Frugal Feeds | Meat Shopping Guide

Buying in bulk works for most of the things that you need that aren't fresh. Now lets talk about the fresh meat ingredients.

Beef and Pork: If you eat meat you will find that it is the most expensive ingredient you buy on a regular basis. But there are some things you can do to cut down on your meat costs. First of all, if you are eating whole grains, beans, peas, corn, eggs and dairy then you don't have to eat meat to get your proteins. That means that you can use meat for flavor instead of for nutrition. If you think of meat as a flavoring aid then you can significantly cut down the amount of meat you buy. In most dishes 1/4 cup, or 1/4 pound of meat is enough for a meal that makes four servings.

Let's do some math here. I am going to use the spaghetti meal as an example because the spaghetti meal is one of the least expensive meals that the family eats regularly. If we can reduce the costs on this meal then we can gain even higher savings on the meals that cost more.

If you normally use 1 pound of ground beef for a spaghetti recipe it might cost you $1.69/# for super lean ground beef in a 4# bulk package. That would be $6.76 a month, or $81.12 a year for just one spaghetti meal a week.

One pound of bulk super lean ground beef is 1/4 cup (4 servings) at .42 each, or 1.69 per meal.
One pound of store brand dry Parmesan cheese is 1 Tablespoon (90 servings) at .18 each, or .72 per meal.
One pound of store brand fresh grated cheese is 2 teaspoons (88 servings) at .14 each, or .56 per meal.
One pound of frozen green peas is 1/2 cup (6.6 servings) at .12 each, or .48 per meal.

So, if you reduce your meat to 1/4 cup for four servings and add 8 teaspoons Parmesan and 2 cups of peas you will save .23/ meal, have a wider variety and by the end of the year you will save $11.96 on this meal alone. If you were to make these changes to all three of your daily meals, over the course of the year you would save $251.16. Remember though that this is one of your least expensive meals that you can save on. For your more expensive meals the savings will be higher.

Not every meal will be great if you replace meat with cheese and peas, so lets look at ways to extend the meat, and alternatives to the meat.

Using bread crumbs to replace a portion of meat called for in the recipe. See the Frugal Feeds blog about that here: 15 Ways With Bread Crumbs

Using beans or peas to replace a portion of meat called for in the recipe.

Using low fat cheeses to replace up to half of the meat.

Using textured vegetable protein.

Using savory vegetables, like sauteed onions, celery, mushrooms, garlic, potatoes, carrots, etc...

Using seasoned tofu or tempeh.

Using eggs.

Let's look at a few other dishes.

Bacon is a great flavor booster. Think of bacon not as the side dish to an egg breakfast but rather a seasoning, like you think of salt and pepper. When you fry up your bacon make it extra crisp. Place it between paper towels and pat it completely dry of oil. Then crumble it up into tiny pieces. Place it into a covered canning jar in the refrigerator. Every time you need to pump up the flavor of a dish, sprinkle a Tablespoon of bacon onto it. Works for pasta dishes, egg dishes, bean dishes, vegetable dishes, salads and casseroles. At around $2.50/# it is more expensive per pound than ground beef but you only need a little bit to make the flavor really come through. One pound of bacon will give you about a cup of bacon bits. (It depends on how fatty that bacon was because the fattier it was, the more you will cook off from it and drain away). So, if you have one cup of bacon bits, you will have 16 Tablespoons and can flavor 16 dishes with it. The cost will be around .15 per meal, or about 10% of what the ground beef costs.

Sausage is also great but not quite as versatile. While bacon goes with almost everything (there are even many desserts and chocolates out there that feature bacon) sausage needs to be considered more thoroughly. There are tons of sausage types out there and each has its special qualities. Breakfast sausage is a good basic sausage for a lot of dishes but remember that it has sage in it that can be the wrong flavor for some dishes. Kielbasa's, German sausages, Italian sausages, they all taste remarkably different so use them where you know the flavor will work before experimenting. To use sausage, slice it lengthwise and then cut it into small cubes or half moons. You want to cut it down as much as possible so that you can cook off the fat. The more surface area that you saute the more flavor that sausage will impart as well. Once it is fully cooked, drain it in a colander lined with paper towels. Put another few paper towels on a plate and top with the drained sausage. Using another bunch of paper towels, pat the sausage dry. Reserve 1/4 cup of the sausage for your recipe and place the remainder of the sausage into small freezer bags, each bag holding 1/4 cup. Label the bags with the sausage type and the date. Use it all up within three months.

