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:

  1. This takes up less space in the freezer
  2. 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:

  1. Make the recipe with less beef
  2. Use two bags of beef
  3. 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.

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72 Comments

  1. I have bought the family packs of meat for years since it is so much cheaper than the smaller packs. It saves us anywhere from $.02 per pound up to $.20 per pound to shop this way. I have split packs of hamburger, steaks, chicken, chops, etc into usable sized packs, and if the grandkids stay for dinner it is easy to pull out another zip lock. Great minds do think alike. lol

  2. I love doing this too! We never miss that 1/2 pound of meat in casseroles, tacos, etc. And I’ve started using Quinoa instead of rice. Just a little healthier and even my picky husband hasn’t complained! 🙂 I can’t wait to check out your other post today. I can always use more ground beef recipes! Thanks!!

  3. This is what I do too! I love that it stacks neatly in the freezer too! I do this with chicken as well-cooked like mentioned above but also raw. I will package it into smaller bags (some with 4 chicken breasts if it is a main stay of the dish and some with 2 chicken breasts which is perfect for a crock pot meal).

  4. THanks, Christie. I already use the freezing method, but I hadn’t thought about adding rice to stretch the hamburger. We always have packages of cooked rice in the freezer.

  5. I would love to be able to print this out, how can I print out just the article and not all the stuff on the side?

    1. Hi Trudei,

      1) Open a new file in Word.

      2) Starting at the bottom of what you want to copy press the right side of your mouse ad hold it as you scroll upward to where you want to stop.

      3)Then with it all highlited, now click the left side of your mouse and when the small window opens, click copy.

      4) Open your WORD file and click on the left mouse again, and hit PASTE
      It all should be on your word page and you can edit or print.

      Then hit print to your final page and you will have it!

    2. Copy what you want from the article and paste it to a word document. You can save the document you create to your computer or simply print it from there. And if you are like me, you can enlarge the print so you don’t have to use glasses to read it!

  6. Why didn’t I think of that?! It’s great way to save freezer space, but the best part is that you’ve given a terrific suggestion for cutting down on meat consumption. Thanks so much!

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