Works For Me Wednesday: What Do You Fix?

hmmmmm……what do I fix for dinner when I’m in a hurry…..

My biggest help is keeping cooked hamburger in the freezer.

I boil my hamburger 5 or 10 pounds at a time, yes, boil. I place the hamburger into a large pan, and add enough water to just cover the hamburger, you can add onions, garlic, and any other seasonings you like. I boil until no longer pink, breaking it apart while it’s cooking. A spaghetti grabber works great for this. Drain. Mo grease splatters on the stove, or you! and less fat in your recipe! (You can save the broth, put it in the fridge, then scoop off the fat after it hardens, and discard. This broth can be used for soup. It’s not a supper strong beef flavored broth, but does make a nice soup with some of the hamburger and veggies.) After the hamburger is cooled, I bag it up in freezer bags. 2 cups of cooked hamburger is equal to 1 pound of hamburger. I put 4 cups in each bag, about 2 pounds, because there are a lot of us. 🙂

Now comes the best part…..
You can use this cooked meat for an endless number of quick meals…

Cheesebruger Macaroni..stir hamburger into mac & cheese along with some diced tomatoes and onions…
Pasta…cook whatever shape you like, elbows, spaghetti, etc. stir hamburger into pasta with your sauce of choice…
Sloppy joes….this takes like 2 minutes if you use the the canned sauce…
Tacos…..stir seasoning, water and meat, and heat. If you have lettuce and tomatoes already chopped in the fridge, it’s really quick.
Crockpot Cheeseburgers….place the hamburger into crockpot with chopped onions and velvetta, this only takes a couple of hours to cook (hamburger is already cooked) But you can put it in the crockpot earlier in the day, too, serve on hamburger buns. It’s like a sloppy joe, only cheesey 🙂
There are tons of different ways you could go with the cooked hamburger, casseroles, soups, etc, etc. But I’ll stop for now. 🙂

If you’ve remembered to take the bag of hamburger out of the freezer that’s good, if not, defrost in the microwave or on the stove top in your sauce of choice, it only takes a few minutes while your getting the rest of the meal ready.
Another tip.. When you bag up the hamburger, smoosh the meat out flat in the bag, instead of having it all in one lump. It defrosts MUCH faster that way!

My Easy Chicken Parmesan that I posted for last weeks WFMW is a fast, easy meal, also.

For more Works For Me Wednesday ideas visit Rocks in My Dryer