Saturday 4 May 2013

Save money on meat and freeze efficiently - Tips

My job often involves travelling abroad. As I get home late I cannot be bothered to shop.
However, having lived on food prepared by others throughout the trip, I long for a home-made meal.
With the added factor of N. eating out or being a away for a couple of nights every week; keeping meat in the freezer is very handy.

In order to scrimp on food costs, I do not buy nice juicy and expensive steaks if they are to be frozen.
Once a month, I will buy a large joint : leg of lamb, beef roast, pork roast or a whole chicken.
The joint will yield so many pieces of meat once I cut it into steaks and work out way cheaper than buying pieces (rump-steak, lamb steak, pork cutlet or chicken pieces).

However, to freeze the pieces, they have to be wrapped individually, frozen in separate bags for each piece or defrosted all at once.
This seems like a waste of (expensive) cling-film or freezer bag. And let alone the fiddling with cling film !

A quick, easy way and cheap way is to wrap each individual portions is sandwich bags. Gather each into a batch in a medium-sized resealable or zip freezer bag. (The sandwich bag alone will not be ideal for freezer burns and such)
You can buy 500 sandwich bags for £1 in Poudland !


The feel pretty flimsily, so I am not sure how effective they would be as sandwich bags but they are a real Godsent when it comes to portioning and freezing.

I also use them for cheese (buy a block, grate it and freeze single-size portions) and bread (2 for xx offer), just freeze a couple of slices in each bags.



Disclaimer : This post was written to share my own tip. Poundland has not suggested I write this post, nor did they sponsor it in any form.

4 comments:

  1. Great idea for saving on costs, I've been using freezer bags and they do add up when you're trying to be organised and freeze in individual portions!

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    1. I am really glad you found this post useful.
      There is another money saving / freezing tip here : http://hussylondonhousewife.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/save-money-stop-waisting-save-your-herbs.html x

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  2. useful article! I get through lots of freezer bags

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    Replies
    1. An article on keeping cheese for longer will come up in the next two weeks. xx

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