Using Textured Vegetable Protein (textured soy flour nuggets) can be effective but if you use too much in the dish it will over power the flavor of the meat. I recommend no more than 1/4 of the meat in the recipe be replaced by TVP. I use low sodium beef broth to reconstitute it and then cook it with the rest of the ground meat and no one can ever tell that it is in there. TVP is exceptionally inexpensive. You can get it for as little as .11 cents per quarter cup and a quarter cup is all you need to replace 1/4 of the ground meat in a dish. If you figure that 1/4 cup of ground beef is .40 cents, you can see how replacing it with the TVP will give you a lot of savings in the long run.

Some meat cuts to look for:

Ground beef, extra lean
Flat Iron Steaks--incredibly flavorful, very inexpensive, makes small delicious steaks that cook up quickly.
Chuck eye steaks--very flavorful, inexpensive, diced up it goes with a lot of dishes
7 bone roast--flavorful and has a great many uses, but you will have to work around the bones
Pork shoulder--very flavorful, but can be fatty, so use for flavoring a dish in that case. Otherwise cook it on a low heat for a long time in a braise and use it shredded into dishes.
Skirt steak--very flavorful for when you need a little meat to make a big impact. It is often used for fajitas for that reason, but you can use it anywhere that sliced steak would work.
Tri-tip--When you need a steak to be a steak but a little flat iron steak won't do. Very flavorful when cooked slowly.

So, lets recap. Use your meat as a flavoring aid rather than the major component of a meal. Buy it in bulk if you can cut it down to 1/4 cup or 1/4 pound servings and freeze the remaining servings. Remember that you will have to defrost the meat in the refrigerator at least one day before using. Look for the low cost meats listed above. Try using meat extenders.

Frugal Feeds | Shopping Guide

Shopping is one of the most complicated parts of frugal living. Here we will discuss techniques for you to employ that will give you the best opportunity to save money while buying fresh, wholesome food.

First, you want to become acquainted with your store's bulk section. Bulk sections have bins that carry pasta, rice, beans, baking items, cereal, dry fruit, snack foods, dry mixes and nuts. They often have large bottles of bulk spice too. The bins, containers or bottles will have a label telling you how much that item costs per pound or ounce.

The price can look really low, like .10/ounce or really high like $21.00/ ounce. The prices vary so extremely for two reasons. One is that the items have different weights per volume and the other is that some items are hard to get and more people want them than they can sell to. The weight of an item makes a big difference though. When you buy a cup of raisins it is going to weigh a lot more than a cup of potato flakes.

When you choose the bulk item you want you can put as much or as little of that item into the bag as you need. By doing this you only buy the amount that you wish to use. If your store has customers that buy in bulk regularly you will be getting your goods cheaper and fresher than the boxed items in the aisles. Where I live most of the bulk bins are filled with Bob's Red Mill products. Buying Bob's Red Mill in the bags on the shelves generally costs 25% more per ounce than it does in the bulk bin. Check it out yourself by picking an item in the bulk section and note its price per ounce. Then go to the aisle section where you normally buy your items and look at the tag on the shelf under the product. Most stores list, in small print, on the shelf price tags how much an item costs per ounce. If it lists it per pound, just divide by sixteen and you will have your ounce price (or alternately multiply the bulk price by sixteen to get the price per pound). Exceptions to this are bulk items like Oatmeal that are subsidized by the government and generally cost the same for most of the manufacturers whether they are bulk or aisle items, unless you are buying organic.

