It’s easy to freeze minced beef – but with a little more effort you can freeze it so it’s not wasting freezer space and is easier to use.

I freeze all my mince like this every time. I’ll typically divide my portions up as:

• 400g packs in one piece
• 500g packs in two 250g portions
• 750g packs in 250g portions.

Save Money!

As a single person household, it’s always an annoyance that larger packs are cheaper per Kg than smaller packs. It therefore makes sense to save money and buy a larger pack.

Taking one supermarket’s prices, a quick check tells me (updated for 2022 prices):

As you can see:

• If you buy a 250g pack each week, after six weeks you’ve spent £11.34
• If you buy a 500g pack each fortnight, after six weeks you’ve spent £8.67
• If you buy a 750g pack each three weeks, after six weeks you’ve spent just £8.58

That’s a difference of paying £1.89/week or £1.43/week, for beef mince from the same company! Nearly 50p – which could be better spent on a treat maybe!

The greatest savings are made between the smaller packs and bigger packs. Even better if you manage to get yourself a yellow sticker/reduced pack (as rare as hen’s teeth these days!

If you use 250g of mince each week and buy the larger packs instead, over a year this is a saving of £23.92.

Remove Minced Beef From the Supermarket Packaging

When you buy minced beef at the supermarket it comes in a large plastic tray. You can just open the freezer door, throw that in, shut the freezer door and forget it! BUT – those packages take up way too much space and might not be in a handy quantity for your recipes.

Portion, Flatten, Freeze

It makes more sense to remove the minced beef from the packet, divide it up into portions that are the size you want for your recipes, rebag the mince, flatten it and freeze it as a flat package.

The weight you choose is entirely up to you – and I’ll sometimes freeze the mince without dividing it up if it’s a small pack. When I buy 750 grams of minced beef though I might divide that into three 250g portions.

I usually do it “by eye”, but you can weigh up your bags to get them all the same size.

How To Freeze Minced Beef

• While the minced beef is still in its original packaging, use a knife to cut it into portions, by eye. The picture above shows 750g of minced beef divided into three 250g portions. YOU choose which size is right for your meals and recipes.
• Place each portion of minced beef into an individual freezer bag – I try to do this in one swift move, using a spatula, to get it from the tray into the bag. I’m usually lucky and it goes in as one piece still.

• You can optionally weigh/compare each bag to get them all weighing the same, or weighing specific amounts
• Holding the top of the bag closed, squeeze the mince into the bottom corners of the freezer bag, then continue to squash the mince down by hand, forming it into a flat/square block. Repeat for each bag.

• Fold or clip the top of each of the freezer bags. Place all of the flat sheets of minced beef into a larger freezer bag, along with the original clipped product label, so you don’t forget what it is!

• Place the flattened minced beef sheets into the freezer, laying them down in a spot where they can freeze flat. You can temporarily use the original container to keep them flat until frozen (1-2 hours) before removing the plastic product container and recycling it.

What are the Benefits of Flattening Minced Beef

• It takes up less room in the freezer – making it easy to move around if you’re having to reorganise the freezer to fit more in.
• It freezes quicker.
• You’re not wasting valuable freezer space, which might mean you don’t need to buy a second freezer, or perhaps you can turn off your second freezer and save the cost of running it!
• If you’re cooking a minced beef slow cooker chilli you don’t have to pre-plan as you can lay the frozen slab in the slow cooker whole and it’ll defrost more quickly in there as it cooks. I’ll typically use a knife to break it down after it’s been cooking 2 hours or so.
• This minced beef defrosts more quickly if you put it in the fridge – as it’s thinner, it’ll defrost faster.

Is It Safe?

This is how many commercial and professional kitchens store and freeze their minced beef.

How Much Room Does it Save in the Freezer?

Here’s a photo of one pack I portioned into three pieces, alongside the original packaging!

You can see the portioned and flattened minced beef takes up about 1/3rd of the space of the original packaging!

While I’ve shown this with beef mince – it obviously works for all other mince too! Chicken mince, turkey mince, pork mince – they can all be flattened and frozen.

UPDATE:

As this information was so popular, I’ve, since, taken a few/better photos to show the process!