We go through a heck of a lot of meat around here and I've learned it's much easier and much cleaner to have it cooked and ready to reheat.

It's not as much about the recipe, as about the cooking in bulk, but I'll share my simple recipe and tricks in this post anyway.

We're on a super tight budget so don't judge our quality of ingredients. We'd buy the most expensive meats and eggs out there if we could!

for each batch, I can make 10lbs of beef.

You need a really large bowl and a really large pan.

We buy ours for about $0.50/each from Costco because they're nice and sturdy, and at the end of all of a couple of batches, I can throw them away and move on with life. I like them with parchment paper because we aren't a fan of aluminum soaking into our food.

Problems solved!

We also grab prechopped veggies from Walmart which makes my life a hell of a lot easier, especially now that I'm 7 months pregnant and cannot stand in the kitchen chopping all day long!

I add 10-12 eggs per batch, so I grab one of these super cheap packs of ALL THE EGGS for dirt cheap (Yay Walmart!)

I leave things out to thaw and warm up so I don't freeze my hands off when I mix, since I just dig my hands in and get the job done.

Throw the meat, veggies, and eggs, together into a really huge bowl.

Throw in some seasoning. This is the seasoning I use for most everything. It's just salt, pepper, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning. It makes everything taste amazing. I buy it all in bulk and make keep this big shaker full.

Now either roll into balls, or slop in a big mound. Meat balls

Or meat loaf? Same food, different shape. Although the meatballs take more time to roll out and more space to cook, but they cook much faster! (and careful, they shrink!)

Once it's cooked we drain the fat. once it's cooled, we drop it into bags, at about 1lbs each. I prefer to label the bags first, so lost or stray bags have info on them down the road, and I know to eat/cook older ones first.

Since my husband eats about 1lbs/ meal/day, he eats the loaf, but since I eat far less meat in one sitting and over time, I prefer the meat balls.

To each their own!