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I work outside of the home two to three days a week and I get home late.  I also make dinner at home every weeknight, so I need two things: meals that can be thrown together quickly or meals that I can prep ahead of time.  I’ve shared some of my quick go-to meals here like chicken croquettes, homemade “hamburger helper,” and beef stroganoff.  Now I’m going to share one way I think ahead to make meal prep quick on busy nights.

Last week I made Swedish meatballs for dinner and I thawed out 2 pounds of grass-fed ground beef.  I used those two pounds to make the Swedish meatballs for dinner as well as plain ones for BBQ and Italian ones for spaghetti and meatballs or meatball sub sandwiches another night!  Not only was it super easy (I had all the meatballs made and dinner on the table in 30 minutes), it was also super frugal!  I am getting at least three, if not four meals, plus leftovers out of 2 pounds of meat!  Hooray!

I’m going to share what I did here, plus I’ll share my recipe for Swedish meatballs for those who have requested it!

I mixed the 2 lbs of beef with 1/3 of a sleeve of crackers (about 10 to 12 crackers), 1 chopped onion, and 2 eggs.  I rolled the meat mixture into a dozen golf ball-sized meatballs and placed them directly into a saute pan.  Then, I rolled a dozen more and placed them on a baking sheet covered with a piece of parchment paper.  Finally, I added a couple tablespoons of freshly grated parmesan cheese to the remaining meat mixture and I rolled the remaining meat mixture into about a dozen more Italian meatballs and placed them on the other side of the baking sheet.

I turned the saute pan on and I placed the baking sheet into the freezer.  After I finished making dinner I got the meatballs back out of the freezer and bagged them up in freezer bags for later use and put them back into the freezer.  The reason for placing them in the freezer on the baking sheet was to help them to hold their shape.  If I would have placed them directly into the freezer bags raw, they would have lost their round meatball shape!

Here’s what I did with the first batch of meatballs while I prepared the others for freezing:

Swedish Meatballs

Follow the meatball recipe above (without Parmesan).
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 soup can of milk

Place meatballs into a skillet and brown them.  Then flip them and brown the other side.  Meatballs won’t be completely cooked, but they should have a nice brown crust on them.  Then, combine soup and milk and pour into the skillet.  While soup warms the meatballs will cook the rest of the way through in the liquid.  The soup will make a nice gravy for the meatballs.  Cook for approximately 15 to 20 minutes.  Check one of the meatballs for doneness.  If they are no longer pink, the dish is ready.

Serve over rice.  This is is home-cooked comfort food at its finest!  YUM!