Rollover Meal Ideas

Any leftover meat can be shredded and mixed with BBQ sauce for either BBQ sandwiches or BBQ pizza.

The cheapest way to buy ground beef is in the 10 pound rolls, which incidentally are the perfect fit for my crockpot (cook with a little water, onions, garlic, and green peppers, break up with a potato masher or one of those fancy Pampered Chef things) divide up and freeze in ziplocs, take out and use for quick spaghetti, tacos, sloppy joes, home made pizza, pasta....

Speaking of sloppy Joe's the BEST homemade pizza is just a wholewheat crust, leftover sloppy joes, peppers, onions, mushrooms and cheddar cheese! In fact homemade pizza is a GREAT second meal--tacos one day and taco pizza another. Steak's one night and either BBQ or Philly steak pizza another....

A lot of leftovers can be added to eggs and cheese for frittatas, quiches or scrambles...

And there are always soups and stir fries....

I'm with Missy for sure. I'll make a gigantic pork shoulder in the crock pot & eat it the first night as pulled pork, then make tacos or quesadillas with the leftover meat. Chicken is the easiest to turn into something else though as there are soooo many recipes that call for cooked chicken, most of them are either salads or casseroles both of which are quick & easy.

I just posted this on another question, so I copied and pasted... point is, eat 1/2, freeze 1/2... or even cut it into thirds, it makes a lot, there's little prep time, and it's yum!!!!

I don't follow recipes. At ALL. I glance at the ingredients in a recipe, then modify it to make something completely different. I honestly use cookbooks just to know the proper cook times on things.

Last night, I made up something new... the recipe called for soooo much less; I made it better :) Don't ask how much of what I used... I don't measure either ;)

-1 (1lb) beef smoked sausage
-ricotta (like 1 container)
-alfredo sauce (the 4 cheese kind, almost 2 whole jars
-16 oz bag frozen spinach
-about a cup of frozen diced onions
-1 lb box rotini pasta
-1/2 cup(ish) of grated parm
-1/2 cup(ish) bread crumbs
-diced orange pepper
-diced red pepper
(next time I'm adding artichoke hearts and maybe subbing the peppers for roasted red peppers)
-black pepper
-basil
-olive oil

Preheat the oven to 425. Cook pasta per instructions on the package. Cook spinach in the microwave. Dice peppers and thinly slice sausage into little circles. Drain pasta and spinach. Throw pasta back in the pot. Mix in a bowl, the spinach, onions, peppers, sausage, black pepper, basil, salt, garlic (whatever you like), alfredo, ricotta, mix well. Dump that into the pasta, mix well, dump into a sprayed down casserole dish. In a little bowl mix bread crumbs and parm; ad olive oil and stir stir stir until it kind of clumps together. Sprinkle that over the entire top. Cover with tinfoil and bake about 20-25 minutes. Let cool covered for about 5 minutes... YUM.

It honestly all cost about $15 (maybe, not even) and the prep time was about 12 minutes... I froze 1/2 and had 1/2 for dinner last night, and there's STILL leftovers for dinner tonight!! It made a ton!!

2 moms found this helpful

Try making double of whatever you make. Make a meatloaf? Freeze one.

Also, if you make pasta and keep it in the fridge, you can add it to lots of stuff:
1. a jar of sauce
2. tomotoes, olives, cut of mozz cheese, balsamic and oil.
3. sautee tomatoes and zuccini for a light, summer sauce
4. broccoli (frozen in micro) and shreaded carrots with olive oil and vinegar - add chicken too

If you make anything with chopped meat, save some meat and make a quick meat and bean chili with a packet of chili powder and a cam of diced tomatoes and onions.

Add any meat to a simple tossed salad and serve with some bread.

Now I need to go get lunch!
P.S.. LOVE your "name"

Make hamburgers for dinner.
Cut up the extra ones and make spaghetti or taco salad or chilli.
Smash the chilli beans and put it in tacos or tostados or make chili mac. Put the cut up hamburger with cheese, pizza sauce, and seasoning on toasted english muffins and you have pizza.

Buy some jalapenos and put cream cheese with the hamburger, mix it together and stuff the Jalapenos. Bake and you have jalapeno poppers. Wrap with bacon if desired.

You can do all the above with chicken.

Good luck to you and yours.

Tuesday night I made Mexican food - tacos, burritos, tostadas....Wednesday morning - we had breakfast burritos.......

I use the left over meat in sandwiches the next day..

Meatloaf makes good sandwiches too!!!

I make roasts (beef, pork or bison) or chicken in the crock pot, no veggies and basic seasoning, then shred it and use it in salads, pastas or other meals throughout the week. All I have to do is add other seasonings and change it up.

I am the queen of this! I will have precooked meat in the freezer so when I get home I have something I can make quickly. I will put a bunch of frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts in the crock with taco seasoning and cook on low all day. Put in zip baggies and use as needed. I use it for soups, tacos, sandwiches, mexican food, salads, pastas etc. Same thing for ground beef or turkey. I brown about 6 pounds at a time and do the same thing.

My latest thing was I put a package of beef stew meat in the crock with a cup of water mixed with powdered onion soup mix. cooked on low all day. mixed in brown gravy served it over rice. A couple days later I used the leftovers (the meat and gravy not the rice) by adding a can of cream of mushroom soup with water until it was on the runny side. served it over cooked egg noodles. just like beef stroganoff! Everyone loved it!