After looking at the prices per ounce you decide to buy the bulk items. How do you do it? The way bulk sections work is that you pick up a plastic bag from the bulk area and a blank twist tie tag. On the item container will be a bulk bin number. Usually the number is four digits long but organic bulk items are usually five digits long. Write the item number on the blank twist tie tag and fill your empty bag with as much of the product as you need. Some bins have tongs, some have scoops and some have levers that you pull down to release the contents into your bag, be sure the bag is held tight to the opening of the lever type of bin. Close the bag and tie with the twist tie tag. The cashier will type the twist tie tag item number into the register and be able to ring up your purchase that way. There will be scales in the bulk area that you can use to weigh how much of an item you have put into the bag.

Many store have liquid bulk items too. In that case there will be empty jugs, jars or bottles in the bulk area. Write the bulk item number on a blank twist tie tag and twist the tag to the handle or neck of the jug, bottle or jar. Nutbutter machines also are found in the bulk sections. For these there are tubs that you can fill with as much as you want. Usually you will also see a special black waxy pencil attached to the machine. You are to write the bulk item number for the nut butter on the lid of the tub in that case. At home, using a funnel, pour your bulk items into jelly and canning jars. The jelly jars are great for spices and the wide mouth canning jars are great for everything else. Put the lids on the jars and attach a label. Use sticky dots, like the ones they use to price items at a garage sale, to note the day you bought the bulk items--that way if you don't use something up super quick then you will know that you need to replace it within three months of buying it.

Not everything is sold in the bulk section so you will want to go to the canned food aisle and canned broth aisle next. You will need tomato sauce for a great many of your dishes so buying four 15 ounce cans of tomato sauce is a good start. Canned broth is more expensive than homemade, and doesn't taste as good, but not everyone can make a gallon of broth from scratch each week. Most dishes call for broth so having a gallon of broth, or four quarts of broth, is a good start. Buy all of these with Low Sodium labels. If you find that a recipe needs more salt you can always add it yourself, but if the manufacturer uses more salt than you need you can't take it away. Plus several dishes require that you boil the broth until it is evaporated by half of the original amount for a richer flavor, but if it already is salted then the half evaporated broth will be too salty. (Canned tomatoes can have far too much sodium in them so by getting low sodium tomato products you give yourself the control over how much sodium your family is getting).

After hitting the dry and canned goods aisles you will want to head over to produce. Pick your produce, wrap with a paper towel if the produce is damp, and place in a plastic bag. Produce is usually sold by the pound. There will be scales in the produce area that you can use to weigh how much of each item you are getting. I will do a post later that will tell you what to look for in each type of fruit and vegetable for freshness.

The remainder of your shopping should be meat next, then milk, eggs, dairy, then frozen foods.

So how do you know how much to buy and what?
At the beginning of each month you will want to go through your cabinets, pantry, refrigerator and freezer. Look at all of the ingredients that you have. Write down how much you have left of items that you use regularly. Then write down the items that you have some of, but not alot of. Next you will need to write down the things that you don't have in your cabinets or pantry that you use constantly throughout the month. Compare the lists and figure out what you are going to need for the month, broken down by each week.Write up something like this:

Here is a typical American family of four example:

Week One, 7 days, 21 meals, 84 servings

Breakfast--quick breads, cereal
Lunch--Soup and salad
Dinner--pasta 2x, Mexican 1x, Asian 2x, Roasted Meat 1x, Vegetarian 1x

You want to think through each meal. What does that meal include? How much of an ingredient do we need to buy without buying extra? Here is an example:

We eat a pasta dish twice a week. For a family of four we need 1# of pasta for each of those meals. 1# of pasta multiplied by two servings per week multiplied by four weeks is 8 pounds of pasta, or 128 ounces a month. Half of that pasta needs to be medium sized pasta shapes for the casseroles.

At least one dish per week is sauced with a tomato sauce so I use four cans of tomato sauce a month. I will need four 15 ounce cans of Muir Glen No Salt Added Tomato Sauce.

To season the tomato sauce I need to get 1 Tablespoon of Italian seasoning a week, or 4 Tablespoons=1/4 cup so I will need 1/4 cup of Italian seasoning for the month.

