If your freezer is small, you might find it difficult to buy and freeze many items – especially those you find in the reduced section and hadn’t expected to need to find space for. Or those packs you bought, but then didn’t get round to cooking.

However, the supermarket packages of minced meat waste a lot of space, so I always use this way of freezing minced meat. It’s also how the catering industry store their frozen meat, so it’s a proper and safe way of doing this.

Save Money on Food Shopping

This helps you to save money on food shopping as it means you can buy larger packs, at a cheaper £/Kg price and benefit from the lower price without having to cook the whole pack in one go.

Taking a produce range from one supermarket, below are the three pack sizes and prices they sell:

Pack Weight	Pack Price	Price/Kg
250g	£1.79	£7.16
500g	£2.99	£5.98
750g	£4.09	£5.45

For small households it’s easier to buy the 250 grams, as that’s the pack size you want – but you’re paying so much more this way. If you’re somebody who deliberately seeks out the Yellow Sticker, or Reduced Price foods, by buying the largest pack at full price it’s effectively buying at the yellow sticker price in any case!

25% Off: Buying three 250g packs would cost you £5.37. By buying the 750g pack, dividing it into three, keeping/cooking 250g today and freezing the remaining 500g gives you a saving of £1.28. That’s the same as seeing a “25% off” sticker!

You will need:

• Individual freezer bags, for each portion you’re rebagging; if you’re going to keep it whole and use a large bag that’s fine.
• One additional freezer bag, if you’ve portioned up your pack of minced meat.
• A knife to cut the meat, a spatula to get the meat from the supermarket package into your freezer bags easiest.

Freezing Method:

1. Open the pack and, based on the size of the freezer bags the meat needs to fit into, slice it into portions. Use a spatula to lift the minced meat out and slide it into a freezer bag easily; else use the largest serving spoon you have.
2. Once inside the bag squash the mince down, flat.
3. Once I’ve done this with the whole pack I’ll cut out the front food label, so I know what it is and discard the remaining packaging.
4. Slide all the bagged portions into one outer bag and slide the food label inside the outer bag.
5. Seal the outer bag and place the whole package in the freezer.

You’ve now got a much smaller space being taken up in your freezer.