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.