13 Easy Ground Beef Freezer Meals

Hamburger is one of the most common meats that Americans use in meals. When preparing meals for your freezer, easy ground beef freezer meals are my favorite! 

There are so many different uses for ground beef. One of the easiest ways to fill your freezer is to cook a bunch of hamburger at one time and freeze it in one pound bags. This makes dinner time so much easier when your meat is already cooked! Here is exactly how I cook and freeze ground beef for my freezer. This is one of the best and easiest ways to start freezer cooking!

Once you have several bags of cooked hamburger in your freezer, you have many different options for meal time. Below, I have compiled a list of 13 easy ground beef freezer meals. I have frozen every single one of them and can guarantee that they all freeze well.

Some of these ground beef freezer meals can be frozen completely prepared and others are easier to prepare when you have cooked hamburger in your freezer. It is a matter of personal choice, as well as freezer space.

If you are just getting started with freezer cooking, I highly recommend trying some of these easy ground beef freezer meals. They are a great place to start!

(Note: All the ground beef recipes are linked with the underlined titles. Just click on them for printable recipes and links.)

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Ground Beef Freezer Meals Using Cooked Hamburger:

Tacos 

Tacos are one of the easiest freezer meals! Just brown a bunch of hamburger and season it with taco seasoning. I love Kate’s homemade taco seasoning recipe! After you have cooked your taco meat, divide it into meal size portions for your family. I like to use sandwich or quart size ziploc bags for this, laying the meat flat so I can stack the bags in my freezer. Just freeze the bags of meat and pull one out the next time you are in the mood for taco night. When your meat is already cooked, it makes assembling the toppings a breeze!

Chili

Chili is a great freezer food. There are two ways to prepare chili for the freezer. You can mix an entire batch of your favorite chili recipe and freeze a container full of chili. It freezes great in gallon size ziploc bags, laid flat, or in glass canning jars. If you use glass jars, make sure to leave a bit of room at the top of each jar before freezing. You can also cook hamburger meat in the portion size you need for chili, and freeze just the meat, keeping all the other ingredients ready in your pantry. I have done both and both work well. Sometimes, I make a double batch of chili and then freeze individual portions in pint canning jars for quick lunches. Other times, I just rely on my cooked hamburger to make assembling chili a quick process.

Taco Soup

Soups make great freezer meals! This is one of of the freezer meals where I recommend cooking your hamburger and keeping the other items in your pantry until you are ready to assemble. It is truly a dump and go recipe – especially if your meat is already cooked! You can dump your frozen hamburger in a pot on the stove or in your crock pot and let it simmer until you are ready to serve. Taco soup doesn’t get much easier than that! We especially like this recipe for the hidden ingredient of ranch dressing mix. It sounds odd but it adds a great flavor to the soup.

Fiesta Soup

Here is another great freezer soup, where all you have to do is cook your hamburger ahead of time. The rest of the soup can be prepared in your crock pot (with your frozen hamburger) whenever you are in the mood for soup. Fiesta soup has a nice kick to it, which makes it a fun variation when you are in the mood for something different than chili.

Sloppy Joes

Sloppy Joes are another easy freezer meal. I mix up a double batch (or more) when I am serving sloppy joes and freeze some for later. It’s nice to be able to just thaw the filling, put it on buns and have a quick dinner ready to go.

Enchilada Casserole

Enchilada casserole is another easy freezer meal with hamburger! Once again, you can cook your hamburger in advance or prepare the whole casserole for the freezer. If you decide to prepare the whole casserole, I would freeze it before baking. When you are ready to serve it, thaw in the fridge and cook for a delicious dinner. Enchilada casserole is one of my kid’s favorite meals!

Other Ground Beef Freezer Meals:

Freezer Meatballs

Meatballs are such a versatile meal! When I make meatballs, I make sure to use at least 4 pounds of hamburger so I can make several batches for the freezer. Right now, I freeze meatballs in bags of 30, which seems to be a good size for our family to eat for one meal with just a couple leftover. I make a basic meatball that can be used in any of the following recipes – or more! The possibilities really are endless. My kids love meatballs but they do take more prep work, so it’s nice to have them cooked ahead of time to enjoy whenever.

Meatloaf

Meatloaf is not everyone’s favorite meal but I love a meatloaf! My kids love it too – once I started making it in individual servings and calling them giant meatballs. When I freeze meatloaf, I like to cook it ahead of time so I am not taking up one of my loaf pans in the freezer. I have started making a double batch of meatloaf in giant meatball form and baking them all. Then, I freeze half for later while we enjoy the rest now. If you are freezing meatloaf uncooked, be sure to allow it thaw before baking so your cooking time doesn’t increase greatly.

Lasagna

No matter what lasagna recipe you use, lasagna is another great freezer meal! If you are going through the trouble to make lasagna, it is definitely worth your time to make a double batch and freeze one for later. I recommend using disposable foil pans and cooking the lasagna before you freeze it.

Runzas

Whether you are familiar with runzas or not, you should give them a try! Runzas are one of my absolute favorite freezer meals. Consider it a portable meat sandwich that Nebraskans love! It is a bit more time consuming recipe, due to the tasty but easy to work with dough, so I always make a double batch. After I bake the runzas, I wrap these tasty sandwiches individually in foil for the freezer. These make for a quick meal because they can be reheated straight from frozen in the microwave or oven.

Sour Cream Noodle Bake

This is one of the Pioneer Woman’s easy freezer recipes. It’s a basic casserole that freezes well. It’s really a quicker form of lasagna but the sour cream adds a surprisingly nice flavor to it. Once again, you bake this meal before freezing.

Hamburgers

What family doesn’t love hamburgers? My husband would happily eat them every week. I eventually learned my lesson and started buying hamburger to freeze into hamburger patties. Sure, you can buy the premade patties but it is more economical to do it yourself. I make hamburger patties and stack them with waxed paper in between. Then, I wrap the stack of patties in foil for the freezer. I currently freeze 6 patties at a time. You can decide how many to freeze for your family. When you are in the mood for hamburgers, it is so nice to have the patties already made and waiting for you!

Spaghetti Sauce

If your family eats a lot of pasta, consider making spaghetti sauce for the freezer. Homemade sauce is easy to make and tastes delicious! Plus, you can tweak it to your family’s taste – with or without hamburger. Spaghetti sauce freezes well in canning jars or flat in ziploc bags.

There you have it! There are 13 ground beef freezer meals that will quickly fill your freezer with tasty meals. What is your favorite ground beef freezer meal?

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One Comment

  1. As a Nebraskan, I appreciate that you mentioned Runzas! I never knew they froze. Are you from Nebraska too??

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