ThayerRags

It’s kind of messy, but we think it’s worth it. We take a large amount of raw ground beef (10# tube when we can get it), put it in a very large boiling pot (commercial kitchen size) on our gas stove top, and add tap water to the pot (a couple of large drinking glasses full or about 4 cups). You’ll want to use the least amount of water that you can, because too much water makes more excess liquid to dispose of, while too little water will have the meat frying instead of boiling. You’ll have to experiment with the water amount.

Roll up your sleeves, and prepare to get messy. The water needs to be mixed into the meat by hand. Just get in there and mush it all up with your hands. Grabbing and squeezing is my method. You want to break the meat granules apart with the water. Squeeze and mix, and mix and squeeze until you have something looking somewhat like what I call a “slurry”. No big globs of meat remaining, and something like “liquid meat”.

Wash your hands and turn on the burner under your large pot, and set to high. Just prior to and as the mixture begins to boil, stir with a large spoon. Once it’s boiling, stir regularly to help keep the meat granules from adhering to one another. Continue to boil and stir until the meat all appears to be cooked (no red or pink coloring). Turn the heat off and immediately begin transferring the meat to colanders in drain bowls before it cools too much. Catch all of the liquid drain-off. Don’t let the liquid go down your sink drain, it could clog it up. Catch it in metal or glass containers, and after it has cooled, dispose of it in throw-away sealable containers (our little dog drinks as much as he can, but it’s more than he can handle, so we always dispose of some.).

It may be easiest to ladle the meat from the large pot to the colanders in the beginning, and then pour from the pot near the end. Use your large spoon to press the meat into the colanders to get as much liquid out of the meat as possible. You’ll want to drain the meat while it is still fairly hot, so that the grease flows well.

Leave the drained meat in the colanders or transfer it back into the large pot, whichever is easiest, and allow it to set and cool for some time. Once cooled to the touch, use a 1-cup measure to transfer the cooled meat into snack-sized ziplock baggies. For two people, one cup will work fine for some dishes, and for dishes needing more meat, simply use more bags. An added benefit of the small 1-cup amounts is that they thaw easily, either in the microwave oven or in a sauté pan.

Put the small 1-cup snackbags into a larger ziplock bag with the date that you boiled the meat written on the outer bag. The second bag will keep the batch together and also provide a second bag to help guard against freezer burn if it takes you a while to use it up.

CD in Oklahoma