Having bought a pack of lean diced beef and cooked it, it no longer looked half as much, so I wondered what was the weight of raw beef compared to the weight of the cooked beef I ended up with. The weight of the raw lean diced beef was 700 grams!

I’d picked up the pack as it had a reduced price sticker on it, dated the same day. I didn’t want to freeze the diced beef and create a future obligation to do something with it, so I figured the easiest thing to do with it was to throw it into the slow cooker and cook it up.

I took the pack weight at face value as being 700 grams as it didn’t occur to me to check the cooked beef weight until it was nearly finished!

I had added in half an onion, which was also scooped up and is included in the overall cooked beef weight, but it’s negligible

• Raw Diced Beef Weight: 700 grams
• Cooked Diced Beef Weight: 450 grams beef + 215 grams of gravy.

From the raw diced beef weight:

• I had lost 35% in the process of cooking.
• I ended up with 65% of the starting weight.

The next question has to be, “how much beef is in ready meals – and how does what I bought compare?”

Is a Ready Meal Cheaper than Cooking from Scratch?

The question I was looking to answer is whether it was worth bothering to buy that raw diced beef and cook it (slow cooker for 6½ hours), or if I’d have been just as well off buying ready meals of my choice, with the additional ingredients added.

This can be a complex question, as you’d need to factor in the cost of cooking + other ingredients, so I’ve kept it simple and just seen how many portions of beef I could get out of my 450 grams of cooked diced beef.

How big is a portion of cooked diced beef? How many portions have I made?

I found a few ready made meals to compare how much cooked beef they contained:

• Asda 400 grams beef stew and dumplings serves two and contains 19% beef. 19% of 400 grams is 76 grams of beef. I could make just under 6 individual beef stews.
• Asda Steak Bakes weigh 280 grams for two. 24% of the filling is beef, which is 67 grams of beef between the two, 34 grams per steak bake. I could make 13 steak bake fillings with the cooked beef.
• Pukka Steak & Red Wine Pies serve two and weigh 450 grams. These contain 16% beef. The beef content is therefore a surprisingly low 72 grams! I must say I expected more beef as it serves two! These cost £3.25, I tried one the other week and wasn’t overly impressed, maybe mine will be better – it’ll certainly work out cheaper!

Price-wise, it can be hard to beat some tinned meats though. e.g. a tin of Asda Beef Madras Curry, 392 grams, contains two servings and 40% beef. One whole tin contains 157 grams of beef – 78 grams per portion – and works out at £3.83/Kg with a tin costing £1.50. Of course, cooking meat yourself you’ve seen how fatty/lean the original meat is and know what’s gone into it.

Is it Cooking From Scratch?

I started off thinking it probably wasn’t worth it, but, when comparing the beef and steak contents of some ready meals it didn’t look like such a bad deal at all!

A portion probably needs to be ~75 grams. My 450 grams of cooked beef would best be divided into six portion packs.

One 75 gram portion could make either a beef stew and dumplings, two steak bakes or a beef and red wine pie that serves two.

If I freeze it in six separate portions I can then mentally see each package as “one stew, or two pastry bakes”, making it easier to get round to using them as I’ve already mentally decided what they’ll be used for.

Cost Per Portion of Cooked Diced Beef

To cook the beef I used 700 grams of lean diced beef, I had an onion about to go off and rescued about half of that. I used a beef casserole sachet mix and threw in two Oxo Red Wine Stock Pots.

The beef (reduced) cost me £3.84, let’s call the onion 10p, beef stew casserole mix 19p and the two stock pots weren’t needed, but cost 50p. Total cost = £4.63

• Each cooked beef portion has therefore cost me 77p

As I used a slow cooker, the cost of cooking is insignificant – if I just round up the 77p to 80p that’d cover it.

All I need now is some pastry, a few more ingredients and about half an hour in an oven to make steak bakes or beef & red wine pies; to make beef stew and dumplings I’ll reheat the beef portion in the microwave and make microwave dumplings – dumplings made without suet if I keep forgetting to buy some!

How to Freeze Cooked Beef in Portions

Having cooked the beef I needed to portion it up – I kept one portion back to eat today, but I had no intention of eating the remaining five portions today or this week! So I bagged up the beef in 75 gram portions, put into freezer bags and put them into the freezer.

You can use digital kitchen scales, or just do it by eye!

Once the beef portions have frozen I’ll put the lot into another bag or box, along with the label from the original pack, so I know what’s there!

I froze the gravy separately, again, in portions.