One of my biggest budget busters, especially after coming home from a long day at work, was deciding I was too tired to deal with dinner and hitting a drive thru on the way home. Now that I am home full time I have still come in from a full day of kid activities and find that temptation taunting me. Thankfully, for the past few years I have been much more prepared!
Inspired by a 5 meals in 5 minutes presentation at a Homemade Gourmet party 2 years ago, I started mass cooking meats I pick up on rock bottom sales to freeze and use on those nights I just don’t feel like cooking. This not only keeps us in line financially, but it also helps us avoid mass preservatives in convenience foods and mass fat in most takeout.
One of my favorite stores to purchase meat at — Albertsons — has been having an 8 hour sale about every 6-8 weeks with amazing deals on ground beef. I am also pretty good at timing my shopping trips to pick up the ground beef that is marked 1/2 off for quick sale keeping my price around $1.50 lb for 15% ground beef. I pick up 15 lbs and make 10 meals I can freeze.
The first 5 lbs will be cooked as taco meat for Taco’s and Taco Salad’s using the fabulous frugal taco seasoning recipe I found here thru Alyssa’s post and divided into gallon Ziploc bags for 3 dinner meals and 2 small Ziploc bags for taco salads for my husband’s lunches.
The next 5 lbs will be made into 2 large meat loaves and 6 individual meat loaves ( that my husband will also take to work for lunches),
For the last 5 lbs — 2.5 lbs will become meatballs for 3 spaghetti dinners (or maybe meatball subs) and the remaining 2.5 lbs are seasoned with only garlic and cooked for use in lasagna and taco soup.
I double bag the meats to prevent freezer burn (and you can reuse the outside bags over and over again) and I plan for these meals in my menu plans. Sometimes I rework a few days when life happens and a full cooked meal wont and I LOVE that they are available to grab, heat and EAT!!
This week I was able to mix a cook-fest with a get together at my friends house and had a wonderful time! Great company and lasagna ready for Wednesday night when I would not be home for dinner. I LOVE a great ways to multitask!
I also do this with 20 lbs of chicken breast. My drill is similar and I will spell it out next week for Frugal Friday. I hope you will join me! Do you ever cook ahead? I would love a few new recipes!!
For more frugal ideas visit Life As Mom! She has a great read on doing theme parks on the cheap and I know there will be many other great ideas too!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
My problem with cooking ahead is remembering to get those things out of the freezer to defrost!
Clever girl! I have gotten really good about doing this with ground meat, but never do it with chicken anymore.
I look forward to seeing how you do it.
I don’t routinely pre-cook meat in quantity, but it’s a great idea. Pre-cooked ground beef is also excellent to use in the slow cooker; I’ve used it for dishes like chili without even thawing it completely.
I love this tip. We could have used some meals like this in our house this week. We ate out way too much this week. Ugh!
Even if I don’t actually cook ahead, I try to prep ahead. That helps, too! One thing I do like to do is to brown my ground beef with some onion soup mix. Just about every recipe calls for onions. I put it in a lasagna pan in the oven and just keep breaking it up. Then I strain it and put in in meal-sized portions in the freezer. (Labeled, of course!) Now I’m halfway to a meal. I just have to add the appropriate spices and sauce, and the meat’s done. Prepping meat is one of the messier jobs in the kitchen, so doing several meals’ worth at once is a smart idea.
Of course, if I want some for meatballs or meatloaf, I don’t brown it first. Same with hamburgers.
PS–there’s a recipe on Allrecipes.com called “Slider-Style Mini Burgers.” Your family might enjoy it. The meat mixture freezes and reheats beautifully, and of course you can have a package of dinner rolls in the freezer, too. Here’s the link:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slider-Style-Mini-Burgers/Detail.aspx