Tips & Tricks: Prepping Meat

Ok, I promised I would talk a little bit about prepping your meat on the weekends to save time during the week. This is something I started doing quite a few years ago actually. Ever since I entered into the rat race that is "corporate America," I've been looking to find ways to save time during the week. I prep all of my meat on Saturdays and freeze it. Then, all I have to prep is vegetables during the week. I buy all of my meat in bulk (mostly because it's cheaper that way). Then I'll meal plan so that I know exactly how many meals it's going to make and how the meat needs to be cut up for each meal. Then I trim the meat and cut it up according to what dish it's going into and put it in a ziploc bag. For example: if I'm making chicken tacos, I will cut the chicken into thin strips; if I'm making grilled chicken, I'll cut each breast in half lengthwise to make two thinner pieces; etc. Once all of the meat has been cut up and stored in ziploc bags, I'll label the bag with the meal that it's intended for and the current date so I know when it was frozen (this will allow you to rotate stock so that nothing gets pushed to the back of the freezer for months until it is unrecognizable).

See my nicely labeled bags.

Now, I have to give Matt credit for giving me the idea for this next tip. I always make sure the meat is arranged in the bag so that it lays as flat as possible. You can see that my chicken breasts are in a single layer and take up the whole bag instead of all being in a heap at the bottom of the bag. The hamburger has been gently pushed flat, again so it takes up the whole bag instead of in a big lump. The same goes for the pork chops, although those are double layered. Just make it as flat as you can. There are two advantages of doing it this way: 1) it will take up less space in your freezer and your meats will be nice and organized, 2) the meat will defrost much quicker because of the increased surface area.

See my neatly stacked bags.

When I'm going to use a meat for dinner, I take it out of the freezer the night before and move it to the fridge. Because the bag is nice and flat, the meat is always defrosted by the next night.

Confession time. If my old self had seen a freezer like this, I would have rolled my eyes and thought, "oh aren't you so perfect... barf." But... as a working mama, I really had to simplify my life. And this really has helped significantly.