Bargain Buy: Bulk Meat Purchase

Today was supposed to be a real "quick" shopping trip. Not a whole lot to buy since last week I did a large trip. But there were so many good deals out there! One helpful stockpiling tip that I've learned by reading other blogging sites and by trying out for myself is to stock up on meat when it's on sale. In the past, I've simply just divided the meat up and stuck it in the freezer. Today, I decided to do things a little differently.

Piggly Wiggly had Boston Butt Pork Roasts on sale for $0.99/lb. Crazy good! I picked up a really nice pork roast for $5.91, almost 6lbs total weight. When I got it home, I started to pull out the electric knife to cut the meat up and freeze it. But then I had a better idea.

I decided to try out the new Crock-pot hubs got me for Christmas (it has a digital timer, warmer, retractable cord, locking lid and other features!). I stuck the roast right in the pan--didn't bother with seasonings or adding water or anything, just put it right in--covered it and set it to cook on low for 6 hours. Meanwhile, hubs did more kitchen remodeling, the kids watched a movie and played, and I took a nap. We then went into town and did a few more errands then went out to eat (it was rather late, and just not feasible to go home and prepare supper). By the time we got home, the roast had finished cooking and the Crock-pot was keeping it warm.

I took off the lid, and it smelled sooooo good!

We got the kids to bed and I prepared to work on the roast. I slipped off the layer of skin and fat that you see in the picture above...yuck! Thank goodness there wasn't a whole lot of it. The nice thing about this type of roast as opposed to a picnic or shoulder roast is that there was very little skin and fat, zero tendons to deal with, and the bone was very small. And since I had slow cooked it, the roast was very tender and shredded easily with two forks.

I ended up with enough roast for 6 meals, plus 4 cups of pork broth, grease skimmed and divided into 2 containers, all of which I'll freeze. This was an excellent and extremely convenient way to get a jump start on my monthly freezer meals (cooking day scheduled for next Saturday!).