Waste-Not Meat and Dairy: What to Buy and How to Utilize It

For much of the year I adhere to a relatively strict $60/week grocery budget. In general I stay within this budget even on the weeks when I need to stock up on toilet paper or cat litter, and in the fall a significant amount of the budget gets used for stocking up on things we’ll want in the winter when the budget goes down to $10/week. (Fall is also when baking supplies like flour and chocolate chips hit rock bottom prices—I bought enough flour last fall that I shouldn’t need to buy it again until August, even though I make all my own pasta and tortillas and a significant portion of our bread.)

So if I’m only spending $60/week on groceries, what do I buy? What could possibly stretch far enough to feed a family of six on only $60?

Let’s start with this qualifier—I have a freezer full of homegrown meat. I’ve got pounds of ground beef from a dairy cow that had milk fever a couple years ago (make a mental note to talk with your local dairy farmer). I’ve got probably a pig and a half worth of pork, frozen and dry cured. I’ve got 6-7 chickens left (need to buy broilers again soon, and butcher some bothersome old laying hens). I’ve also got hens that lay a couple dozen eggs every 3 days or so, a garden full of produce, and shelves packed with produce that I canned last year. You may not have all these advantages, and that’s totally understandable! Work out a budget that works for you. But my food purchase budget has a lot of hacks to stretch those dollars and make every bite delicious and nourishing, and I’m certain that you’ll find something that works for you! 

Pepperoni

Would you believe that Pepperoni is something I strive never to be without? How does that even make sense? How often does a family need to eat pizza?

… That’s a question I haven’t been able to answer, as I’ve never made pizza often enough to have the family say “no more.” (It helps that my homemade pizza is straight bomb.) But if you buy a large package of presliced pepperoni, it’s actually a flavor shock, with more savory deliciousness for the price than virtually any other substance. Far from just using it for pizza and snacks, I add it to many other dishes in several cuisines. It can easily replace some or even all other meat in chili (it’s an adequately similar flavor profile to Spanish Chorizo). I’ve been known to add it to the filling for my homemade quesadillas or as the sole meat component of nachos, , put it on sandwiches with all the toppings (allowing me to get away with using less of the more expensive luncheon meats), or use it to flavor baked beans in much the same way one might use bacon. I generally eat low-carb, so I like to fry it in a pan to dice up and sprinkle on my salad. I’ve used it as the sole meat in lasagna, adding it at the beginning of the sauce making process, and I’ve stirred it into rice as a protein boost when I didn’t have time to fool around with a side dish for a fast lunch. And of course there are pizzas, pizza sandwiches and pizza noodle soup (Don’t laugh. OK, fine, laugh. But it’s actually really good.)

Bottom line: Pepperoni is a fast, convenient and tasty way to add some fat and protein and a ton of flavor to many meals and I see it as a household staple.

Rotisserie Chicken

Alright, hear me out on this one, because this might seem a little luxurious. And if your plan is to pick this baby clean the moment you get it home, consume it all at one sitting, and toss the bones, just forget I brought it up and don’t buy it. But if you learn how to stretch a chicken into four or five solid meals and then boil the carcass for half a gallon of stock, this can actually make sense (especially if you buy the chicken “reduced for quick sale”). Is it cheaper to buy a raw chicken, roast it, and utilize the meat similarly…? That depends! The chicken you buy will lose quite a bit of weight in the oven, as it has often been pumped full of water, so the 3-4 pound bird for $2-3 might end up giving you the same quantity of meat as the lemon pepper chicken in the cold case. I’d personally recommend buying the fresh chicken most of the time, partly to gain the experience of roasting and utilizing a whole bird, but if you’re pinched for time a $3-5 pre-roasted chicken for dinner tonight trounces two pizzas any day of the week.  

When I get my rotisserie chicken home, I get the meat off the bones first thing. I try to pull the skin off in big pieces. Ever lay a piece of chicken skin in a hot skillet, then crack an egg on top, season, and put a lid on until the egg is soft cooked?? NO?... anybody?... ok well maybe I’m nuts. But it’s good and for me it’s lunch, which is more economical than just eating all the skin off the chicken while I break it down, which is a very real temptation.

