Hunter Gutirrez on Wed, 15th May 2013 5:27 pm
I do not believe in cheaper meat. If it’s cheaper than I must doubt its quality. I often found meat that is not fresh anymore or contaminated with other kind of meat.