Beef | Budget Friendly | Round Ups | What's For Dinner
ByJo-Anna RooneyPostedUpdated
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Ground beef is a great staple to have on hand for your meal planning! Affordable, versatile, and delicious, it’s one of my favourite easy go-to meats. Here are 15+ Easy and Delicious Recipes with Ground Beef for you to choose from!
Ground beef is a staple in our home, especially on busy weeknights. I know we are all feeling the pinch at the grocery store too, so recipes with delicious and affordable meat like ground beef are good to have on hand right now! Life is busy. Kids are busy. Work is busy. Just trying to stay on top of laundry, schedules, appointments, and school is tough enough, but then we have to plan and prepare meals on top of all that!
Ground Beef Snapshot
When it comes to getting tasty meals on the table FAST, ground beef has a lot going for it:
- QUICK: If it’s frozen raw, you can thaw and cook it in under an hour.And fresh ground beef cooks in under 20 minutes.
- MEAL PREP: Cooked ground beef can be prepared in advance and frozen for even faster meals!
- EASE: Ground beef checks all the boxes to get you through those hectic weekdays and stay on budget.
Meatballs
When I said ground beef was versatile, I wasn’t kidding! I’ve collected several completely different meatball recipes for you that are all truly amazing. The best part? You can make a big batch of meatballs and then freeze the extras. Then you can easily make any of these recipes later in almost no time at all!
Meatballs and Gravy Dinner
This Meatballs and Gravy Dinner is a quick and delicious meal that the whole family will love. Hearty and tender meatballs with rich gravy are perfect over mashed potatoes! Ready in less than one hour.
Italian Meatballs
If there is one meatball recipe that I could recommend and shout from the rooftops, it would be this one! These Italian Meatballs are soft, tender and so flavourful. Once baked, these meatballs then simmer in a simple tomato sauce. Serve them over your favourite pasta with fresh basil and grated Parmesan, or use them to make Easy Meatball Subs!
Easy Beef Stroganoff
This Easy Beef Stroganoff is all about the sauce. Creamy and delicious, it is perfect served over meatballs (or any beef or chicken really, but meatballs go great with our ground beef theme) with egg noodles and a green veggie!
Sweet and Sour Meatballs
This family favourite Sweet and Sour Meatballs recipe, always gets my kids running to the dinner table! They’re delicious served with rice and a green vegetable. These meatballs are simple to make and I haven’t met a person yet that doesn’t love them!
Soups with Ground Beef
Soup is a wonderful way to use ground beef. Served with bread, buns, or biscuits, this kind of meal goes a long way for very little money.
Hamburger Soup
This Hamburger Soup is a simple and delicious weeknight meal! Hearty and loaded with seasonal vegetables and ground beef, this big batch recipe is sure to please.
Cabbage Roll Soup
This Cabbage Roll Soup is a hearty, healthy and delicious dinner…and it tastes just like cabbage rolls! Ready in one hour.
Beef Burgers
I don’t think it would really be a roundup about ground beef if we didn’t include hamburgers! But if you’re looking for a regular old burger recipe, you are going to be sorely disappointed.Ground beef doesn’t have to be boring! Check out these ways to fire up your grill in a new and exciting way.
Jalapeño Bacon Cheddar Burgers
If you’re looking to take your classic burger up a notch, make these Jalapeño Bacon Cheddar Burgers! Just add chunks of cheddar cheese, chopped bacon and diced fresh Jalapeño peppers to your beef, mix, shape, and grill. So good.
There’s just something so delicious about a burger stuffed with cheese! And these Smoked Gruyere and Bacon Stuffed Burgers with Balsamic Caramelized Onions are fantastic. The smokiness of the Gruyere cheese, the bacon with the balsamic vinegar and onions…it’s amazing.
Old Classics
Sometimes, we just want the taste of our childhood, don’t we? These next two recipes are tried, tested, and true and will be appreciated by your entire family as the perfect comfort food they are.
Classic Meatloaf
This Classic Meatloaf drenched in a delicious sweet and sour sauce and served with mashed potatoes and a green vegetable makes a hearty and delicious weeknight supper. Like my daughter says, it’s really just a big yummy meatball! Mmmmm…she’s so right.
