Penny pinchers: how to turn 1 kilo of ground beef into 3 affordable dinners in one go.

How I use batch cooking to save time and money! I share three delicious meals you can make ahead of time with a simple meal prep hack. Plus, recipes brewing in my head this week.

Last year we bought our own place. We’ve been saving and looking for the right place that we could afford for years. We finally settled on one, bought it and BOOM, the interest rates started going up like a fast-moving elevator. And just like that, within months, our mortgage repayments soared and we found ourselves having to watch our budget more carefully than ever.

I am sure this will resonate with many of you.

As part of my cost-cutting crusade, I’ve started to do more batch cooking and meal planning using budget-friendly foods and ingredients. The likes of chicken drumsticks, frozen fish, seasonal vegetables, rice and beans are making a regular appearance on my shopping list.

When it comes to affordable cooking, you can’t go past ground beef or beef mince as we call it in Australia. I usually splurge a little and buy grass-fed meat, but even then I still save quite a bit of money by purchasing a whole kilo or two rather than smaller packets. 

I use my ground beef batch cooking hack to turn one kilo of mince into three delicious, affordable dinners. It takes me about 2-3 hours.

My Make-Ahead Hack: Savoury Beef Mince

My little trick is using a whole bunch of ground beef to make versatile savoury mince. It’s made with sautéed, almost caramelised onions, carrots and celery, garlic and a few simple seasonings.

This beef mixture becomes the base for three different dinners: Bolognese, Shepherd’s Pie and Tex Mex Beef & Rice Casserole. There are lots of other ways to use it as well.

Once you’ve cooked this savoury ground beef mince, you can use it as a base right away or you can freeze it in portions for later. To complete each of the dinner dishes, you only need a few extra ingredients from your pantry and freezer. 

The three dinners I make with this savoury ground beef base include:

• Bolognese sauce

• Shepherd’s Pie

• Mexican Beef & Rice Casserole

These dishes use affordable staples, so they are perfect for those on a budget or feeding a family. Each dish serves four so can be done as one dinner or divided into two meals.

I often do meal prep on the weekend, so I will make the Bolognese sauce and the Shepherd’s Pie to eat on Monday and Tuesday/Wednesday and I make the filling for the Tex Mex beef and rice casserole and freeze it for later. Whenever I need a quick and easy dinner, I defrost the mix overnight, then add cooked rice and cheese and bake it! Boom.

You can switch the meals around as they are all great for storing, freezing, thawing out and reheating. 

I have the full recipes for the basic savoury beef mince and all three dinners in this post on my blog. It was too long to include all of them here. The post also has a video showing you how I make them all. I will upload it to YouTube soon and include the video here as well.

Let me know if you’ve been cooking more cheap and cheerful dinners lately. What are your go-to recipes?

Irena xo

More penny pinchers to try

Here are some of my other budget-friendly recipes.

Lemon Honey Garlic Pepper Chicken Thighs

Spanish Potato & Egg Tortilla Muffins

Cabbage Pie With Sour Cream Dill Sauce

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Things I’ve bookmarked this week

On Instagram, I’ve bookmarked this reel from @Foodess sharing 4 tips pro bakers use for moist cakes every time.

For families with kids, this freezer hack from @staceyclaire_healthcoach for quick and easy ham and cheese toasties is brilliant.

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Recipes brewing in my head lately

• Spicy vodka zucchini noodle ‘pasta’ with bacon…because I’ve cooked and shot the real vodka sauce pasta and now want to do a paleo/low-carb version.

• Sheet pan slow-roasted eggplant with tomatoes, garlic and feta - soooo, nobody in my household likes eggplant but me, which makes this recipe tricky, BUT have a vegetarian coming for a BBQ on the weekend, so I might sneak this one in.

• Asparagus ricotta pasta with a creamy sauce made from ricotta and seasonal grilled asparagus pureed together with lemon and garlic, kind of like a pesto sorta thing. It seems asparagus is cheap at the moment…

• Honey roasted carrots with tahini lemon sauce…might make this tomorrow as I got some baby carrots on special today.

What are you cooking up lately? Let me know in the comments!

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