4 meals from a pack of mince…

After the popularity of my blog post the four meal chicken, I decided to follow it up with another cost saving tip, this time with a 500g pack of beef mince.

Ok, so buy your mince, take it home and split the pack in 2. Put half in the freezer for another time.

With the 250g you have got, make a pasta sauce. Use onion, whatever veg you like (I use courgette, pepper and mushrooms), garlic, a couple of tins of tomatoes, a handful of mixed herbs, a dash of worcestershire sauce and a teaspoon of mustard ( you can make yours with whichever herbs and spices you like!). Add a good handful of red lentils and simmer for a good while until the lentils are soft. If you cook them long enough you can’t really see the lentils, so veggie resistant hubbies need never know 😉

This pasta sauce will do twice for my family if I add enough veg/lentils. I serve half with spaghetti and freeze the other half.

The following week defrost the half pack of mince you haven’t used. Make it into the filling for cottage pie. This time I bulk with mushrooms and chopped carrot, onion, handful of herbs and beef stock from a cube (I thicken the gravy with a spoon of gravy granules if necessary). To bulk it out you can either add a can of baked beans or a good handful of porridge oats if you prefer. This works really well made in a slow cooker if you have one!

Make a cottage pie with half the filling. With the other half, you can either make another pie and freeze it, or just freeze the filling with the other half.

The following week, defrost the pasta sauce you haven’t used. You can either use it with spaghetti again or make it into a lasagne.

The fourth week, defrost the cottage pie filling. Either make another cottage pie or mince and dumplings or mince and tatties!

So, you’ve had spaghetti bolognese, cottage pie, lasagne and mince and dumplings, all from a pack of mince that has cost £3 ish, and a few quid more on veg!