Works for Me Wednesday

It's been a while since I posted a Works for Me Wednesday, but I had a tip that seemed worth sharing this week!

I like to use ground beef in a lot of recipes, but I hate frying the ground beef. I don't know why I have such an aversion to frying ground beef, but I really just hate to do it. I will end up not cooking a recipe I planned on making because I just don't want to fry the beef. But I've found a way around it... and it's a money-saver, too!

When you go grocery shopping, you can get a much better deal on ground beef if you buy the big family pack of ground beef instead of just a pound at a time. But it's a pain to divide it out into smaller containers - ick, handling raw meat. But I recently learned that you can buy the big family pack of ground beef and then take it home and dump the whole thing in the crock pot. I seasoned it with a little salt, pepper, and onion powder and left it mostly alone for 4 hours. I stirred it a few times to break up the meat, but mostly ignored it.

When it was done, I just scooped out the beef with a slotted spoon and divided it into smaller batches to store in the freezer. Soaked up the remaining grease with a couple of paper towels and popped the crockpot liner in the dishwasher. Since then, dinner featuring ground beef has been a breeze! I just keep one container of ground beef in the fridge and when I need it I can just dump it into the recipe, then pull another container from the freezer to thaw and be ready for next time.

So that's what works for me. Head over to We Are That Family for more WFMW ideas!