Tuesday's Terrific Tip--Pre-Cook Ground Meat

On Friday evening J wanted to stay up until midnight.  He made it until 6:30...pm.  That meant that Saturday morning he was awake in the pre-dawn hours, which meant we were also up early too.  But there is good news from this groggy blogger.  When you are the early bird at HEB, you can take advantage of the clearance meat.

Here is the booty I scored:
3 pounds bulk breakfast sausage $3.45
3 pounds ground pork $3
1 pound ground chicken breast $1.50
1 pack hot Italian sausage $1.50

Then I also picked up a package of ground beef that had been steaks and roasts the day before.  The fat content is very low on these cuts, but it is priced at a lower price.

When I got home, and after I snagged a little power nap after getting up SO early on a weekend, I got started with the bulk cooking.

First I mixed a bowl of equal portions of the chicken, pork and beef and made hamburger patties for supper that night, plus a few extra that went into the freezer for another night.

Then I started cooking.

about one package at a time fit well into my skillet.

Then I filled three smaller containers...

and popped those right into the freezer.

Because one of the first things that most recipes call for is to cook the ground meat.  You've saved yourself about 15-20 minutes of cooking time the next time you are making something with ground beef.

Monday night we had spaghetti, so I popped a container into the microwave for a minute and then poured the spaghetti sauce over it.  Dinner was done in the amount of time it took for the pasta to cook.

Then I cooked up the breakfast sausage, making some into patties because that's how J likes them for breakfast, but it takes a while to cook them fresh each day and we've already established that I don't like to wake up early.  So now I have enough prepared for the week and just 20 seconds each morning and he's set for breakfast.

Wait, you say, I thought you bought three pounds of breakfast sausage.  Well I did.  I cooked the other two as crumbles and L can put a little in his eggs every morning for breakfast.  Again, much faster than cooking up just a bit at a time or not wanting to open a roll of sausage for one morning.


Now, that's fast food!