Baked Beef:

Baking ground beef, the easy way to creating the perfect foundation for any beef dinner. Best of all, it freezes great so all you need to do is heat and eat. Just think, no muss, no fuss… you come home from work, nuke your frozen ground beef mix, toss it in your noodles or rice or whatever and voila, dinner is served!

Step 1. Kick the oven on to about 375*F so it preheats while you get things ready.

Step 2. Using your large roaster, crumble up your raw ground beef across the bottom. I needed to use this one up since it was starting to brown on the edges, so don’t mind if yours looks much nicer, LOL.

Step 3. Add a generous helping of chopped onions, peppers and celery. You can add any other seasonings you want here, but from experience… as long as you have veggies in there, it will season itself.
Step 4. We love mushrooms, so I tossed in 2 pounds of mushrooms on top.

Step 5. Cover and put in oven for about 45-50 minutes. I usually pull it out after 30 and give everything a mix.

Step 6. After the time is up, pull it out and smell that yummy smell. It should look something like this. Notice all the fat and juices… that’s next.
Step 7. Drain your baked ground beef mixture. I like to give mine a rinse in the colander to get out all the fat. Put it back in the roaster and you should have something like this.

Step 8. Scoop it into containers for freezing. It’s best to let things set out for 20-30 minutes and cool before throwing it in the freezer.

That’s it. Cook the beef once and get many meals out of it. It makes like a whole lot easier. Our 5 pound beef pack with all the veggies yielded 6 ground beef meals about 3/4 pounds each (cooked).

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Boiled Beef:

As an alternative to baking ground beef, you can also boil the ground beef. The boiling method is very simple, however in my case I had to tend it since it kept wanting to boil over (my fault for over filling it).

It’s a really simple alternative: Boiling ground beef is really as simple as it sounds. A friend suggested it rather than baking so I tried it out. In the end I like the roaster method better, but this works too.

Here’s how:

1. Take out your biggest stock pot, get it on the heat and start crumbling up your ground beef. In my case I crumbled in 10 pounds (2 large tubes). Be sure to layer in any seasonings or additions you want along the way. I prefer to season only with vegetables, so I added several layers of chopped onions, celery and green peppers. Once you get it all in, top it up with warm water. Be sure you have the stove cranked up, I had ours on about 8 out of 10 (electric).

2. This step is the easiest, sit back and wait… except for when you put too much in and it wants to overflow like mine, LOL. I let it boil and simmer for about 45-50 minutes to really cook and soak up the onion taste.

3. Give it a couple good stirrings and break it up along the way. In the end it should look like hamburger stew.

4. Get your freezer containers ready. We like to use these tupperware‘s as they are reasonably priced and stand up very well in the freezer.

5. Use a strainer or collander and strain off or dip out your beef mixture. Once the dripping stops, fill up your containers.

6. Let cool about 30 minutes before freezing to make it easier on your freezer. We ended up with 9 ready to heat and eat ground beef meals from this batch. Each one is about 3/4 to 7/8 of a pound, perfect foundation for anything from beef stroganoff to taco’s.

Hope you enjoyed this alternative idea, it works just as well as baking it in the oven… the net result was the same.

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