Anyway, once the skin is off, the meat and skin can all go in a container in the fridge (a sour cream container works great.) then when you’re making quesadillas (or tacos or fajitas or taquitos or burritos or…), or stir fry, or soup, or sandwiches, or mashed potatoes and gravy, or virtually anything else, you have chicken cooked and ready to go.

The carcass then goes in a pot with water to cover. I might add the bones from a batch of homemade hot wings that I froze last time I went all out for pizza night, or the bones from last night’s pork chops, and if I have some skin from a rasher of bacon so much the better—it enriches the stock and makes it oh so smokey. At that point you’ve got a decent sized batch of broth; boil it up and use it for cooking beans, or for chicken soup with the last few scraps of meat you pull from the bones after boiling, or for any of the other uses I list for bone broth in this article here. (One quart of quality bone broth at the store costs more than your chicken did! Game changer!)

Spiral Sliced Ham

Now I haven’t purchased one of these in probably 3 years, ever since an argument Ben and I had about pigs. I expressed concern that pigs have more capacity for suffering than most people give them credit for, and he challenged me that if I felt that way I shouldn’t buy spiral sliced hams at the grocery store anymore. So I didn’t, partly because he was right, and partly because our homegrown pork supply has become much more steady and I’ve become much better at curing and smoking. Those hams were more a tasty convenience food than a necessity anymore and I quietly dropped them from the grocery list. (I wonder if he noticed?)

But here’s the deal: If you have a hungry, growing family and a limited budget, keeping tummies full and bodies nourished is priority A1 and your family’s need can easily justify the life and death of even the most miserable factory-raised pig. (Sorry piggy.) And especially around (and ESPECIALLY after) the holidays you can pick these hams up for $.80 per pound or better. I remember in lean years digging through the case for a ham I could purchase with my dearbought pocket full of $15.63 worth of dollars and change. I went home with my prize and fed my family so, so well on noodles browned with ham, ham and potato (or turnip) chowder, ham and tomato soup, ham sandwiches, cabbage rolls filled with vegetables and chopped ham… and then boiling that bone with beans for yet more utilization of smoky, salty, nutritious flavor. 

Pork Shoulder

I’m occasionally tempted by pork shoulders at the grocery store. I resist because of the moral concerns cited above, but man—a pork shoulder is so rich, meaty and versatile, and so inexpensive, it’s really hard to say no! Before cooking it for pulled pork it’s easy to trim off enough for a pork stir fry; after that it can go in a low oven or a big crock pot until it all falls off the bone (get bone in, people, come on now.) I season minimally before cooking: salt, pepper, garlic, onion, maybe bay leaf, plus some apple cider vinegar. That way it’s super versatile pulled pork, able to be dressed with your favorite region of barbeque sauce, or seasoned with your favorite Mexican flavors and stuffed into tacos, or stirred into lo mein, or doused in gravy and put into a pork pie with carrots and turnips and peas, or diced into  small bits and used as the protein for fried rice, or even mixed with egg and bread crumbs, breaded, and pan fried for a mock schnitzel. The bone and any leftover cooking liquid can and should be boiled with water to cover to create bone broth. Since it will be very fatty you can skim off the lard—or just leave it in and make a giant pot of beans. They’ll be absolutely delicious.

Frozen Hamburgers

I have gotten pretty good at hand forming hamburgers from our frozen ground beef, but at times when there wasn’t a lot of ground beef in the freezer these sometimes became the only sort of beef we ate. Aldi has a brand that’s very cheap per pound, largely because it contains heart (this blog is called the Waste-Not Blog, in case you missed it, so sneaking some organs into a tasty burger is A-OK by me). In fact, it’s cheaper than the ground beef chub, which is the next cheapest way to obtain ground beef (and an excellent option as well, though I’ve never utilized it.)

