How can a young family starting out stretch a single pound of hamburger?
In our sparse economy these days, feeding a young family starting out seems to be getting more and more difficult. What is a great way to make a single pound of hamburger stretch enough to reduce the "grocery financial burden" for these new families?
Spaghetti and meatballs would fit the bill. Tacos would be another good choice. A better choice might be to use pork or turkey, as beef has gotten pretty expensive.
Bill Yovino~ I really like your idea of using ground turkey or pork instead of beef for greater savings! I have used a combination of turkey and beef, adding frugal aspects as well as that one-of-a-kind taste of beef. Thanks for your great comment!
I usually buy 1 lb. of ground beef and make 2 meals out of it.
My first meal is spaghetti, but I ground the beef, add the sauce and finally add the pasta. I mix it all together and put it in the oven as a casserole.
My second meal are sliders. I make them thin and then serve them with lettuce, tomato, sometimes mushrooms.
You can also make a meatloaf and stuff it with boiled eggs before baking. We usually eat the meatloaf on day 1 and then sandwiches day 2.
BSloan~ Wow! Some really great options here, thanks. I have never heard of stuffing eggs inside of meatloaf; may have to give that a try. I like the spaghetti casserole idea, too. Thanks for sharing your frugal food ideas for today's young family!
Chili is a great option because you can make a big pot with the ground beef, beans, cans of tomatos and tomato sauce, and even get a couple of vegies like carrots to cut up really small or puree for extra health benefits. You can make more than one meal out of it, or make a meal out of the chili then have hot dogs with chili another night.
TripleAMom~ What a great idea! Getting those veggies in the chili bumps up the nutrition values significantly. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Cheers~
Definitly! Also spaghetti sauce, add hamburger, sauce, spices, etc etc. It will double and possibly triple is size then it can be stored in the freezer and used later on. American Chop Souy. Great Ideas!!
Stir fry by mixing ground beef with vegetables. Use leftovers to make fried rice for your next meal. Make patties with grated vegetables then use leftovers to make soup for another meal. Make beef omelet and use leftovers as sandwich filling stuffed with grated cheese and carrots. Incorporating vegetables into your ground beef allows you to stretch your beef supply, plus, you are making healthier dishes. Cooking from scratch is key. Your question made me hungry :
My mother joked that she had 101 ways to make a hamburger hot dish (the MN equivalent of everyone else's casserole). Here are a few memorable ones:
Sloppy joes
Made-rights (basically just the ground beef cooked and salted - I liked mixing mine with mustard) served with buns or not.
Hamburger & Rice - cook the hamburger, then add cooked rice, some peas, a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup and a can of water. Cook until everything is uniformly hot.
american chop suey or a shephard's pie or even a box of macaroni and cheese with scrambled hamburg in it. I love all of these!!
Adding more veggies on your plate can help reduce the amount of meat per serving in different casseroles. We like to add more beans to dishes as well because it increases protein and fiber and makes for less need for meat. So in things like tacos, make homemade refried beans and add some to the taco, then bulk up with lettuce and tomatoes. Mixing hamburger with rice, cooking it in beef broth and adding in veggies is also a good way. Soups are good, or cutting ground beef out of your diet completely. We just stopped buying it, then look at lower price things like chicken legs, etc. Good luck!
There are so many ways to stretch a pound of hamburger meat!
One of my favorites when making chili or a meat sauce that will be cooked for a long time, is to use a food processor and chop up cauliflower. The bits of cauliflower resemble the cooked mince, and kids don't know that they are eating something healthy!
I always stretch mince in my dishes with loads of vegetables. If making dumplings, meatloaf or mince patties, then I add egg and breadcrumbs in addition to the extra vegetables.
My favorite three healthy, vegetable-stretched recipes with 1lb of minced meat: http://nifwlseirff.hubpages.com/hub/3-g … round-beef
Here is one of my favorites, but I use a pound of turkey sausage for the flavor, but you can use ground beef.
brown the meat, add 2 T of crushed garlic, 2T basil, 2T of oregano, 1t fennel seed, (fresh herbs if you have it)...one (or two for the 'stretch') large tomato, diced, handfull of mushrooms, sliced, 1/3 c olive oil, one medium summer squash or zuchinni, sliced thin, add a small can of tomato sauce...shake of sea salt...cover and simmer till veggies are tender....boil some mini penne (here is where you 'stretch'...more or less penne)....once the penne is cooked, drain it and add it to the veggie-herb-meat mix...toss well, serve with some parmesean on top....yum
Wow! This sounds fantastically yummy and so economical! You should make a recipe hub for this one! Great answer, thanks!
I'm so glad you asked this question! There's a recipe I like very much but haven't made in years because I don't eat much beef anymore, and when I do, I want a 10-ounce steak! It's called savory Spanish rice*, it's low-fat, and you'll be amazed at the beef flavor you get with so little ground meat.
1 med onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1/4 pound lean ground beef
1/2 cup brown rice
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups fresh tomatoes, chopped, or 2 cups canned diced tomatoes (make sure you retain all the liquid)
1 bay leaf
1/8 teaspoon red pepper
Saute onion and green pepper in a bit of oil or beef stock until tender.
Brown beef and drain off the fat.
Combine all ingredients, bring to boil, stir, reduce heat, simmer on lowest possible heat, covered, for 40-60 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir often to prevent sticking. Add a bit of water if things get dry and the rice hasn't become tender yet.
Serves 4 to 6.
Serve it with a green salad and some crusty garlic bread.
It sounds crazy, but you only need that 1/4 pound of beef to make a very satisfying beef-tasting dish.
*From "Recipes To Lower Your Fat Thermostat" 1985.
Cut it up into pieces and spread it out throughout the day. Don't wait too long or it will get dry, stale, and possible moldy.
Cut it in half and cook it as a sauge for spaghetti for two different days.
Or make it into meat patties and eat half one day and half another ---this you can accompany with lentils, salad or fried potatoes and salad.
Great question! I buy a value pack of ground turkey (we prefer this over ground beef) which has 2 1/2 pounds. I divide this into thirds and put each into a baggie which I freeze. So, when a recipe calls for 1 pound, I actually use 3/4 of a pound. It means a little less meat in the dish, but every dish I has made still works just fine! I then stretch it a bit more:
1. Tacos: Add a can of black beans with the meat. This adds protein and makes the meat seem more substantial. If I mix in a cup of cooked rice that stretches it even further!
2. Spaghetti: Instead of meatballs, I mix the ground beef directly into the sauce so the meat is spread out a bit more throughout.
3. Sloppy Joes: Instead of hamburgers, sloppy joes go a little further. Whereas I make 4 patties out of 3/4 pound of meat, I can make 5-6 sloppy joes out of the same amount.
by Heidi 12 years ago
What type of recipe do you use ground beef most often?
by medor 13 years ago
What meat do you use for chili? How do you prepare it.
by Connie Smith 12 years ago
It was bad when we found out recently that McDonald's, Taco Bell and Burger King had "pink slime in their food. Still, it only affected me a little since I rarely eat fast food. I was pretty ticked, though, when I heard that the USDA had bought 7 tons of it for the school...
by flacoinohio 12 years ago
If I were to buy half of a cow, what kinds of meat cuts will I get and how much will it cost?
by Kelly Kline Burnett 11 years ago
I purchased pink slime! Have you?I have turned away from the big boxes because of pink slime and make a special trip to another grocery chain. I have purchased their meat loaf for over 2 years and have been exceptionally happy. Until now. They too, have changed and the meat loaf I onced loved all...
by Aloe Kim 12 years ago
If you could only eat one type of meat what would it be?
Copyright © 2024 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2024 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |