Ultimate Recipe Swap: Where's the Beef?

Life As Mom is hosting another Ultimate Recipe Swap. The theme for this week is beef.

I have a few recipes previously posted for beef, both here and on my other blog and I figured that linking them in this post would be the easiest way to share them in today's recipe swap.

• Hamburgers, Meatballs, Meatloaf (I use the same recipe for all 3)
• Pepper Steak
• Beef Barley Soup
• Crock Pot Beef Stew

Recently, I've been pre-cooking and freezing ground beef. You can read more about that here in a previous post. It makes my life so much easier. Well, my life at mealtime becomes easier.

The pre-cooked and frozen ground beef can be used in any of your favorite meals that call for ground meat. I use it for the following meals:

• Meat sauce for pasta
• Hamburger gravy over mashed potatoes
• Hamburger gravy mixed with elbow macaroni
• Tacos
• Chili (I'll be posting my chili recipe to my other blog in a week or two)

And most recently, I used the pre-cooked burger in my Cowboy Stew recipe on my other blog. Do you know that I've skipped making recipes in the crock pot that call for browning meat in a skillet first? It just didn't make sense to me. I mean, I'm using the crock pot because I'm pressed for time in the first place. Why would I make something that involves another cooking process. Not to mention the extra dirty pan to wash!
Well, I was really in the mood to try that Cowboy Stew recipe. And I wanted to cook it in the crock pot. I remembered that I had some pre-cooked ground beef in the freezer. I added all of the other stew ingredients and then added the beef. Still frozen! How easy is that?
Don't forget to check out this week's Ultimate Recipe Swap for more great recipes using beef.