Slow Cooker / Crockpot Sloppy Joes
These Slow Cooker/Crockpot Sloppy Joes are such a fun family meal! Throw the sauce ingredients in the slow cooker in the morning and then serve it over soft buns with corn on the cob, a veggie, and dill pickles. SO good.
Recipes for Pre-Cooked Ground Beef
By doing meal prep ahead of time, you can save yourself a lot of stress. I like to set aside Sunday afternoon (when it’s possible!) to do some meal preparation for the week ahead. I’ll cook up a batch of ground beef, prepare some cooked shredded chicken, chop vegetables for lunches, make a batch of cookies, etc. This is all an attempt to make our week ahead easier on everyone. It is a lot of work all at once but the pay off is SO SO worth it.The kids have ingredients at their fingertips for lunches and I have meal prep taken care of, so when 4:00 pm rolls around, I’m ready to face supper!It’s such a relief. I love having batches of seasoned cooked ground beef in the freezer that I can take out and add to soups, stews, tacos and casseroles.So handy!
How to Prepare Cooked Ground Beef
I buy the big packages of lean ground beef (the ones with about 8 lbs of meat) and cook it with diced onion, minced garlic, salt, and pepper.That way when I need to use the cooked beef it’s already seasoned and ready to go.Once it’s cooked I store it in ziploc bags or plastic containers and freeze it, usually 1 1/2 to 2 lbs per container. Then it’s ready to go right into any recipe.
How to make a big batch of ground beef
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Cooked ground beef is a great staple to have on hand for your meal planning! Cook it ahead of time for easy meal assembly later.
- Author: Jo-Anna Rooney
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Category: Beef
Ingredients
UnitsScale
- 8 lbs ground beef
- 1 large onion
- 1 – 2 cloves garlic (minced)
- salt & fresh ground pepper
Instructions
- To a large skillet on medium-high heat, add the ground beef, onions, garlic and salt & pepper.
- As the beef cooks, use a spoon to break up the meat so it cooks evenly.
- Cook until the ground beef is no longer pink.
- Drain the fat.
- Now you can portion the meat into 1 – 2 lb portions and use accordingly.
Now that you’ve got all of this cooked ground beef, what are you to do with it? Here are some of our family’s favourite recipes:
Homemade Spaghetti Sauce
This Homemade Spaghetti Sauce recipe is simple and results in a big batch of sauce that makes enough for two meals (love that!).It’s great either served over spaghetti or in lasagna recipes. So good and so practical!
Classic Lasagna
This is a delicious recipe for Classic Lasagna!Made with layers of rich tomato sauce, ground beef, noodles, ricotta cheese and loads of shredded mozzarella and parmesan, everyone is sure to love it.
Easy Ravioli Lasagna
This Easy Ravioli Lasagna is just what it says…easy.Take a few simple shortcuts with the ingredients, and you can have this hearty and healthy dinner on your table in just over an hour.
Pizza Pasta Bake
This Pizza Pasta Bake is made with rich layers of ground beef, pepperoni, mushrooms, tomato sauce and noodles, all topped off with melted cheese and more pepperoni. Ready in 40 minutes!
Best Beef Chili
This Best Beef Chili is one of our family’s favourite meals! It’s easy to make, filling, delicious and so versatile! Serve it with homemade cornbread or rice to make it a complete meal.
30 Minute Korean Beef
This 30 Minute Korean Beef is ready and on your table in 30 minutes or less! Sweet, spicy and delicious served over steamed rice.
Loaded Nachos
These Loaded Nachos are guaranteed to be a hit! They are made with tortilla chips, seasoned ground beef (which you already had cooked and ready to go!), cheese, peppers, black beans, guacamole and more! Use my Homemade Taco Seasoning recipe to make them extra delicious.
Mexican Bowl Recipe with Cilantro Lime Dressing
This Mexican Bowl Recipe with Cilantro Lime Dressing is a fun, delicious and healthy dinner idea! Serve everything buffet style so everyone can create their own bowl.
Taco Night Menu
Taco night is such a fun dinner! Serve up all your favourite taco ingredients (including taco seasoned ground beef) buffet style, so everyone can get what they want and create a custom meal that’s just for them.
There you go! So many recipes! Whether you were looking for ideas for fresh ground beef or pre-cooked and frozen ahead of time, I hope you found something here to make the week ahead easier for you.If you decide to try any of these recipes I’d love to know @aprettylife. Happy cooking!
Have a delicious day!
