How I process large quantities of ground beef…
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I don’t always brown my beef this way, sometimes I use the traditional method of cooking it in a pan and standing over it chopping, stirring, chopping, stirring…yeah sometimes I do that. One thing I ALWAYS do though, is cook large batches at once. I never just cook enough for one meal.
I prefer to brown at least five to ten pounds at once. I then drain off the grease, cool it, and package it in small freezer bags in whatever amount equals enough for a family meal of spaghetti or whatnot. For my family, this usually means a cup to a cup and a half of ground beef. I freeze it and whenever I need it for a meal, simply thaw in the microwave or with whatever I am cooking and I’ve cut out a major step and a decent amount of mess!
If you end up having a meal such as tacos, which required extra beef, simply grab two bags.
Why get out the skillet, thaw, brown, and drain over and over when you can do it once and save yourself tons of time and repeated messes?
This is one of my favorite ways to cook beef as it doesn’t require the attention that a skillet browning does. Also, you can get those nice little granules of beef without having to chop, chop, chop….Its great for large quantities of beef as well and I find the cooking process is done in half the time, with a lot less fat left on your finished product.
Begin with ground beef. Why do I use ground beef instead of ground chuck or lean ground beef? Simple, its cheaper. Grocery prices have been rising rapidly, gas is through the roof and I still have to feed a family of four with the same amount of money as I had before all of this. Ground beef it is!
Using your hand, take a clump of ground beef and submerge it.
Bring to a boil. You’ll need to stir it just a time or two until its all nice and browned and done.
Until I have a whole bowl like this. At this point, I will get a one cup measuring cup after it has cooled and put one cup servings in individual freezer bags to have on hand whenever I need ground beef for a meal.
And look at all this you left behind!! ewwwww
I actually just joined your group today…. but…. I have been boiling my hamburger for the last year…. I had lapband and found that my lapband can not stand grease of any amount. now saying this I have lost 175 lbs…. well like you i found i can buy the cheaper hamburger (the one you have pictured is the one I buy) and then freeze in 1 lb baggies… i weigh it out and usually get 4 lbs out of a 5 lb roll. I love it and usually have several lbs ready and waiting in the freezer… and being a farm girl from Oklahoma… I have also used this on my processed side of beef that is normally lean too… but my one pound packages usually end up a 1/4 lb short… i also do this with sausage… (blue and gold)… quite flavorful and also good to go on pizzas or sausages or in omelets….love your site…. love the recipes and love the stories…so many are very familiar
There was a coupon for the ground turkey in the newspaper this week, so I bought 5 pounds so I could try your batch processing technique! I stuck a pound of the turkey in the freezer raw to use for meatloaf or something, but cooked the other 4 pounds this way. It worked perfectly! Of course, there wasn’t really any fat to pour off, but the texture of the meat is nice and fine (fiance prefers it very broken up like this) and it was way faster to cook the meat this way than to fry it in my little skillet, 1 pound at a time. I’m going to try it with ground beef next. Oh and it wasn’t as gross to gush up the meat as I feared- since it was all under water, I didn’t have raw meat gooped all over my hands. Win!
That picture of the meat all gushed up in the pot before it cooks… *shudder* I have this raw meat phobia thing (it’s the germs, I’m the child of a germaphobic nurse, what can I say). It looks like a giant pot of something horrible. That being said, I think this cooking method sounds fantastic and I’m going to put on my big girl undies and give it a try! Better to get it all over with at once 🙂 I know that the point of this cooking method is to cook lots at once and get rid of fat, but I think I may try this with the extra lean ground turkey breast I buy. I buy the ground turkey instead of hamburger usually because in addition to having a raw meat phobia of sorts I also can’t stand the little chewy gristly bits (and sometimes stringy bits) of horror that I find in ground beef. The extra lean ground turkey is blissfully free of such things! My dude doesn’t really like it when it’s in clumps because it’s kind of dry, so I always try to break it up as much as possible. Looks like this method would result in super fine “grain” ground turkey, too! Now if only the ground turkey cost less.
Christy That is an amazing way of doing large batches of beef. You continue to dazzle me with your charm, wit and true culinary wisdom for the common kitcheneer [is that a word?] ‘Tis now :o)
I’m going to tell you about a recipe using this method that has been in my family for eons of time, maybe it came from my grandmother Alice from KY I don’t know. But y’all will have to wait cause I think you have a contest or something connected with your new Vlog project.
Okay… I was soooooo excited to find this trick. Made lots of packets of frozen ground beef. It tastes like grease. It even smells weird when I open the bag. I know it’s something I did wrong and am trying to figure out why…… please help!!! Anyone have this happen or know what I did wrong? I did not rinse the ground beef after draining it. It happened with my frozen meatballs also 🙁 So sad… Christy, love love love your recipes! Check your site weekly for new stuff. It’s so practical! That’s what we eat 🙂 Again, thanks for all your time into sharing with us!!
Hi. Waking up an old thread, I want to say I LOVE this way of cooking the ground beef, and I cannot wait for a good sale.
That being said, I wonder (like a few other readers) about the taste. Is the flavor as good as if you browned in a skillet, or does the water wash away alot of the flavor?
Thanks so much for all you do. I’m thrilled I came across your site!
Okay… guess I’ll just try it with a pound or two to see, and if it still tastes yummy, watch out!
Thanks again for the great tip!
Hey Renee! I’ve never noticed any difference in taste myself. In fact, I usually eat a bit of it after I’ve drained it, just by itself! hehe
Thanks Christy. It’s really reassuring to know that you’re still following these threads… just in case.
I cannot wait to try this, and I won’t tell any of the family how I did it, just to see if they say anything. I have one of those families that automatically balk at change!
Thanks again for so many of your wonderful recipes and tips… I “check you out” several times a day, as well as the e-mail subscription. 😀
What a great site! I’ve been reading for nearly two hours and I’m not nearly done 🙂
Can someone please clarify how many cups to bag and freeze so that it’s in one cup proportions? I read the recipe and the comments but I’m STILL not clear on that, lol!
Thank you! Back to more site-seeing!
~~susie.
Hey Susie!
WELCOME TO SOUTHERN PLATE!!! It’s so great to have you here!
I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking so I’m going to just go through my whole shebang in hopes of answering your question and if I don’t get it, holler back at me and I’ll clarify some more. Bear with me today as I have a book deadline on Monday and I think I’ve seriously sprained my one remaining brain cell 🙂
What I do is cook all of my beef in the water and then drain it off.
Then, I get a one cup measuring cup and measure out one cup of cooked beef into each bag.
Seal the bags and place in freezer.
Now I know that each bag has one cup in it because that is how I measured it out. When I am cooking for just my family, I use one bag. If I am cooking for more, I just get two.
This makes you beef go a lot further, as well!
Hope this helps and it’s so great to have you as part of our Southern Plate Family!
Gratefully,
Christy 🙂
and if you’re SUPER thrifty with that marked down fatty ground beef…
After you’ve boiled the beef and removed it, cool the liquid and put it in containers/jars to put in the fridge overnight (eww, I know but stay with me here). The next day the fat has solidified on the top, you can spoon it out into the trash, and VOILA! beef broth that you can also freeze in 2 cup quantities for use in stews, etc. There’s no salt in it like if you’d bought the can, but I prefer to salt to taste per recipe anyways.
I love this site! Cooking your recipes makes me feel like my nana is in the kitchen with me and that my girls are getting to know her….such a blessing, thank you!
Does anyone do the beef broth? Did it taste okay? I may try to freeze the broth like you said.