I picked this up over at Rocks in my Drier and even though I post in the evening I decided I'd do Works for me Wednesday instead of Thursday Thirteen tonight. Here goes:
I buy my meat in the mega packs when it is on day old markdown. I'm cheap and well, remember when hamburger was 99 cents a pound. It wasn't that long ago. It might have had something to do with Oprah and Mad Cow, but I won't go there. Anyway, my equally cheap sister and I began buying lean hamburger by the case at Sam's. That's 80 pounds of hamburger. (That's 20 for me, 60 for her.) But it is 90% lean and less than two bucks a pound. And we both have deep freezes. So, although that is a good enough works for me for me, you probably don't find this remotely feasible so think family pack, okay?
I thaw a tube of burger (10 pounds) and brown it five pounds a time in my stock pot. I crumble it as it browns with an old fashioned potato masher. I add onion, garlic, salt and pepper, but you season it like you would. To drain, I have a huge mixing bowl and an equally huge colander. Colander goes in bowl, burger goes in colander. It cools while I do the second five pound browning. Bag it in pound containers and dinner is started for me for ten meals. Later I refridgerate the bowl of fat for an hour. Lift off the huge chunk of solidified fat--goes in trash--and bottle the very rich and tasty beef broth for soup stock.
Works for me!
2 comments:
Great idea to freeze the beef already cooked. I love it!
I do the same sort of thing with 2 differences.
#1-I boil the meat. That way I can do it all at once with no splattering. I add some extra bullion cubes to the water to help retain more of the flavor. This also leaches out all the fat, so if you have a less than 90% meat you can MAKE it around 90% lean because the fat goes into the water.
#2-I use TVP (Texturized Vegetable Protien) to stretch my meat and lower the fat/increase the fiber in dishes. So I use that yummy beef broth I have leftover to reconstitute the TVP, then I mix the TVP and cooked ground beef about 1/2 and 1/2 (or a bit more of the beef) and THEN I freeze it.
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