Practical Thursday Notes

Rotation Meats

One easy way to cut your protein costs is by adapting your food purchases to a rotation meat .  By simplifying your meat purchases to cuts that are versatile, you keep variety in you meals, and cut costs.   This means that you can buy larger quantities for less money and portion control your meat.  This makes for less waste.  

A pork loin can cost as low as .99 a lb.  Costco business has them for 1.59 with a 2.00 discount on the bag at checkout.  That makes the ten pound pork loin 1.39 a lb.  My top buy price is 1.69.   You can make pork chops, pork roast, pork stew meat, and stir fry from the scraps.   To exemplify, center cut pork chops can be 3.49 a lb.  

Boneless, skinless , chicken breast can be purchased for 1.77 here.   I bought direct from the farmer for .99.   Split chicken breast has the rib portion on it.   If you cut the rib portion off, you can cook it and pull the meat from the bones .  The bonus is chicken stock.   A hack I learned from a utube friend, April, is to set your slow cooker on low before you go to bed.   ( bones, veggie scraps, and a few herbs, water up to within an inch ) in the morning, you hae broth and bones you can pick the meat from.   Picked meat can be tacos, cassarole, soup, nachos, etc.   Chill the stock and defat it before freezing .  Leave head room in your container.  

We put each chicken breast in a separate quart bag (cheap ones at DT) and put the batch in a gallon bag with the date and chicken breast marked on the bag.

Hamburger is a whole lot more efficiently cooked in batches.   Cook it until no longer pink, de-fat it, and bag in portion controlled batches.   Cooked hamburger is easily thawed and is a great time saver at dinner time.  You can also portion off enough for hamburger patties or homemade meatballs.   I have found, however, that meatballs are cheaper bought frozen.   I save the inside wrapper of things like cereal, or baking mix to use in place of wax paper separating beef patties.   It is also good if you are making cutlets, or crushing crackers.  

The other rotation weeks can be used for eggs, cheese, and beans.  

No, Virginia, we don’t just eat beans.    LOL.