Kitchen Tip Tuesday

Last week, I posted about getting back into the groove of freezer storage and cooking.

One of the things, I like doing for some of my freezer cooking is finding "manager special markdowns" on meats! I love to get the markdown meat and bring them home to either cook up or just stock the freezer.

One of the meats that I like to find on markdown are beef roasts, or top round steaks or other lean cuts of meat that I can cut up in cubes and brown. Then once it is cooked thru taking the meat and dividing it up with the juices in the pan and sticking in my freezer.

Last week, I found some top round steaks on markdown that were not very big. I think the two of them totaled around one pound. Even though that would not have been enough for a meal for my family of 7 to keep them whole it was enough to cube up into 1/2 inch cubes.

Instead of putting it in the freezer, we had it for dinner. I took a can of beef broth along with the juices that the beef produced and had a meal of beef gravy over egg noodles with peas and bread as sides. A filling meal without alot of meat!

While I was cooking up the meat, I started thinking that I should have taken the time to get more and about what else I could have done with the meat had I stuck in the freezer.

The types of meals that I do up with the beef cubes are: beef gravy, beef/steak tacos, veggie beef stew. I am sure that there is more I could do with the beef cubes but this is what the family enjoys! I love having a meat that can be frozen that ends up being so versatile!

At any rate, the kitchen tip out of all that rambling is....when doing freezer cooking and storage it is okay not to actually have full meal entrees ready to go but to have various meats to a certain point where you could make a variety of meals within a matter of minutes. Also thinking outside the box for uses for certain cuts of meat can add to your advantage of feeding your family for less.

For other kitchen tips, recipes and more; head over to Tammy's Recipes!