Planning - Protein

     There's no denying that the most expensive part of your food budget will be your proteins.  It doesn't matter if your family is vegetarian, white meat only, kosher, halal, or has no dietary restrictions, protein is freakin expensive.  The problem is that none of us can survive without protein.  You have to have some form of it to make sure your muscles function properly and can heal from injuries.
     The issue with protein is that small amounts aren't usually on sale.  In fact, the larger the amount, the less it tends to be per pound.  You'll notice, if you look, that a pound of 80/20 hamburger might be $3.83 a pound, but 5 lbs might be $15 even and 10 lbs are $25.  That's a good amount of savings, but then you wonder if you'll use all of it because it might go bad.  The more you buy, the more you save, but the more you buy, the more potential you have for waste.
      So, how do we meet our budget and get all the protein we'll need at the same time?  The same way we get anything else within our budget.  We plan exactly what we want and need.  I've heard of some techniques that will help you in this endeavor.  I hope they help:
1.  Buy by the week
      If you have a very small freezer, you're going to have to shop week-to-week.  That means, when you make your shopping list, you'll figure out exactly how much meat you'll need for the week's food and buy as close to that amount as possible.  There are exceptions to this rule like when your local store has a sale on chicken breasts for 97¢ a pound, but you have to really consider the amount of room you have to freeze them.  I suggest buying week-to-week for most people who are just starting out in the cooking realm as well as those with small freezer.  If you keep pork chops in your fridge for more than a week at a time, they'll start to go green, and that's gross.
2.  Buy for the month
     The typical fridge/freezer combo that comes in most low-income rentals is a top-freezer like this:

     Once you get all the hot pockets and TV dinners out of that freezer, it's got more than enough room to hold a month's worth of meat in it, easily.  Heck, you can probably hold two months of meat, if you don't have bags of beef broth stuffed in there.  But we all have neat things packed into our freezer because they were on sale.  Ergo, you can buy several pounds of every type of protein you use and freeze it.  When I buy chicken for the month, I consider that we eat about a pound a meal at least twice a week.  That's 8 to 10 pounds.  The same goes for our beef and pork purchases.  However, you have to decide what you're going to feed your family.  If you don't eat certain types of protein, you have to choose enough to feed your family for the month.  The thing about this method is that you can use sales to your advantage to get the most for your money.  If you can get 10 lbs of chicken for $10 it's better than 5 lbs for  $15, so get it.  When you get home, you'll need to freeze them, but if you wait until after method 3, I'm going to go over how to do that.
3.  Buy in bulk
     I really don't suggest this unless you have an excess of money for some reason.  For example, you got a back payment on your benefits or you put some of your tax refund to do this three or four times during the year.  Even if you have that situation, don't buy in bulk unless you have a great deal going.  I'm going to go over sale shopping next week, so just be patient on that one.
     Buying in bulk is kind of the advanced meal planner's game.  The one you play after you've gotten really good at knowing how much your family eats each week, what you need, and what it costs you on average.  Seriously, you'll probably need to consistently plan your meals for at least six months before you get the hang of this.  Then you can start sale shopping for the best deals you can find and buying three or four months of what's on sale at a time.  I can't tell you what a good deal is for your area, but I'm sure, after looking around for a while, you'll be able to tell.
     Bulk buying will only work for you if you have a freezer solely for keeping your stock of meat in it.  Whether that's an upright freezer or a deep freeze, you have to have a dedicated freezer.  The top-freezer won't work, the french door freezer is closer, but it still won't work.  Find a freezer on Craigslist before you consider bulk buying.

