To help save time in the kitchen when I know it is going to be a busy week, I will buy a large amount of lean ground beef at Costco or Sam's. I purchase, say, a 5 1/2 pound package. I bring it home and cook it in a large pot with diced onion and garlic and season it up with black pepper and salt. After the meat is cooked through, I drain it in a colander then add it back to the pan to let it cool down a bit. I then weigh the meat on my kitchen scale to get 1-2 lbs. of cooked meat, put it in freezer bags, and label.
Now all I have to do the rest of the week is pull out a package of the already cooked meat and thaw a bit in the microwave. Add it to a pan along with taco seasonings, spaghetti sauce ingredients, sloppy joe ingredients etc.- whatever your family is wanting for dinner that night. You can even use it to make one of the boxed hamburger helper dinners. Dinner is done in a fraction of the time.
I realized that I start all my ground beef recipes basically the same way with onion and garlic. It just made sense to go ahead and cook it all ahead of time instead of freezing the raw meat.
By KimbrD from Corinth, TX
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My frugal tip is for cooking, but it's also a healthy one. Buy the cheap ground beef and BOIL it! The fat will rise to the top! Just don't pour the water (and grease) down your sink.
Tips from our readers for browning ground meat for a variety of uses.
When you purchase large amounts of ground beef on sale here is a great idea I found and it works great. Place 10 to 12 pounds of ground beef in a large stockpot.
I mixed some of my favorite spices into a 2 lb. package of ground beef and formed it into one big meat patty that I then cut into equal sized 1/4 lb. meatballs. Then I froze them separated and bagged them up once they are totally frozen and won't stick to each other.
With the recent recall of fresh and frozen ground beef, it's more important then ever to cook ground beef safely. Although the product(s) being recalled should be returned to the point of purchase, consumers preparing other ground beef products should heed the following advice.
My husband lives for Mexican food. Burritos, tacos, etc, are better if the beef isn't in big chunks. To finely crumble ground beef for tacos or other dishes, I use my food processor...
This is a page about cooking ground beef in a crockpot. Your crockpot can be used to conveniently cook ground beef without the hassle of frying, before adding to a recipe.
This is a page about cooking ground beef in the microwave. Using your microwave oven is a convenient way to cook ground beef that will be used in a recipe.
This is a page about removing fat from ground beef. Removing the fat from ground beef will help cut the calories from fat and is good for your overall health.
