I hate actually browning the meat. I dislike the smell of raw meat as it goes into the frying pan. I despise the spattering mess it leaves on the stove. I could live without all the wasted time standing in front of a hot pan chopping the meat so it doesn't accidentally turn into a meatball-like substance.
What's a mom of many to do? There are so many recipes that call for some form of ground meat that it really is a necessity (unless you are a vegetarian, which no one in our family is). Here's my solution....buy, brown, rinse, bag, freeze.
Let me explain. Keep an eye on your grocery ads and buy ground whatever when it is cheap. Next, enlist your loving husband to brown the meat for you as shown here.
Do this in small batches. Don't be tempted to just throw it all in the frying pan. Believe me, we've tried it and it doesn't save any time. It takes much longer to cook up a large batch than two smaller ones.
I portion it out into Ziploc (I've found store brand baggies just don't cut the mustard in the freezer!) baggies with the date written on the outside so that I know how long it's been in the freezer. This is what 12 pounds of ground beef looks like all browned, bagged and ready for the freezer.
I now have a freezer filled with browned ground meat all ready to go into a recipe. This is enough to last us for a couple months. It makes me sooooo happy to know that all I have to do is grab a bag, thaw it, and toss it into a recipe without having to mess with browning it! :-)
I apply a similar method for cooking chicken breast and chopping them up to be used in recipes. Or you can shred rotisserie chickens in a like manner. Since I have confidence that my readers are all highly intelligent (grin) I won't bore you with the details...you can figure it out!
God Bless!
Heather :-)
Good idea, Heather.
ReplyDeleteI love this idea. I, like you, do not enjoy handling or cooking meat. And (this is weird) I enjoy eating meat less when I am the one who has cooked it. If I just handled a bunch of raw ground beef, I'm much more likely to serve my family what I made and eat a bowl of cereal myself. Perhaps this will help. :)
ReplyDeleteI had to laugh because I would be one of those people who would dump in all of the meat at once, just to get it done! Thanks for the great tips:)
ReplyDeleteHeather, have you ever tried browning the meat in the oven or crock pot? I do this when I don't have time to stand over the stove and I want/need to do a lot of beef at once. I just put it in my roasting pan, break it up, cover it, and put it in the oven at 350. I do have to go in and break it up as it cooks, but only once or twice depending on how much meat I'm browning. The time it takes depends on the amount I'm making. Same goes for the crockpot. It takes longer there, but I can toss it in and return hours later to browned meat for freezing. I CANNOT brown meat when I'm first trimester. I usually have about two weeks between finding out I'm pregnant and starting to feel sick so I always use those couple of weeks to freeze ahead. :)
ReplyDeleteMolly-
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. I'll have to give that a whirl if my hubby isn't around to be the master browner for me!