Spend a few hours cooking your meats and packaging them up and either individual size dinners for two or family dinner size packages. Then you have cooked meat that you can add to salads, tacos, pasta or rice dishes, et cetera, without all the cleanup during the week nights.
I decided to stir in the rest of the tomato sauce just to bind the meat together a little bit. Then I let that meat cool in the skillet while I started to package and heat seal the Italian seasoned meat.
Looks good, doesn't it? The meat is all cooked and I could use it for tacos right now, making burritos, topping a taco salad, making enchiladas or quesadillas, whatever.
I put the smaller packages into convenient Ziploc bags that I can pull out and grab chicken or cooked pork or cooked hamburger, etc.
I began with a 3-pound package of ground beef, which I split into two halves. I plan to cook one skillet full of Italian-flavored beef and a second skillet full of taco-seasoned meat. Then I split each skillet of cooked meat into two, creating four future family meal kits.
I took an an onion, halved it and diced it, and began sauteing half an onion in the skillet. Then I added to minced cloves of garlic and the approximately one and a half pounds of ground beef.
I season the meat with Italian herbs and stirred in a half a can of tomato paste. I also decided to add in a half a package of mushrooms that was already opened in the fridge.
I cooked the meat until it was completely browned, going an additional 5 minutes to make sure it was really cooked well. Then I put the Italian-seasoned beef in a bowl to cool.
Without washing the skillet, I started the next batch which would be seasoned with my own blend of taco seasoning. I started off in the same way with the minced garlic and chopped onions. I added the beef and taco seasonings and cooked it through.
I prepared four large heat sealing plastic food storage bags, marking them with the type of meat and seasoning and then proceeded to fill them up. I measured them on my home scale and tried to get the packages approximately even. Then I filled the packages and weighed them again, marking the weight and the date on the package.
I ended up with four packages of cooked meat ranging from 12 to 14 oz, perfect for a family dinner for four, or dinner for two with two leftover meals for lunches.
In this meal prep, I only used one skillet, one knife, one wooden spoon, one bowl, and a cutting board. I washed everything, seasoned my cast iron skillet and cleaned up the stove.
I added the packets to the freezer where they will be stored until I want to use them. Meanwhile, with the heat sealer out on the counter, I also heat-sealed some previously cooked (a few days ago) chicken breast and cooked hamburger patties for future dinners or lunches.
It's pretty comforting to know that I can come home from work and put together a pasta dish or something and just a few minutes with minimum clean up afterward. I can also send the smaller servings with my husband for lunch which he can heat in the microwave and create a nice hot meal.
I also use this method to prepare lunches in our food prep containers with meat veggies and a healthy carb for microwaving at work. Whenever I cook quinoa or rice I usually double the amount I need and package up the leftovers small servings for quick lunches or dinners for my husband and myself. I also discovered if I meal prep a few lunches and put them in the fridge for quick heating, my son tends to eat them up, whereas if I just put the leftovers in a big bowl in the fridge, he would never actually utilized them and assemble his own plate!
