Baking a large batch of meatballs for the freezer

Yesterday, I told you about my 20-lb purchase of ground beef, and what I did with it all. In the comments, I was asked how to keep them from sticking. There are a few tricks with meatballs, some of which really help with the sticking aspect. Here's how I make mine.

I use bread torn into small pieces, soaked in 1 beaten egg. I mash up the egg/bread, then add seasonings (for Italian, I add garlic powder, onion powder, red pepper flakes and salt). I mix the seasoning/egg/bread with the ground meat, and knead it all together with my hands. (Not my favorite thing to do with raw meat, but it gets everything incorporated well.)

Working on a large sheet of waxed paper on the counter, I make 1-ounce meatballs. To decide how big to make each, I take the total ounces of the meat used, divide the meat into that many portions on the sheet of waxed paper, and form into balls. Keeping the balls uniform in size ensures even cooking of all meatballs. An easy way to do this is to pat out the meat mixture into a rectangle, about 1-inch thick. Then use a knife to cut the meat into equal squares (the number of squares being the number of ounces of meat you are using). Each square should be a 1-ounce portion of meat to form into a ball.

As I make the balls, I set them into pyrex baking dishes. I refrigerate all of the uncooked balls for at least 1 hour. Refrigeration does two things. It allows the flavors of the seasonings to develop. And it firms up the balls, so when baked or cooked in a skillet, there isn't too much flattening of the underside. A lot of flattening of the underside means a lot of surface contact with the baking sheet, which in turn leads to more surface which can stick.

While the balls are chilling, I grease an insulated jelly roll pan (I use butter, but any solid fat will work). A jelly roll pan is a large baking sheet with raised edges all around. Using an insulated baking sheet prevents over-caramelization on the bottoms, which lessens sticking. And greasing the baking sheet helps the balls release from the pan.

I preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

After the balls have chilled, I transfer all of them to the greased baking jelly roll pan. I bake for about 20 minutes, and check for all over browning and clear juices. If you have an instant-read meat thermometer, the internal temp of the balls should be about 160 degrees F.

After taking the baking sheet from the oven, I prop up one long end, and pile all of the meatballs along the high end, to drain excess fat.

Next, I wrap a clean baking sheet in plastic wrap. After the meatballs have cooled and drained for about 10 minutes, I transfer each ball to the plastic-lined tray/baking sheet. (Silpat would also work for freezing.) I freeze for about 30 minutes, then transfer all to a zippered bag. Freezing separately prevents the balls from glomming onto one another in the freezer, and I can use however many I want at a time, with ease.

So, that's how I make meatballs and keep them from sticking to the baking sheet.

If you regularly bake with a silpat or parchment, you could also bake meatballs on pans lined with either of those.

What to do with 20 pounds of ground beef

It's that time of year, again. When it seems like time speeds up. Between now and New Years, the calendar may say there are about 44 days, but it will feel like a week and a half to me. With family birthdays, baking cakes, wrapping presents, baking pies, decking the halls at church, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, decking the halls at home, Christmas shopping, wrapping presents again, baking cookies, open houses, a musical performance or two, (and all of the rehearsals that go with those), Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas Day dinner, unwrapping of presents and New Year's Eve dinner and festivities -- there will be less time, before there is more, when it comes to making weekday dinners.

Coincidentally, ground beef was on sale at Cash & Carry, last week, in 10-lb chubs, for $1.99 per pound. I bought 2 chubs (20-lbs). Ground beef is great for make-ahead meal items. I can make so many of our family favorites with it, such as meatballs, taco/burrito filling, Salisbury steak, and of course, hamburger patties. And, with a little up-front work, I can have these all in the freezer and ready to go, for an easy dinner.


Last Friday afternoon, I took a couple of hours to divide up these large chunks of ground beef, precooking/seasoning some of it, and pre-portioning other amounts.

I made a 48-ct batch of 1-oz Italian meatballs,

3 pounds of cooked and Mexican-seasoned beef for filling tacos and burritos, making skillet dinners, quick chili con carne, and bun tacos,

flattened 3 pounds into hamburger patties for 15 burgers,

and portioned the rest into 1-lb packages.

