Buying meat in bulk to make MANY meals
Meat is one of the biggest expenses in any household shopping bill. Similar to household chemicals, it can really bump up the cost of your expenses in no time at all and leave you standing at the checkout bewildered how your weekly shop can cost so much.
Note: I literally dropped my jaw in line at Coles the other day. I purchased all the chemicals I needed to clean my new place ASWELL as meat for the coming week – I actually couldn’t believe the total amount! Everything else is insignificant compared to these two kinds of purchases! Luckily I won’t be buying chemicals every week, though I will be buying meat.
So how can we look at reducing the cost of buying meat?
Well I don’t know about you, but I am not going to reduce the quality of the meat I buy. I refuse to eat chicken giblets and red meat that is 98% bone and fat. I like healthy, lean and tasty meat and that means more cost.
Or does it?
The trick to reducing the cost of meat
Is buying in bulk. The more you buy the cheaper it is (normally).
In the past I would use local butchers to drive down cost, though now days Coles and Woolworths are cheaper than just about any butcher I can possibly find.
What do I buy in bulk?
- Steak
- Sausages
- Chicken Breasts
- Beef mince
The trick to buying meat in bulk
If you buy meat in bulk, you will definitely have to freeze it to make it last. Though the problem with freezing is that when you defrost, if you have purchased an extra large piece of meat it may go to waste.
The solution?
Prepare and divide your meat BEFORE freezing
Steak
I get my 2KG of steak and a sharp knife and go to town. I slice it into steaks for multiple nights as well as dice into cubes for Asian dishes. From my 2KG of steak (eye fillet) I can easily make 10-12 meals for two people and sometimes more. Portion control is maintained by doing this as you then only defrost the right size of meat for each dinner.
Chicken Breats
Notice that chicken breasts are always really chunky and if you cook them as they come they tend to be too thick and white? We prefer to slice each breast into two pieces. This means a standard package of two chicken breasts goes from feeding two people once, to feeding two people twice! Not bad!
Beef mince
This is the Australian fav! We buy ALOT of mince. We make Mexican, chilli con carne, savory mince, the list goes on. Buy in as large a bulk as possible and when you get home divided into even blocks for each dinner. We buy our mince on special from Woolies as they are closing and buy as much as we can possibly carry. Mince is great for everything and a real cost cutter for the meat bill.
How do you reduce the cost of meat?
Any tricks we didn’t mention? Our freezer is rapidly becoming overly small due to our rapid purchase of bulk meat!
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