As much as I love to cook, there are days where we’re so busy that I have little time to put supper together. Like many people, I’m trying to find ways to get meals on the table faster, without resorting to fast food or ordering pizza. I’ve tried freezer meals (things you put together ahead of time and toss in the freezer), and the few that I’ve tried have turned out really well. Still, I find myself wanting to prepare meal components ahead of time, and not entire meals.
Chicken broth is easy enough to do. A whole, 5 lb chicken gets my family 2 meals from the meat, and I can make up to 8 cups of broth from the carcass. In fact, since I first started my drive to cut back on our food expenses three months ago, I haven’t had to buy chicken broth from the store. I am truly starting to love my freezer as something more than just to store the ice cream. 
One of the things this freezer-food revolution talks about is stocking up on things that are on sale for a really good price. There’s a small market in town that has made its name on having one of the largest selections of wines and spirits in the area. Seeing the inside of it makes me believe it. Anyway, they sell more than just alcohol – they have a fantastic meat counter. We’ve bought steak there (boneless top sirloin for $3.99/lb – a real steal in my area), and chicken breast (very nice stuff). Their ground beef, however, I think is the best. The regular price of their ground chuck is $1.99/lb, but for the last two weeks, they had it on sale for $1.79/lb, if you bought a minimum of 3 lbs.
We rarely use more than 1 lb per week, but there was no way I was going to let that deal pass us by. But what was I going to do with the meat? Just divide it up into meal-sized portions and put it in the freezer? That didn’t appeal to me, and then I remembered reading online about cooking large batches of ground beef at a single time.
A quick search and I found the directions – you boil the meat. That really surprised me. I was concerned about how it might affect the taste, but I wanted to give it a try. It actually turned out pretty good. Boiling the meat lets you cook it quickly, and gets rid of most of the fat when you drain the water.
I have found, though, that if you’re not going to use the meat right away (as in the day you originally cooked it), you’ll want to use the ground beef in a dish that will be simmered in a sauce. I don’t know why it is, but the meat doesn’t have much flavor after it’s been frozen, and works much better if it’s had a chance to cook in something else. For example, letting the sauce simmer for 20 minutes or so in tomato sauce gives the meat a better flavor than reheating the meat, tossing it into warm sauce and then serving. I don’t remember if I added salt to the water when I cooked the first batch, so part of the reason for the blandness could be the lack of seasoning.
You don’t just have to boil the meat on its own. The second batch of meat I cooked I added salt, pepper, onions and garlic. That turned out much better. I used a frozen portion of it in a batch of beefaroni and you couldn’t tell the meat wasn’t freshly cooked for the meal.
So, how exactly do you boil ground beef? Fill a large soup pot half full with water and bring to a boil. When the water is boiling, add in salt as if you’re cooking pasta. Remember, like pasta, whatever you cook the meat in will be giving it flavor. When the salt has dissolved, break the ground beef up into small pieces and put it in the water. Let it cook, stirring occasionally, until there’s no visible pink. Remove from heat and drain. And you’re done! Let it cool for about half an hour, then divide up into whatever portion sizes you want for meals.
If you want to do as I did and add onions and garlic to it, add 1 onion and 2 cloves of minced garlic for every pound of meat you’re cooking. There’s really no limit to what you can add to the meat, either during cooking, of just before you put it in the freezer.
When you’re cooking the meat, however, make sure you don’t overcook it. While it may not burn like it would if you were frying it in a pan, it can still get really dry and yucky.
It was Matt’s birthday yesterday, and I wanted to make him a cake. He said he didn’t have a regular cake, but it changed from year to year. The one he remembered most, though, was a cinnamon streusel cake from a mix (he’s pretty sure it was Pillsbury, but they changed the recipe years ago and he didn’t like the new formulation. I did some rummaging around, and eventually found a cake that looked like the one he liked. 
