Pre-Cooked Ground Beef

No, I haven't given up on this blog. Our family just moved from Utah to Delaware and I was without computer for more than a week. I still have to unpack our kitchen, so no new recipes for a few more days...however, today you will learn something invaluable to your Freeze Happy lifestyle. Pre-Cooking ground beef.



Here's what you'll need.

5-8 lbs. raw ground beef
2 cups finely diced yellow onion
2 Tbsp. minced garlic
1 cookie sheet
Silpat Mat or Wax Paper
Small Ziplock bags
Sharpie Marker


1. Get a huge non-stick pot, like the kind you might make soup in.
2. Cook the onion and garlic on medium heat for 3-5 minutes.
3. Add your ground beef and cook until completely done. Drain any excess fat.

Now here's where I'm gunna get all Food Safety Inspector on you. The temperature in which bacteria grow is the luke-warm temperature. therefore, any time you are cooling meat you want to chill it as quickly as possible. This explains your next step.

4. Line a cookie sheet with a silpat mat (or wax paper). Lay out your beef in an even layer.
5. Place in freezer, uncovered, for 4 hours.
6. Use a Sharpie marker to label ziplock bags with date.
7. Use a cup measure to measure out 2&1/2 cups into each ziplock bag. Store in freezer.

Now here's what's so genius about this. 2&1/2 cups of cooked ground beef equals 1 pound of ground beef in a recipe.

So let's say it's 5:00 pm and your day was so stressful that you have no dinner planned for tonight. Grab a jar of your favorite jarred marinara sauce. Boil pasta noodles you have in your pantry. While the pasta is cooking, throw your marinara in a medium pot and add one of your packets of hamburger straight from your freezer. Cook on medium heat until heated through. Voila! In 15 minutes you have a filling, warm and easy meal. What could be better?

Also try adding your precooked meat to...
- Canned soup
- Chili
- Casseroles
- And anything else you can think of.

Pre-Seasoned Variation: When your cooking your meat in step 3, put half on a cookie sheet to freeze and leave the other half in the pan. Then add 1-2 taco seasoning packets and place to freeze on a separate cookie sheet. Then you or your kids can simply throw a seasoned meat baggie straight into the microwave and have instant taco meat. Genius right? I know.

Healthy Version: And of course, for the Health Conscious you can choose how lean you want your beef or do this with ground turkey or (for picky families) you can combine a mixture of lean ground beef and ground turkey.