Mashed Meat Marathon

For Christmas Doug’s mom and husband sent us a wonderful gift (particularly wonderful since we’ve been so busy) of assorted pre-prepared meals and meats from Omaha Steaks. He had not told them about his diet (so we were super lucky not to get fruit or sweets!) and the 65 pounds he’s lost, so they did not know that we have switched to grass-fed and that our poor, tiny little freezer took some serious organizing!

We realized from that is that one of the things we really miss from our old SAD diet is the ability to throw an Amy’s Enchilada or Healthy Choice Steamer into the microwave on a whim. A couple of the included meals went from freezer to microwave. They were pretty good, but we won’t try to do that at home as without flash freezing, we just don’t trust the delicate stuffed fish and such to store well.

What we did decide we wanted to get on hand and freeze is burgers! We’re not precooking them, but the package we got for Christmas had pre-formed burger patties.. dethawed quickly, threw them on the cast iron skillet and topped them with assorted veggies.

The downside of those burgers was they were nothing but plain old meat. We had to dress them up to give them flavor. So today along with our normal monthly order from US Wellness/Grassland, we got an additional 12 pounds of ground buffalo and we had our first official mashed meat marathon! I didn’t write these up as individual recipes as we didn’t follow these super closely. We threw in egg yolks, picked out 4 different flavor styles, and just added spices at will; 3 pounds each of Chipolte, Pepper, Southwestern & Horseradish.

We rolled them out on parchment paper, used a round storage container to cut out patties. Then we stuck them in the freezer until the outside edges were hard, and the used the quart size Ziploc Vacuum Freezer System bags and froze them in 4 burger sets (2 for each of us).

On top of the burgers we poached 6 pounds of chicken to put on salads (we always have salad and dressing on hand).

I much prefer to cook fresh as much as possible, but in December and January, once we went through the Omaha Steaks burgers and fish meals, we found ourselves wasting a ton of money ordering burgers (sans buns) and salads from delivery places in the area. Now we’ve got something fast that either of us can dethaw and cook on the fly.