How I process large quantities of ground beef…

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!

Fill a large pot with water, you’re going to need a good bit of water here.
Using your hand, take a clump of ground beef and submerge it.

Then moosh it up really well, leaving no large clumps.

Continue until all of the beef has been smooshed into the water.

Yeah, this isn’t pretty but puleeze. I’m a mom. I’ve seen worse by far.
Bring to a boil. You’ll need to stir it just a time or two until its all nice and browned and done.

Here you can either drain it with a collander or strain it out. I prefer to use this neat little strainer I have and just strain it out.
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
Posted by on Jul 18 2008. Filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

67 Comments for “How I process large quantities of ground beef…”

  1. Alicia Busch

    Do you use this same frozen meat for recipes that call for ground beef with onions? I’m just curious how and if you can incorporate the onions after the beef has already been browned and frozen.

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