I use half of a pound of meat in the pasta so I will need to add 1 pound of meat for two pasta dishes.
I can only buy 1 pound of fresh ground beef if those pasta days are both going to occur within four days of when I buy the meat. But buying the meat in one pound packages is not the way the stores sell at the best price. You can freeze ground beef very nicely so if you buy the 4 pound bulk pack of ground beef, just divide it into 4 pieces and then divide each of the 4 pieces in half. Put each of the pieces into individual quart freezer bags. Put on the label that it is ground beef, what the date is and that it is half of a pound in weight. Put all but one of them into the freezer and put one of them into the refrigerator. The hard part about storing your meat in the freezer is that you will have to pull out the 1/2 pound meat from the freezer and put it into the refrigerator one day ahead of making each recipe all month, or know how to defrost it properly in the microwave.

We like cheese on our pasta so I need to add 1/4 cup cheese for each serving. 4 servings per meal multiplied by four pasta meals means I need 4 cups of Parmesan cheese for four pasta dishes in one month. If I buy the dried out cheese that is sold on the shelves, I can buy all of that Parmesan at the beginning of the month. But, if I use the fresh cheese in the refrigerated section I need to buy no more than two weeks worth or it can start going stale or moldy.

One of our pasta dishes each week is a casserole. The casserole is made up of leftovers and pasta. I need a medium sized pasta to mix into the casserole. Rotini, Ziti, Fusilli, Egg Noodles, etc.

The casserole dish needs a sauce. I will need broth, flour and fat for the sauce. 2 cups of broth per week. 2 Tablespoons of flour per week. 1 Tablespoon of fat per week. If I want to add herbs and seasonings I will need at least a Tablespoon of those each week. So, since all of these things can stay good for a month in the cabinet I will need:

2 quarts of broth
1/2 cup of whole grain flour
1/4 cup of oil
1/4 cup of dried herbs

So, that covers two meals per week. Consider what your meals will be for the week, and what you can expect it to be for the month. Buy in bulk all of the items that you know that you will use. Then, if it is on sale, buy a months worth of the canned items you know that you will use. If it isn't on sale just buy what you need for that week. Maybe later in the month it will go on sale and you can buy what you need for the rest of the month. Buy the produce that you will use for no more than four days. If you buy a weeks worth of produce some of that produce is going to spoil and get tossed out. Buy the milk, eggs and dairy that you will use for a week. Buy the fresh meat that you will use for the next two days. Buy the frozen foods you will use for the next month. Go to the store every two days for fresh produce and meat. Your family will be eating fresher food and you will be able to specifically buy items that work with what you have for leftovers and what is in your pantry. Plus you will see the items that go on special and stock up as needed.

Here is the shopping list for one month's worth of pasta meals:

8 pounds pasta (128 ounces), half of it in medium sized shapes, Rotini, Ziti, Fusilli, Egg Noodles
4 fifteen ounce cans Muir Glen No Salt Added Tomato Sauce
1/4 cup Italian seasoning
4 pounds of ground beef, divided into eighths, 7/8 placed in freezer bags in the freezer
4 cups Parmesan cheese, or two cups of fresh Parmesan cheese, refrigerated
2 Quarts low sodium broth
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup oil or fat (olive oil, nut butter, corn oil, butter)
1/4 cup dried herbs


Sometimes though you can't find what you need at your local store and will want to shop online. In that case, here are some resources for getting the specialty foods at frugal prices:

Auntie Andies Grocery and Kitchen Wares: www.frugalfeeds.com
For Thai food go to http://www.importfood.com/
For organic dry goods go to http://www.bobsredmill.com/
For dry beans go to http://www.purcellmountainfarms.com/
For just about all of your organic and unique pantry needs go to http://www.barryfarm.com/
For dry pastas go to http://www.hodgsonmill.com/
For low sodium tomato products go to http://muirglen.elsstore.com/

For low sodium broths go to www.pacificfoods.com/where-to-buy/buy-our-foods-online

That's all for this time.