Batch {Bulk} Cooking with Ground Beef

I love the idea of having meals in my freezer that are already prepped, and ready to be used for dinner in the days to come. Let’s face it, we all have moments where we don’t want to spend lots of time each night in the kitchen preparing a meal for our families. Sometimes you’re just too tired, too busy, or just plain don’t know what to fix when it’s near dinner time and everyone is sitting around hungry.

To help with that problem I learned about freezer cooking years ago. I have done this off and on.
With much planning ahead it is doable, and so worth the time and effort you put into it. To be honest I do slack off and get lazy when it comes to freezer cooking. It is a tiring task, and I don’t always have time for it. One minute I’m all amped up, and can get a couple of weeks worth of crockpot dinners prepped and ready to freeze. Whenever I need something for dinner the next day I can go look in my freezer and take out an already prepped meal to thaw over night, and put it the crockpot the next morning. This is so easy because I don’t have to worry about “what’s for dinner?”. Other times it may be something I already cooked, froze, and just need to thaw and reheat. I have also just made plans for an easy skillet meal that doesn’t take much time because I did all the side prep work before hand, and stored it with directions when time to prepare it. My problem starts when after a few months I get side tracked, knocked off my meal planning groove, and no pre-planned meals are put together for months at a time. I just get plain “stuck in a rut”.

 I’ve learned (been reading up on it for a few years) of another way to prepare meals that may get me back motivated and hopefully stay there. It’s called “batch” or “bulk” cooking. This is were you make a double, triple, ect. batch of a single meal item/dish and freeze what you won’t use right away for later meals. I’m now on a journey to see where this goes, and I thought it would be great to share it with my readers in case someone else out there needed some ideas too. Each time I have a cooking session I’ll come on here to share with you what I batch/bulk cooked as well as some ideas of different uses for it. First up in this series is ground beef. This will be done in 2 parts so this is part 1.

I bought a 5lb. chub of ground beef while it was on sale for a very good price. In the past I would normally cut it into 1 or 2lb. sections and put into Ziploc bags to freeze for a future meal. This time I went ahead and cooked up the whole thing. I took half of it and browned it up with a whole chopped onion. I put 1/4 cup of water in the skillet to help it break up a little easier and cook off some (not all) fat. I cooked it until completely done, drained it well, and let separated it into two cup portions (1 lb. ground beef) to put into quart size Ziploc bags.

As you can see I got 3 bags out of it that I pre-labeled, squeezed all the air out them before closing, let meat finish cooling off, and placed in a flat single layer on a baking sheet to freeze. Once it was stiff enough I take the baking sheet out, and stack the bags on top of one another in the freezer. This is so you save on space to put other things in there. Now what can I use these bags of cooked beef for? Here’s a list:

* Hamburger Helper (I do homemade version)
* Spaghetti meat sauce
* Sloppy Joes
* Stuffed Bell Peppers
* Soups
* Chili
* Rice Bowls (ex: “Korean” Beef Bowls)
* Casseroles, Baked Ziti
* Loaded Tots
* Stuffed shells
* Hamburger Gravy
* Tacos, burritos, or nachos
* Enchiladas, Empanadas, or Quesadillas

These are just examples of the many things you can do. I may come back to add to this list later as other things come to mind. What can you think of that I haven’t added to the list? Please fee free to let me know. Stay tuned for part 2 where I shared what I did with the other half of my 5 lb. chub of ground beef.