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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Thumbs Up KimbrD. Makes perfectly good sense to me too. I've been doing this for years, and I've also kept cooked rice and cooked spaghetti in large freezer bags in the fridge so it's so easy to prepare 1 or more meals for anyone around.
Everyone here has a different schedule almost daily, so I never know who all will be eating here or maybe will want to take something with them to be heated up at work or school.
Having foods already cooked and ready to complete has saved us more money as it cuts way down on fast-food and other restaurant food buying. While the kids are showering and dressing, I can have meals all ready for them in no time. Steamed veggies only take a few minutes as well. I love being able to put together a decent meal for them in such a little bit of time.
We cook (bake or boil) chicken the same way. They can have a choice of meat meal in about the same amount of time as it'd take to make a good sandwich.
I have one who will not touch anything with onion and garlic in it though, so I always have a bag marked just for her of ground beef and chicken.
One of our son's favorites is something his sisters came up when they were playing "cowboys and indians" when they were young. Called Grub Gravy, it's just the ground beef cooked your way with a can of cream of chicken soup dumped in and served over rice, pasta or mashed potatoes.
They also like Manwich over toasted hamburger or hot-dog buns.
I'm going to make myself hungry. LOL
Thank you for sharing your ideas with us.
Pookarina
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