Ground Beef, how I loathe thee!

Okay, so maybe I don't really loathe thee, but i find you terribly inconvenient. Most of my recipes that call for ground beef, you have to pre-cook it before you use it in your recipe. That seriously adds on an extra step and more time than I am willing to spend. Plus, it usually leaves me one more dish to clean at the end of the night. Oh the agony of it all!! Can you feel my pain?

How do I survive...Here's my solution: Buy your ground beef in bulk at sam's club or costco, or when it is discounted at your local grocery store. When you get home, most people I know, separate that red gooey mess into ziploc bags with a pound in each and toss it in the freezer. Do I do that? Nope. I cook it right there all together. Well, I usually cook half at a time and then divide the amount evenly into five or six bags depending on how many pounds I bought.

Also, most recipes have you cook your meat with onions. Solution to that....add dried onions to the beef while you cook it all together and that will save you the time of sauteing those little guys. Plus, no more tears over cut onions.

Then they go into the freezer until I need them again. Pull out of the freezer in the morning when you want to use it or defrost in the microwave when you are ready to start cooking dinner.

This saves so much time and less mess during the week. I sometimes try to plan ahead and if I want to make a meatloaf or something that requires the meat to be raw, I just put some uncooked beef in a bag before cooking the rest. Time saver, I guarantee, and you only have to clean the greasy pot with yucky beef remnants once in a while.

Check out my spaghetti recipe below using pre-cooked ground beef.