Buying in Bulk: How to Make the Most of Bulk Purchases

Items like meat and cheese might not be what you think of when it comes to stockpiling, but buying these higher-priced items at their cheapest is another great shopping strategy. It does take ever freezer space as well as time and effort, but it pays off. Jessica over at Utah Deal Diva is really talented at stockpiling all kinds of things in her freezer, and she's written a post on how to process some meats and cheeses to freeze for longer-term storage. Here's a copy of her original post:

Today I want to show a few simple ideas on how to save with buying bulk chicken breasts, ground beef and block cheese.

Last week I price matched Winco at Walmart and got boneless, skinless chicken breasts for .98/lb. {Compare to Costco's frozen chicken breasts at $2.19/lb!} I bought over 10 lbs worth as it was such an incredible deal! We generally only use 1-2 breasts per meal, so I paid $10.02 for what will most likely cover 14-17 meals, which breaks down to .59-.71 per meal.

Back to the chicken! We froze half individually on a large jelly roll pan covered in plastic wrap. The other half we grilled, then froze individually. When it comes time to prepare dinner, the grilled chicken will take only a fraction of the time to cook after it defrosts. Plus it will have that yummy grilled flavor even in the middle of winter!

Freezing each breast individually is a huge time save as then I was able to put it all in 1 big storage bag so that I can pull out one or two pieces for meals later on.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a package of ground beef that had been marked down at Albertson's. The mark down price made it only $1.11/ lb! {Compare to Costco's $2.69/lb or frozen ground beef for $2/lb!}

I defrosted a package of ground turkey I got a while back for .03 and browned some of the beef and the turkey together with chopped onion. I'm not a huge fan of ground turkey by itself, but when combined with beef, you get the added nutritional value and you can hardly tell the difference. Another tip: even if a recipe calls for 1 lb of ground beef, I use less and you'd never notice!

Altogether I had 4.62 lbs of meat that cost me $3.84. I was able to split it into 6 meals so each cost about .64.

You can also brown the beef and actually make a few meals to freeze. Meatballs and meat loaf are good options. One of my favorite make-ahead meals is lasagna. Actually making the meals and freezing them is a real life saver as you then have inexpensive, home made meals for those nights when you are out of time and energy!

I got these 2 bricks of Tillamook cheese at Albertson's last week for $1.49/ lb. {Compare to non-Tillamook block cheese at Costco for $1.89/lb.} Preparing the cheese for freezing is a no-brainer- I grated it. Normal bags of shredded cheese come in an 8 oz package, however, I opted to stretch them a little farther and made 10 bags, each holding about 6-7 oz and costing me about .60 each. Depending on the meal I prepare, each bag will cover about 2-4 meals.