Meat

So, call me crazy, but in December I ordered 40 lbs of ground beef. Yes, 40 lbs.

Where can you buy 40 lbs of beef? I bought mine from Zaycon foods, a northwest based company. (But they deliver all over the country! Check out the website to see if they are near you.) They are pretty much an amazing company. They sell in bulk (ie 40 lbs) straight to you. No grocery store prices, no wondering how old your food is, and high quality products. They sell fresh boneless skinless chicken breasts (my 40 lbs is coming this week!), ground beef, bacon, fish, and even produce that I am eager to try this summer. The ground beef we bought is 93% lean and is honestly the best tasting ground beef I've ever had. And it's not dry like super lean ground beef can get. It's delicious (and that's not normally a word I use to describe ground beef). And at $2.89/lb, we were sold. Cheaper than Costco, better tasting, and leaner beef.

What does 40 lbs of ground beef look like you may ask? Why, let me show you!

I know, I know, it looks absolutely disgusting. Don't judge me.

Now, the annoying part is that you obviously can't store beef like this in 10 lb rolls. But, I ended up cooking 10 lbs (1 tube) into taco meat and freezing it that way. The rest I just divided into 1 lb chunks, put in quart sized freezer safe ziploc bags, and flattened to freeze (and thaw!) faster. Now I have baskets full of 1 lb bags of ground beef and taco meat sitting in my chest freezer. Whenever I need ground beef, I just pull out a bag in the morning and it is thawed by dinner time.

One of my baskets o' ground beef.

In the upper basket on the right you can see some of my cooked taco meat in ziploc bags.

 

This was my first time using ziploc bags to store ground beef in, but they work very well! When you flatten the meat out, you squeeze out almost all of the air. It's like the poor man's way to vacuum seal. Just make sure to use the freezer bags because they are thicker and will protect against freezer burn better than the cheap ones. And it makes perfect sense that flattened bags of ground beef thaw faster because of the greater surface area. I can't believe I've always been storing beef in huge chunks that never fully thaw in time for dinner.

So now I'm in need of ground beef dinner recipes. Shepherd's pie, lasagna, all things taco, and of course Hamburger Helper have become routines at out house now. What else do you guys use ground beef for? Recipes/suggestions are always welcome!