frozen meat or fresh?

spike7451

Fresh meat for me apart from Sainsbury's frozen chicken portions (£3.89 for 2.5Kg bag) I reckon a bag of that will last you about 2 weeks.loads of drummers & the thighs are big enough for a Sunday roast,one per person)

evie451

I have one meatless meal with DH but the Teen is lethal for not eating veg, having to do hidden veg with an 18yr old is ridiculous!

He will turn his nose up at veg (particularly the evil mushroom) then go and make super noodles at 3am cos he is hungry.

anyway bought a bag of the mince and a bag of chicken fillets so i will see how that goes....

valk_scot

evie451 wrote: »

I have one meatless meal with DH but the Teen is lethal for not eating veg, having to do hidden veg with an 18yr old is ridiculous!

He will turn his nose up at veg (particularly the evil mushroom) then go and make super noodles at 3am cos he is hungry.

Your house, your rules. Ban him from the kitchen? I'd be b****ered if I'd put up with one of my kids turning up his nose at food I'd cooked for him when money is tight then going and helping himself. At the very least I'd be making him pay for his supernoodles myself.

BitterAndTwisted

Valk_scot you are a woman cut from the same cloth as me dear old Ma! No messing, eat what you're given and all of it. And night-time snacks are toast only and don't ruddy-well touch that cheese! As a result we are food-fad free. Apart from me going non-meat a long time after I left home: she never understood it and didn't approve either.

valk_scot

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

Valk_scot you are a woman cut from the same cloth as me dear old Ma! No messing, eat what you're given and all of it. And night-time snacks are toast only and don't ruddy-well touch that cheese! As a result we are food-fad free. Apart from me going non-meat a long time after I left home: she never understood it and didn't approve either.

I don't mind preferences and will work round them to a point but everyone has to take a turn at eating other people's favourites that they don't like so much. And they don't tell me what they want for dinner, they ask me what we're having or ask well in advance if they can have such and such sometime soon. I'm not an utter tyrant about it. But absolutely, no messing. Even my OH, who is the one that earns every penny I spend on food, comes and asks me what he can have out the fridge or cupboards if he wants a snack. And as a bonus none of them are that fussy, they all eat a wide range of foods, especially vegetables, and they're willing to try anything once.

valk_scot

Oh yes, and to get back on topic, I find the cheapest way to buy meat is in bulk, get the knife sharpened up and portion it for the freezer yourself in the exact portion sizes required. I'll buy three chickens at once from the butcher for example for £10-£12 ish, depending on size (not certified free range but from a local farm with good husbandry practices) and parcel them down into breasts, stir fry strips, diced thigh and scrappy pieces for curry etc, wings for BBQ sauce, drumsticks for baking and buckets of chicken stock from the carcases. Similarly I'll portion mince down into 400g packs (for four of us), four chops, four modest steaks, the correct amounts of pork or beef strips for stir fries, for eight portions of stew etc. If I get bargain meat in the supermarket whoopsies I'll do the same so there's no wastage. I find supermarket packs are invariably the wrong size for my family. Not that I can remember when I last bought supermarket meat at full price!

squeakysue

I always buy frozen beef mince, the lean ones though not the value ones. I can't stand the smell of fresh beef mince when it is cooking :eek:.
I buy frozen chicken fillets as well as fresh, handy to have on standby to defrost and chop for curry etc, they do shrink up and give out a LOT of water but taste ok. I tend to stock my freezer up with meat (bought fresh) from the reduced fridge, I love having a big freezer

malefic

Being a chappie who does like a lump of meat on his plate as often as possible we do it the 'cheapskate' way (according to some people). We hit the local supermarkets for their fresh meat when they mark it down and then whack it in the freezer.

Okay, so its still frozen when you come to cook but it was fresh when we bought it.

Been doing that for a couple of months now and can sort of guess when the local places start to mark down their goods (Morrisons is especially good for their price reductions!). We never take more than we know we will eat, but our freezer hasn't been lacking a good lump of something tasty for a while

Hopefully someone will get as lucky as we are (all big boy supermarkets are within a couple of miles of where we live so makes things a bit easier) and won't go without meat

spike7451

valk_scot wrote: »

Your house, your rules. Ban him from the kitchen? I'd be b****ered if I'd put up with one of my kids turning up his nose at food I'd cooked for him when money is tight then going and helping himself. At the very least I'd be making him pay for his supernoodles myself.

Even the school dinner ladies when I was growing up in the 70's wouldn't let you away from the table until you'd ate everything on your plate,usually with the line "The's starving children in Africa who'd be grateful for that meal" which,to a ten year old kid in 1977,meant b ugger r all to me!!

BitterAndTwisted

Meant naff-all to me as a kid as well but it was Chinese children at that time. We got to say which were our favourite meals but had no say in when they were served and how often. Dunno why because the ones we were most fond of were the cheapest, except chicken which we only ever saw at Christmas. As a nipper I would have been happy with stovies every other night.