It's hard to let summer pass without at least one weekend spent standing over a grill. But this summer, those weekends may hit your wallet pretty hard. Beef prices have already hit an all-time high, and the USDA is predicting that prices for chicken and turkey will be higher than average, too, which could be painful if you're already shelling out extra bucks for pastured organic meat.
If you need to economize but you still want to throw some meat on the grill—or just make the most of the meat you buy for everyday meals—here are some ideas for stretching your meat supply and your grocery dollars.
1. Blend ground beef for better burgers.
Adding roasted mushrooms and minced onions adds body to your patties, allowing you to get more burgers from the same pound of beef. As an added bonus, the resulting burgers will stay moist and delicious, since leaner grass-fed beef tends to dry out more quickly. The recipe that follows will double the number of burgers you can get out of a pound of ground beef.
For 1 pound of ground meat, make the following mushroom base: Preheat the oven to 400°F. Toss 2 pounds of sliced organic button mushrooms in about ¼ cup olive oil until well coated. Add sea salt to taste and spread thinly on two cookie sheets lined with parchment paper or silicone liners. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until mushrooms are soft and shrunken. Cool and chop fine. This base can be made up to three days in advance to save time.
To make the burgers: Combine 1 pound of ground grass-fed beef, ½ cup of very finely chopped onions, and 1 batch of your mushroom base. Mix well and shape into four to eight equal-size balls. Gently flatten each ball into a patty about ¾ inch thick then press the patty's center so it's a little thinner (this will help the burger cook evenly and compensate for the tendency of the patty to contract and get thicker during cooking). Cook on a hot grill for 5 to 6 minutes per side. It's time to flip them when the juices start bubbling up to the top. Use a meat thermometer; your burgers are done when the temperature in the center of the thickest portion is 160°F.
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2. Buy a whole chicken rather than parts.
It's a lot less trouble for a farmer to sell you a whole chicken than one cut up into parts, which is why you can easily spend $10 or more on just one pound of pastured or organic boneless, skinless chicken breasts, compared to $20 or so on an entire four-pound bird. And with the bird, you get breasts, thighs, drumsticks, and wings, along with the bones and trimmings to whip up a batch of homemade chicken stock. You can cut up a chicken in just a few minutes; watch my video how-to.
3. Stre-e-e-etch a chicken breast into two meals.
Chicken breasts can be tricky to grill because they are an uneven thickness, and the edges can get overdone and dried out before the thick centers are finally done. Since the breasts are the most expensive cut of a chicken, you don't want to ruin them. Make them tasty and make them go farther by pounding them thin before grilling them.
To do it, remove the chicken tender (the part of your chicken breast that seems to be only loosely connected to the main part of the meat), and pound it separately. Place the breast on a sturdy cutting board and cover it with a sheet of sturdy plastic wrap such as a zip-top bag; you can skip the plastic, but using it cuts down on splattering and cleanup. Using a smooth-surfaced mallet (not a knobby tenderizing one) or a heavy rolling pin—even a wine bottle filled with water and recorked will do—gently pound the breast, starting in the center, to spread it out into an even layer of tender meat. About ½ inch thick is good for grilling. Cook each piece on a hot grill with the lid open or off for about 2 minutes per side.
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They taste great as is, and you can easily feed two people with the same breast that, unflattened, would be a single serving. Or you can slice the grilled breast into thin strips and combine those with grilled peppers and onions. Serve it all wrapped in flour tortillas, and you have enough sumptuous grilled fajitas to feed your entire family. Grilled chicken breast strips are also wonderful (hot or cold) served on top of a green salad. For extra grilled flavor, split a head of romaine lettuce in half lengthwise, brush vinaigrette dressing all over, and grill it for a minute on each side. Serve each half topped with your chicken strips.
4. Serve some substantial grilled veggies as part of the main event.
Corn on the cob, slabs of eggplant or summer squash, portabella mushroom caps, or even cauliflower "steaks" are a great way to enjoy the flavors of grilling without making meat the only player. Slice thickly, rub with oil, season as desired, and grill until browned and cooked through. Or skewer the veggies on kabobs with 1-inch cubes of chicken, sausage, or beef to make a generous meat-eater's entrée without wasting too much meat. Most kabob makers use larger (2-inch) cubes.
5. Top a pizza.
A little bit of special grass-fed sausage goes a long way if you grill it, slice it thin, and use it as one of the toppings for grilled pizza. Make your own fresh pizza crust dough or use whole grain pita as crusts. Put sauces and prepared toppings in bowls near the grill, toast one side of the pita on a moderately hot grill, and flip it over, then put on a little sauce and selected toppings and close the cover to trap the heat. Rotate with tongs every 30 seconds or so until the toppings are hot and melted and the bottom is lightly browned with a few darker grill marks.
