Save Money by Increasing Your Supply of Minced Meat

It’s not your imagination: buying food has become expensive. While we are collectively recovering from the trauma of the 2023 Great Egg Price Shock , overall food prices continue to rise – nearly 6% year-over-year. And while everything is more expensive than it used to be, one common ingredient that can get really expensive is meat. Due to many different factors , this common protein source is likely to remain expensive for the foreseeable future .

Such prices lead to desperate thoughts, such as cutting your budget elsewhere, taking questionable loans on the fly , or eating food that has expired . But there’s a better way to deal with higher meat costs: stretch it out. Whether we’re talking ground beef, chicken, or turkey, adding non-meat products to meat can increase shelf life, reduce food costs, without sacrificing anything in terms of taste, nutrition, or enjoyment.

Fillers

The key strategy here is to add fillers to the meat to increase its volume while complementing the flavor and texture. If you choose your ingredients thoughtfully, you can generally increase your “stock” by about half , though this can be adjusted to suit your own taste (and budget). There are four main options for meat fillers:

• Cereals: Rolled oats and rolled oats, breadcrumbs, barley wheat, bulgur wheat (actually often used as a vegetarian substitute for ground beef), quinoa, rice, or couscous are great fillers for minced meat. There is also textured vegetable protein (TVP), which is made from soy flour. One of the peculiarities of using TVP is that it takes on the taste of the meat itself, mixing invisibly with the dish.
• Vegetables: Unsurprisingly chopped or pureed vegetables are natural fillers for meat, as are mushrooms. Carrots, peppers, onions, potatoes, cabbage – almost any vegetable will do.
• Legumes: Lentils and beans of any variety work well as fillers. For example, black beans pair very well with hamburgers.
• Eggs: Adding an egg to a stretched meat mixture can help bind the meat and fillers together so the mixture doesn’t turn into a crumbly mass. Whether this will positively affect your grocery budget, of course, depends on the current price of eggs.

Keep in mind that there is no rule that you can only use one filling ingredient – mixing and using a combination will add flavor and variety to your kitchen.

Adviсe

To increase the budgetary benefit, dig through your pantry and use what you have on hand – if you have a bag of rice, don’t spend more money on something else, just use it. You can even use dry cereal in a pinch. Two important things to keep in mind are

• Preparation: You need to prepare the fillers before adding them to the meat, and you need to grate or chop everything very finely (or purée the filler mixture ideally) so that it mixes with the minced meat. Rice and grains must be cooked and dried before being added.
• Proportion: You’re stretching your meat without necessarily replacing it (although there’s nothing wrong with vegetarian or vegan food!), so don’t go overboard with fillers. A good rule of thumb here is one cup of filler and one (optional) egg per pound of meat – although if you’re following a specific recipe and calls for a different proportion, that’s fine.

Meat stretching to save money has a long and storied history in this country. With proper preparation, the dish turns out to be just as tasty, only cheaper.