Get 8 Meals from 4 Lbs of Ground Beef
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To see a list of over 35 Ground Beef Recipes to help stretch your food dollar and keep
things lively at the supper table, please click here.
Most folks I know are trying to figure out how to stretch an already tight grocery budget so I’ve set out to bring you a few tips that may help the process a bit.
Today’s post is how I divide up my uncooked ground beef to get the most meals out of it.
I’ll keep these short and sweet, which is a rarity for me, so enjoy it while it lasts 🙂
Here we go, four pounds of ground beef.
Now if I were to just cook beef right out of the package for supper, I’d likely grab two pounds of it. We’d have an awfully meaty dish, but I’d be doing good to get one or two meals out of the entire tray.
Instead, I take my tray and cut the ground beef into eight different sections like this.
Package each section into a quart sized zipper seal freezer bag.
Flatten each bag with the heel of my hand and let squeeze out as much air as I can before sealing.
I flatten it for two reasons:
- This takes up less space in the freezer
- It thaws REALLY quickly when it’s all thinned out like this.
Stack all of the layers (if you want) and freeze.
Each bag now has about 1/2 pound of ground beef in it.
This will work for most ground beef recipes. If a recipe calls for more, you have two options:
- Make the recipe with less beef
- Use two bags of beef
- Substitute 1/2 cup cooked white or brown rice for 1/2 of the beef. This works especially well in skillet meals, casseroles where beef is it’s own layer, and fillings such as sloppy joes or tacos. There are tons of recipes like that at the link below!
To see a list of over 35 Ground Beef Recipes to help stretch your food dollar and keep
things lively at the supper table, please click here.
“Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.”
~Eleanor Roosevelt
Thanks to Jackie for submitting this! Click here to see more and submit your own.
I have done this for years, too, but I cook my ground beef. It takes only a couple of minutes to thaw in the the microwave. I also mix up my meatloaf and flatten it in a freezer bag. I mix up salisbury steaks and make the patties and freeze those, too. You can freeze 1- 1/2 c. cooked chicken in freezer bags, too. That is the perfect amount for pot pies, soup, or casseroles.
Hey Christy girl, that is so funny! Monday i went to the IGA for meat stock up and my beef in all in the little packs like your pix. BTW, i just love the smaller old fashioned grocery stores like our IGA…………and did not realize until they posted a big sign telling us…….that IGA has the most grocery stores of any other in this country. I can’t rem the number, but they are waaayyyy bigger than even Walmart. Ours has grown and will include produce like i reuest bok choy, they keep it. They have real butchers. So if your town has an old- fashioned grocery store, be sure and don’t forget to shop there. (used to love Piggly Wiggly).
I get my ground meat at Wal-Mart, too. 🙂
I’ve done it like this all my life because that’s what my grandma taught me as a kid….and in answer to someone’s question where Christy gets her meat…like the rest of us,Wal-mart
Please, everybody! Find your local small grocery store and support it. Otherwise, they will all disappear, like so many small businesses that actually care about people. It’s worth it to pay a little bit more to keep nice people and local money in our communities! IGA, for example, is better!
Great point! I’m sure, if money permits, everyone is happy to do this. If its a matter of putting food on the table as best you can with very limited budget, we all understand shopping where you need to as well.
Right now it’s cheaper to buy the ground beef at our local mom and pop by a dollar a pound my freezers full told my daughter to go stock up. I like this idea I’ve been thinking of cutting ours with ground carrot because I saw it somewhere else.
Ooh, ground carrot is a great idea! I’m going to try that! My youngest won’t eat veggies unless I hide them.
IGA has great meat and they normally are better priced then Walmart.
Not at our local IGA…prices there are high for meat and we have to watch about meat that has gone bad.
Hey Christy! Where do you shop for your ground beef like in the photo? Thanks!
I never thought to add rice to taco mixture or even sloppy joes. What a great idea! Thanks for that!
Quinoa mixed with ground beef adds protein, and looks like ground beef. It’s expensive but we ordered a 20-lb bag from Amazon which brought the price way down.
I mash up a can of pinto or kidney beans and add to meat for tacos. Stretches it and tastes good too.
This is what I do too!