The pre-cooking and pre-patting saves money over similar offerings in convenience frozen foods. Cash & Carry sells 1-oz Italian meatballs, in a 5-lb bag, for a little over $3 per pound. My meatballs, in a 3-lb batch (and also now conveniently in a zip bag for easy access), cost about $2 per pound. Cash & Carry has pre-formed beef patties (same 80% lean/20% fat as the ground beef I bought), on sale this week for $2.49 per pound. My hand-patted patties cost $1.99 per pound.

I saved both time and money, by cooking and/or forming the beef, in one large batch.

Meatballs are a favorite for our family. I would be making them anyways, with ground beef on hand. So making a large batch will save me time for future meals. Once upon a time, I actually did buy them, pre-made at Cash & Carry. So, this is a "real" savings for us, not just hypothetical. And those hamburger patties that I formed? When I gave my son some choices for his birthday dinner, this week, he chose hamburgers. Our home-cooked burgers will cost about $2.50 for meat and homemade buns, or 50 cents per burger -- far less-expensive than anything I could get carry-out.

One more perk to doing a little extra prep work this last week --

in addition to there being less time for cooking, before there is more, last week reminded me that there will be more colds/viruses, before there are less. So having some easy to fix, meals-at-the-ready may be very useful in coming weeks.

This doesn't just happen . . .

it all takes planning.

I was trying to explain this to an acquaintance the other day. You all know that I run our household like I'd run a business. Because it is a business!

Merriam-Webster defines business as "dealings or transactions of an economic nature". Aren't we carrying out dealings of an economic nature? We have an income that comes in and expenditures which go out. And somewhere in between, we have all of the activity which has the ability to grow, preserve or deplete our finances. I am CEO, manager, labor force, and accountant for this enterprise.

As the CEO, I set the direction for the activities which will bring us the greatest financial rewards. As manager, I make the detailed plans for how to activate this direction. As the labor force, I do the grunt work of carrying out these plans. And as the accountant, I look at the numbers to ensure we are, in fact, making financial gains with our activities.

That's the big picture.

On a smaller scale, yesterday afternoon, I finally made the year's supply of salsa. I didn't just head into the kitchen and say to myself, "gee, I'd like to make some salsa. I think I'll run to the store and buy everything in my recipe". I could make our salsa in that spur-of-the-moment fashion. But my accountant tells me that the figures don't add up. I would be spending more in ingredients for the homemade version than I would spend on commercially-made salsa.

Making my own salsa is a valuable use of my time, if I obtain each ingredient or supply at our area's lowest or close to lowest price. But doing this takes planning. I need jars, right? Fortunately, I have a large supply of jars that have been given to us, or that I've purchased at second-hand stores in the off-season, or that I've scrounged from free bins at garage sales, and some jars that I bought on sale at the local discount store. At the end of the canning season, I check the discount stores for marked down lids and rings. I watch for ingredients to be at their lowest prices of the season at the wholesaler near us (Cash & Carry), for items such as canned tomatoes, garlic powder, vinegar and onions. I grow, harvest and dry or freeze my oregano and cilantro. I collect and save little packets of red pepper flakes from my kids' pizza outings. And when I have everything else I need, I buy my jalapenos at either the local produce stand or at my favorite year round ethnic market.

Once I have all of my supplies, then I schedule an afternoon to make a 12-pint batch. I spend about 3 hours, start to finish, to make 12 pints. If I just shopped dollar sales at the supermarket, I would spend as much as $24 on this amount of salsa, when the 8-oz jars are on sale for $1 each. If I shopped at Dollar Tree, I would see about the same cost for this much salsa. Buying salsa in a 64-oz jug would cost about $1.48 per pint, at a store like Wal-Mart, which is an improvement over buying salsa in the half-pint jars. But, by making salsa at home, using my best buying/acquiring strategies, I spend under $5.50 for the 12 pints, or under 45 cents per pint. That's a savings of about $12 for our supply of salsa.

My accountant says that saving $12, doing an activity that is one of the more "fun" homemaker activities, and not displacing any other work which could bring in income, is a good use of my 3 hours, on a Sunday afternoon.

My labor force is looking at the jars, all neat and in rows, and feeling satisfaction on a job well-done.

My manager is pleased that the salsa could be made affordably and under budget, with some planning.

And my CEO is thrilled that the bottom line is more money in our pockets, and less going out the door.


Who else, here, thinks of their household as if it were a business? Judging from many of the past comments, I believe I'm in the company of quite a few other CEOs!