I stopped by Kroger the first evening, picking up beef fat, coconut oil, and some other wacky things that I can't get at other stores. ...One fancy find was little lamb chops! I was like a kid in a candy store!
The real hard work began when I got home though! The first night, I rendered fat and got several containers. If you remember, here while back, I rendered lard. I love my lard, but the lard is more prominent so I like to have the beef fat around too. ....But anyway, I was happy to have that job done so I could do more bulk shopping and storage the next day, so it worked out very good to break the trip up.
I went first to pick up a LARGE quantity of meat at Leo's. Its our local 'hometown' market. Fryer chicken breasts and roasts were the sale items this week so I bought 40 lbs of chicken and about 20+ pounds of the roast.
Wanna see what I did with all of that?
Below is 2 bowls of ground chicken with all the ingredients to make chicken loaf. I stirred them all up and I will show you how I freeze them below.
I usually have the butcher do different things with the roasts but I was thinking we'd eat them all as "roasts" but once I got them all home, I realized that I had more than I thought. So, I got out the handy dandy Kitchen Aid and ground up some!
See? Ground beef! Fresh- no fillers- just meat!
I 'flash froze' these patties then bagged them all up with my Food Saver.
And with some of the ground meat, I made a beef meatloaf BUT this meatloaf has more than meats the eye! I also ground up 1/2 a pound of chicken liver in this ;-)! Shhhhhh! I added extra seasonings, and hopefully no one will notice!
Some of the meat, I chopped up for stew.
This one, I decided to slice up to make 'roast beef' sandwiches, sorta like these.(Again, I could have had the butcher do this ...sigh..)
I put almost half the chicken on to boil. Both of these pots have fryer breasts in them, and will then be used with the bones to simmer for 1 to 2 days for broth.
Below is an interesting picture, huh? Well, when I tell you what's in the pot, you'll think I did this on purpose to "hide" what's in the pot! But it was actually steam from the chicken that caused my lens to fog ;-). Oh- what's in the pot? The rest of the chicken liver- sauteing in a little seasoned lamb fat. (Its really good this way.) I chopped this up and froze it in portions that I will later sneak into other dishes. SHHHHH!
To freeze the chicken and beef meat loaves, I lined my baking dish with plastic wrap, sprayed, and put the meat in so as to mold it.
Then I wrapped the plastic around it.
That made it easy to seal in a Food Saver bag quickly and also to have a shape that can be easily transferred to the baking dish when I decide to cook it.
When the chicken was done, I shredded it all up and portioned it out into freezer bags. Some will be used for casseroles and other dishes, but some already has been 'spoken for' to use to make shredded chicken sandwiches, a family favorite. They also begged for chicken and dumplings but I told them I bought whole chickens for that! (Nothing like using the broth as your base and using meat from the whole chicken- yummy!)
I put almost half the chicken on to boil. Both of these pots have fryer breasts in them, and will then be used with the bones to simmer for 1 to 2 days for broth.
Below is an interesting picture, huh? Well, when I tell you what's in the pot, you'll think I did this on purpose to "hide" what's in the pot! But it was actually steam from the chicken that caused my lens to fog ;-). Oh- what's in the pot? The rest of the chicken liver- sauteing in a little seasoned lamb fat. (Its really good this way.) I chopped this up and froze it in portions that I will later sneak into other dishes. SHHHHH!
To freeze the chicken and beef meat loaves, I lined my baking dish with plastic wrap, sprayed, and put the meat in so as to mold it.
Then I wrapped the plastic around it.
That made it easy to seal in a Food Saver bag quickly and also to have a shape that can be easily transferred to the baking dish when I decide to cook it.
When the chicken was done, I shredded it all up and portioned it out into freezer bags. Some will be used for casseroles and other dishes, but some already has been 'spoken for' to use to make shredded chicken sandwiches, a family favorite. They also begged for chicken and dumplings but I told them I bought whole chickens for that! (Nothing like using the broth as your base and using meat from the whole chicken- yummy!)
I also bought lots of other fresh and frozen goodies, like scallops and shrimp, and blueberries, and lima beans- speaking of lima beans- my kids can't seem to understand why kids on tv hate them so much- go figure!
:-)
Frugal tip: buy meat when its on sale and you have extra to spend!
2 comments:
Was your food saver worth the investment? Seems like those bags would get pricey and be non reusable.
Countrymama,
If you do a lot of food prep in advance, OAM shopping or OAMC, then its a great investment.
I reuse the bags. By wrapping raw meats, it makes them easier to clean. I scrub them out with vinegar and baking soda, but you do lose some from sealing and cutting them open.
You can often find them on ebay for a bargain!
Post a Comment