Making Meals Easier
March 26, 2007 by Karen Weideman
Filed under food, time saving
I did something last week to save time on meal preparation and I wanted to share this idea with you.
Last week, my local grocery store had hamburger on sale for a really good price. I bought a large family pack. I cooked ALL of the ground hamburger and added some ground turkey to help cut down on the fat.
After the hamburger/turkey combination was cooked, I divided the meat up into 1 – 1 1/2 lbs and put it into freezer containers. I let the meat cool for a little bit, wrote the dates on them, and froze them.
Sunday this really saved me some time. We had a covered dish meal at church Sunday that I didn’t know about in time to prepare. I pulled two pre-cooked hamburger containers out of the freezer and made a Shepherd’s Pie. (I’ll give you that recipe later.)
The pre-cooked hamburger is certainly a time-saver. With it you could cook spaghetti, lasagna, taco salads, tacos, dirty rice, Hamburger Helper, Shepherd’s Pie, and more. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend eating hamburger every night, but this method is a sure time-saver for the nights that you do eat it.
Do you have any tips for making meals easier?
Picture from shoplocal.com.
That tip sure would have come in handy that one time my husband bought 8lbs of ground beef from Costco and threw the whole thing in the freezer. When I finally defrosted it, I was cooking full meals all day!
Once every few weeks, I spend an hour or two in the kitchen chopping and dicing veggies (peppers, carrots, celery, onions) and freezing them in plastic bags. When making a soup, quesadillas, or chili, I break off what I need, whether it’s one serving or more.
I also buy chicken in bulk (best price I’ve seen is 1.79/lb at a regular grocery store) and freeze it in freezer bags (enough for 4 servings). I add in a marinade, italian dressing, or other seasonings, and when it thaws all we need to do is bake it. 4 servings gives my husband and I dinner and leftovers for lunch the next day.
Karen,
This is one of my favorite time savers. I hate cooking ground beef so if I do it all at once its not so bad.
Kailani: I bet your were upset with your husband. I hope he won’t do that to you again.
Char: Thanks for dropping by.
Kara: Thanks for visiting and leaving your first comment. Sounds like you’re doing great with planning your meals. I also buy chicken, hamburger, cube steak, etc when it’s on sale. Then I split up the packages and freeze it. Thankfully, I’ve run into some good sales on chicken lately, where the amounts were in small packages. I’m thankful I didn’t have to touch the stuff more than necessary, know what I mean?
I do the same thing with ground beef. Sometimes I do it in the crockpot, so I don’t even have to attend it while it’s cooking. I just come and smush it up every 15 minutes or so.
I also add garlic salt, onions, whatever. No matter what recipe you’re gonna use later, those spices will usually work.
What a great idea! I do similar with bacon.
Lori: I agree. I add onions and garlic to about anything.