14 quick meals you can make from meat sauce

It’s happy times here in the Savings Room and whipping up a batch of meat sauce is a surefire way to save money. Meat is getting pretty expensive and as a result us mums have had to turn to good old-fashioned common sense to reduce our grocery bills. Okay, I have been a menu planning nutter in my time and wrote an entire 336-page book on the topic! So my dedication to eating my way to more money is strong.

Today I’m delivering some quick meal ideas you can make out of a big batch of meat sauce. Simply whip get cooking over the weekend (Sunday afternoon is good) and put some meals in your freezer ‘bank’.

Here’s what to do

Make up a huge batch of meat sauce and divide into 15 containers. Add four cans of lentils (drained and rinsed). People never notice lentils in meat sauce but this is a great way to stretch out the meat without anyone noticing.

Now you will have in your freezer enough meat sauce to create two budget beef mince dinners each week. This list will last you approximately seven weeks. I suggest buying too large 2kg packs of mince and stretching out the mince as suggested above.

Simply add onion and garlic to a pan and then the mince. Brown. Add flavour (i.e stock) and cook through. Cool, divide up and freeze.

He’s my list of 15 meals you can make out of the beef mince you’ve popped in the freezer

1. Cheap pizzas
2. Good ole’ fashioned spaghetti bolognese
3. Beef chow mein
4. Quick beef curry
5. Cheats lasagna
6. Baked potatoes
7. Cottage pie
8. Sloppy Joes
9. Beef gratin
10. Beef enchiladas
11. Nachos
12. Chili con carne
13. Tacos
14. Beef stew

If you love cooking make-ahead dinners, consider investing in my book Freezer Meals. You can make 28 dinners for the small price of $140 AUD. If you don’t want the headache of working all out, watch my video at the link above and I’ll show you how to save thousands each year on groceries.