$5.29. $5.79. $5.99. $6.19. That's a pound of 80/20 ground beef at our Aldi, going by my receipts from last April, last September, this January and the first Monday of this month. I stood at the meat case that morning with Rosie in the cart and looked at the $6.19 long enough that she started reading the stickers to me, which at two and three-quarters means announcing "six" at everything.
We go through about two pounds of ground beef a week, between hamburger steaks, spaghetti sauce, taco meat, Frito pie and chili. At $6.19 that's around $645 a year. So two weeks later, when Kroger's weekly ad had 80/20 family packs at $5.29 a pound, I bought twenty pounds and spent a Saturday afternoon putting it away properly.
The math, including the part I don't love
- 20 pounds at Kroger's sale price of $5.29: $105.80
- The same 20 pounds at Aldi's $6.19: $123.80
- Saved: $18.00
That's the headline number. The real one is a little smaller. I vacuum sealed twelve bags at about 30 cents each and used six quart zip bags at about 13 cents, so $4.38 went to packaging. Net savings: about $13.62. It's not life-changing money, but it's a real dinner's worth, and it only counts if every pound gets eaten before it turns gray and freezer-burned. That's where the sealer comes in.
Back in January, at the seven-week check-in on our vacuum sealer, I wrote that it would earn back its $89 a lot faster if ground beef prices ever gave me a reason to buy bigger batches. They gave me a reason. I also said in March that I was done buying regular-price meat at Kroger. A sale price is a different story, and this is the kind of sale I had in mind.
Setting up the station
Twenty pounds of raw beef on a kitchen island is a lot, so I set up before the first package came out of the fridge:
- Room cleared on one side of the chest freezer, with two half-sheet pans already in there getting cold
- The kitchen scale, a box of quart zip bags, the sealer and a roll of bags
- Blue painter's tape and a marker for labels
- Disposable gloves, and a sink of hot soapy water for the end
I worked in two rounds of ten pounds so half the beef stayed in the fridge while I portioned the other half. Each pound went onto the scale (anything between 15 and 17 ounces counts), into a bag, and got pressed flat with my palms to about half an inch thick. Then I pressed a crease across the middle with the side of a chopstick, both ways, so I can snap off a quarter pound when a recipe only needs a little. Flat bags lie on the cold sheet pans until they're frozen solid, then stand up in a bin in the chest freezer like records in a crate.
Four of the twenty pounds became twelve burger patties, a third of a pound each, stacked with parchment between them, because Matt has requested burgers for Memorial Day and I would like to never shape patties in the heat of a holiday afternoon again.
Here's where it all went:
- 10 one-pound flat bags, vacuum sealed, for July and August
- 2 sealed bags of patties, six to a bag, for Memorial Day and one Saturday in June
- 6 one-pound flat bags in zip bags, for the next month of dinners
The whole thing took 55 minutes, including bleaching the counters, which is the step I don't skip.
Keeping it safe, and the mistake
I go by the USDA's freezer guidance: ground beef kept frozen at 0 degrees stays safe indefinitely, but it's best within about four months, and it thaws in the fridge or in cold water, never on the counter. The thermometer in our chest freezer reads right around zero. My plan is to use the sealed bags by the end of September. Read the guidance for yourself rather than taking a blog's word for it, mine included.
My mistake was the very first bag. I sealed it before I'd pressed it flat, so the sealer pulled the plastic tight around a lumpy one-pound ball. It froze into a brick and took almost two days to thaw in the fridge, and that's how I learned the order: weigh, bag, flatten, then seal. Every bag after it came out flat and even. The brick is on the plan for chili, which doesn't care what shape the meat started in.
Will I do it again?
When the price is right and the freezer has room, yes. I'm not going to buy twenty pounds every time Kroger runs an ad. I'll watch the price on my receipts, and when there's a real sale and a little room in the freezer, I'll set up the station again.
The patties are earmarked for Memorial Day. Matt asked whether "earmarked" means he can't have one this weekend. It does.
