Save Money: Stretch Your Meat

Ground meat is popular for its versatility, but it can be pricey. Meat is almost always the most expensive component in a meal. You can cut the quantity of meat in a recipe by adding cheap fillers that provide bulk with sacrificing flavor and texture.

There are many options to choose from:

Beans
Rice
Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP)
minced vegetables
oats

The fillers add nutrients and take on the taste of the spices and sauces you mix in.

My filler of choice this week is lentils. I cook them up in a bit of broth.

This appetizing log is a 1lb chub of lean ground turkey.

To further stretch my meat dollar, I grind up a chicken breast to add to my ground meat mixture. I find the breast and 90/10 turkey combined is a nice balance. If you have mega big chicken breasts like me, you may need to chop into slightly smaller, manageable pieces.

A food processor will make quick work of the chicken.

Some processing machines offer different grind settings. My processor turns the meat into a kind of thick paste. Not to worry; it’ll cook up fine.

Turkey, chicken and lentils all get smooshed up together with spices and worcestershire sauce.

…and into the pan! If you’re used to ground beef, the texture of ground poultry might be a little off-putting. Keep chopping and pushing the mixture around in the hot pan with a spatula and you’ll find it starts to take on a more familiar shape as it cooks.

Done! Your thrifty ground meat can be used for all kinds of things:

tacos
spaghetti
casseroles
sloppy joes (or “sloppy toms”, in this case)
chili
any recipe that calls for ground beef

Meat, stretched. Try it :)

Thanks for reading!