Kielbasa

Eckrich Farms brand Kielbasa is a great price per pound at WalMart if you buy it in the larger package, usually containing 3 Kielbasi. It’s my favorite convenience food in the summer because it’s delicious on a roll with ketchup, though I’ve recently discovered homemade pierogi and I gotta say—match made in heaven. (AKA Poland.) Anyway, to justify the expense, I’ll generally use 2 kielbasi in sandwiches or with pierogi and one as the meat in a large soup, stretching it over a couple of meals. It’s also good if there’s a bit left from sandwiches or a pierogi dinner to slice it thin, pan sear it with mushrooms and onions, green and otherwise, and dump in a few cups of cooked, drained noodles. Sautee with butter or bacon fat for a few minutes, season and serve. A little meat goes a long way in that fashion.

Bacon

Currently I have a ton of dry cured bacon and another two tons waiting to be smoked. (OK more like 10 pounds and 20 pounds respectively but still.) But if I didn’t have all that I would buy bacon ends and pieces at WalMart for a little over $3.00/lb. they’re just as delicious for breakfast as regular bacon, they’re tasty additions to soups or beans or pasta or pizza or sautéed vegetables or… you get it. Use a little tiny bit of bacon and you can get away with not having a big old pork chop or a quarter of a chicken on everyone’s plate. It’s all about intense, delicious flavoring and plenty of healthy animal fat. 

Sour Cream

I love sour cream. Not just on tacos (though it’s delicious there) or as a dip for quesadillas (of course it’s delicious there, too) or on a baked potato (again, yes, so good). I love it as a fat-rich garnish on many soups, like chili and curry and borscht (especially borscht, guys, omg), as an integral component of my white sauce for mac and cheese or breakfast pizza, as a crucial flavoring for any kind of white chowder, as an indispensable topping for latkes… having it in large quantities enables  me to expand my cuisine to include things like chicken paprikash. Add salt and dice in some green onion and you have something very nearly as good as helluvagood, but with fewer ingredients and lower cost. And whether at WalMart or Wegmans, the big tub doesn’t cost much more than the medium tub, which costs just a smidge more than the little tub. So grab that big tub and pull out your recipe book because this stuff is dairy gold! I even use the whey if I’m making something and need a little extra liquid; just pull out the sour cream, open it up, and pour whatever liquid is at the top into your soup or sauce or pancake batter. Extra acidity and no waste! Finally, that big sturdy tub is usually good for at least two uses as a lunch container as long as nobody microwaves it. Just sayin’.

Grated Cheese

At both Wegmans and Walmart, the cheapest way to buy cheese is grated in a big 5 pound bag. At just a little over $2 per pound it’s by far the most economical way to get cheese at the store, and with both cheddar and mozzarella available it’s versatile enough to be used in a variety of contexts.

The trouble with buying cheese in this quantity is that if you’re not careful it will start to get moldy, and while a block of cheese is easy to demold (just shave off the area where the mold has grown), if the bottom of your cheese bag grows mold you’re probably throwing away handfuls—far from ideal utilization. Waste-not Fail. I combat this by making sure that every time I buy a big bag of cheese, I also freeze a few sandwich bags full for the next time the budget gets smaller. A sandwich bag packed with mozzarella is enough for two pizzas, and a sandwich bag of cheddar will stretch to handle a round of quesadillas and garnish a few meals of chili. I also use the cheese to make baked macaroni or lasagna, for nachos, and on sandwiches (especially good if you put it under the broiler, but can be used cold if you mix it in the mayo first to glue it on.) This is a very economical way to get cheese into your family’s diet and with good utilization habits can greatly improve the day to day slog of meal planning.

Finally, I want to qualify all this: things appear upon and disappear from this list all the time. When we have a lactating dairy cow, I don’t buy any sour cream or grated cheese; when pork or beef is plentiful I buy almost no meat, and my goal is to raise enough chickens to not even consider buying one from the store, rotisserie or otherwise. These are simply the meat and dairy items I have personally found to be the most economical in terms of flavor per dollar and dollar per pound. I hope this helps inform your grocery decisions so you can start saving some money and feeding your family great food for less!