Handy Tip #5

This tip is about buying ground beef in bulk.  It's usually cheaper per pound when you buy larger packs.  The problem is, it can ruin before it is all cooked up.  Right?  Here's my solution.

This is a 3 pound pack.

I cook the entire pack all at once.  Usually I will go ahead and add my chopped onions and bell peppers.  This time I didn't because I am using most of it for tacos, and I prefer my onions uncooked.

How do you like my iron skillet?  I couldn't live without it.

As you can see, it makes a lot of grease and it's only half way through.  I go ahead and drain this out, and then do a final drain once thoroughly cooked.

At this point, I will turn the meat every so often to help it dry out and cool down faster.

While I'm waiting on the meat to cool, I label my ziplocs.  These are just regular quart bags that I put 1 pound of meat in per bag. Normally, for this 3 pounds, I would have 3 labelled bags.  Right now though, I'm going to be using 2 pounds for Tacos tonight, so 1 bag is sufficient.

I put one-third of the meat (1 pound) into my bag.  Before sealing, I push all the air out.  It helps to fold the top half over and seal most of the way. Then kinda lean onto it to help push the last of the air out.

This is about one inch thick.

Nice and flat for stacking.  Although I wouldn't stack them on top of each other until they are frozen.  That's for safety reasons.








Now my next meal already has the meat cooked.  This is so easy to pull out at the last minute and add ingredients to for a quick meal.  Very handy when you haven't taken anything out to thaw ahead of time.

And one more thing...doing it this way means that there is no more grease to mess with later.  This comes out very lean.  Win-win.