Prepping Ground Beef For Easy Meals makes weeknight dinners so much easier! Time… there is never enough time! Dinner time overlaps with soccer practice, homework time, and errands. If I can find a way to save money, I will and this is one of my favorite ways to save time when it comes to dinner time in my house! I love that after Prepping Ground Beef I can pull out the meat and thaw it for dinner.
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Sometimes little things can go a long way to make a big difference in your life. Now with meat markdowns in the store I still stock up if the deal is screaming, you can never have too much meat when you have kids!
How prepping ground beef can save more time and money:
Easy to defrost and throw in a casserole meaning no ordering take out or a drive-thru
No waiting on meat to brown
Weighed and frozen in size for dishes super helpful
Perfect for the nights you burn the regular dinner as a backup plan
Ultimate Ground Beef Cookbook
Ground Beef Cookbook: Main Dishes, Casseroles, Skillet Meals & More!Taste of Home Ground Beef Cookbook
Supplies for prepping:
Large Stockpot- Browning several pounds of ground beef at a time to brown meat goes faster than browning individual pounds for each dinner individually
Over the sink strainer– This makes draining the grease off the cooked ground beef easy. A large batch of ground beef will create quite a bit of grease.
Tin Foil– This will be used to line a large mixing bowl. Using the filter over this, the foil will be wrapped up to throw away the grease.
Freezable containers– You could use Freezer Ziploc bags, but I like how the containers stack.
Snapware 24-Piece Total Solution Food Storage Set, Glass
Rubbermaid 50-Piece Easy Find Lid Food Storage Set
Food Scale– I use mine to measure the cooked meat so I can note how much meat is in each container. and then to serve sizes on almost everything coming out of the kitchen
Funnel– I use this when I don’t line the bowls with tin foil (occasionally, I forgot the foil till it’s to late) to drain the grease into a container.
How TO Cook Your ground beef
Dump your ground beef into the large pot.
Season if you want to while browning. I always do a seasonal all and minced onion that way, it is ready for anything and can have more season added to it. But you could skip this seasoning if you wanted to
McCormick Culinary Chef’s Cut Onions, 2 lbs.Johnny’s Seasoning Salt, No Msg, 42 Ounce
Set up your large bowl with your strainer over it! It works great to catch grease and I don’t know about you but I always burn myself trying to use a turkey baster to get oil out. After I am done I funnel it into a milk jug or cans.
Once the meat has browned, dump it into the strainer and start the next batch of beef.
Be sure to mix up the meat in the strainer for efficient straining.
While the second batch is cooking, start filling and weighing out your containers for the meat. I do 6 ounces and 11-ounce containers of ground beef. And one large one for taco night, so we have leftover meat for taco salads!
Be sure to refrigerate your meat before freezing it to allow it to cool down before freezing.
How do you bulk prep your ground beef? What is your go-to ground beef dinner?
GinaJ says
I do the same but vacuum seal in bags, freezes well and saves a ton of space. 🙂
Kim says
I find ground beef tastes a bit rancid after freezing, so I freeze it with some sauce or spices to keep that from happening.
For example, i will divide a jar of spaghetti sauce between 3 containers of cooked meat. Stir it up, then label it for spaghetti & freeze.
For taco meat, add some taco season & a 1/2 cup or so of salsa.
Anything you would use canned soup for, I put 3/4 cup or so of canned beef gravy in the containers.
This also helps me decide what to make when I open the freezer not having a clue. Whatever sounds good when I see a label 😉
Trina says
I cook large batches with onion. Drain on paper towels the lay flat and put in the freezer drawer for a short time. Then take out, slightly frozen, pack in vacuum bags. Freezing a little first keep the juices from getting in my Foodsaver.
Trina says
I should’ve added, i dispose of the paper towels, I separate into several batches for multiple meals.
Morgan says
That’s a great tip! I was wondering how to keep the juices, but not have them squish up the bag when I vacuum seal it! Thanks!