     Okay, so at this point, you're probably ready to buy for a month or more at a time, but the question might be "how do I store it?"  If you've ever taken the Styrofoam packaging from the meat section of your grocery store and tossed it in your freezer, you've probably dealt with the result that requires a hammer, a chainsaw, and tears.  Don't freeze things in the container they came in.  You always end up trying to cook the spongy thing that's meant to soak up the blood of the meat or the Styrofoam itself.  If you've never done this, I'll ruin surprise - that stuff does not taste good.
     There are two options that are dependent on how much you bought and how much your family uses at a time.  Note:  These are only good if you bought them fresh rather than frozen.  If you bought frozen, just toss them in the freezer the way you bought them.  There's nothing wrong with pre-frozen, but I'm going to talk about that later.
     The first option you have is to freeze it all at once.  To do this, you need a lot of space to start out with.  Let's use chicken breasts as an example because it's rare that someone who eats meat doesn't eat chicken.  If you just bought 20 pounds of chicken breasts, take them home and open up the packaging in which they came.  Take them, one at a time, and put them in a gallon, zippered storage bag that says "freezer" on the label.  Put them in individually so that you're sure you have one layer and one layer only.  Lay your gallon bag on a cookie sheet (that's important) and put your chicken breasts down at the bottom.  Spread them out so that they're touching, but not smooshed (that's a technical term) together.  Once your bag has a full level, press all the air out of the bag and zip it closed.  Put your cookie sheet in the freezer, making sure to keep it level.  If you have more meat to freeze, repeat the process and put the second cookie sheet on top of the first bag to freeze.  Leave it there until you can knock on the chicken and they're hard.  Then, you take them off their cookie sheet and put them in the freezer without it.  If you've done it correctly, they'll have formed their own solid base that will allow them to rest evenly and levelly in your freezer.  This is the exact same process you should use for pork chops and beef cutlets.  However, if you are freezing ground beef or any other kind of ground meat, divide it into 1 lb portions to freeze in blocks that are, again barely touching in the bag.
     If you're freezing all your protein at once, you make sure they're barely touching so that you can break out portions a little at a time.  That's why you separate your ground meats into one pound blocks.  That way, you can pull one or two pounds out to make dinner and leave the rest in the bag.
     Your second option, of course, is to freeze your meat in single portion sizes.  This is especially useful if you know your family and what you usually use.  For example, a family of four usually uses 2 chicken breasts per meal.  If you want to freeze in single portions, you'll need to choose how to do so.  I'm a fan of quart-sized, zippered freezer bags.  That's because, if I ever really need to, I can always wash a zippered bag and put something else in it.  However, you can also use plastic wrap, if you wrap it really, really tightly.  I will say that if you aren't very good with plastic wrap, use the zipper bags.  They're easy to get your food in without extra air that will cause freezer burn.  So, freezing single portions isn't that much different from freezing full amounts, with one exception - you're making smaller bag.  So, again with the chicken breasts, take two chicken breasts and push them into your zipper bag.  The fit will be tight, but as long as you get it closed, it won't matter.  Put each of the bags on the cookie sheet and slide it in the freezer once it's full.  Again, if you have more than a cookie sheet's worth, put the second sheet on top of the first and let them all freeze at once.
     The benefit of this method is that, once you know what you're making for dinner (yay for that meal planning!), you can take your portion out of the freezer before you leave for work in the morning.  Put it in your refrigerator and walk out the door.  You then have defrosted meat when you get home, and you can get right to it.
     The internet informs me that you can freeze tofu.  I don't eat soy products, so I wouldn't know the first thing about it.  If you're interested in writing an article about how to properly freeze tofu, please email it to fairefaerie.gourmet@blogger.com If it's good, I will totally post it and give you credit!

     Now for a little bit of quality control.  Before you put any of your protein into freezer bags, label them with a permanent marker as to what type of meat, what type of cut, and on what date you're freezing them.  Do this because, after 2 months, frozen chicken and frozen pork start to look a lot a like.  Besides, if you don't label them, you might not be able to know the difference between chicken breasts and chicken thighs that you have sitting next to each other.  You put the date on it so that, when the same meat goes on sale in two months, you know to use the stuff you froze in July before the stuff from September.  You do that so that you don't run into the dreaded freezer burn that comes from having too much air in contact with your food for too long.  That's why we press all the air out before we freeze it!

What do you freeze the most of?  Questions?  Comments?  Tweet to @cookingcheap