What’s in your freezer, Frobose-style

What’s in your freezer?

I was brought up with the mindset that a meal doesn’t count unless a hunk of meat is involved. With this in mind, I’d like to share some of the current mainstays in the freezer of the Frobose household. Keep in mind I am still a graduate student and my wife Brandi and I aren’t exactly rolling in the dough, so don’t expect to hear about a stash of tenderloin and lobster. Nevertheless, I do have a meat science background and I do take my “center of the plate” options seriously when preparing a home-cooked meal.

Let’s start with the basics. Although we are currently not living on the Frobose family farm, we still take advantage of the opportunity to take a couple of coolers with us to load up on home-raised ground beef and ground pork whenever we visit my family. This stockpile usually forms the basis of a quick evening meal at our house, be it burgers on the grill, tacos, or the odd pasta or Asian dish. While these don’t sound worthy of blog mention, my wife can attest that we make an effort to change things up each time with different combinations of seasonings and spices. When I’m at the kitchen helm, these rogue recipes usually keep her guessing and I’m greeted with restrained disgust nearly as often as the treasured “Wow, what did you put in them?” While my little concoctions don’t always hit the home run, they keep me entertained in the kitchen and allow me to work with the tools of my craft: meat, knives, spices and open flames….

While ground meats are a big part of the freezer space, I am also a man who likes his variety. I personally love a good steak, but if I ate a T-bone every night, I would probably get sick of them after a while. This brings me to the 100 pork loins I’ve acquired as part of grad school research. While I was excited to get to eat the leftover samples, I didn’t realize how long it takes for two people to eat 100 pork loins! Therefore, these have also been subject to the rigors of different cooking strategies and spice combinations. Much to Brandi’s dismay we still have about half of them left! However, if I must say so myself, I’ve gotten to where I can make a pretty dang good grilled pork chop.

Back on the subject of variety, we do have some chicken legs in the freezer for Brandi to fry up from time to time (she makes excellent fried chicken), along with some pulled pork, frozen fish and pheasant from my last hunting and fishing trips.

That’s enough about all the second-tier proteins beside beef. As mentioned, we can’t afford expensive beef options right now, so I have become an opportunistic beef buyer. A meat enthusiast, I’m confident in my ability to marinade or prepare some of the lower cost beef items from the store. While my visits to the Manhattan grocery stores are usually intended to pick up a gallon of milk or loaf of bread, I often spend an extra 30 minutes or more scouting for beef deals in the meat case. I am more than happy to buy the marked-down steaks that are starting to lose their bright cherry-red color because I know eating quality is dictated primarily by tenderness, marbling and beef flavor. I’m not scared to buy the odd roast or top sirloin butt at a discount so that I can cut them down into steaks and freeze them for later grilling. Just as often, I’ll find a decent eye of round or chuck steak priced lower than ground beef in the meat case….those are my kind of deals.

As a young person perpetually in college and without the luxury of home-raised beef, I have become more cost-conscious on our family’s meat selections. While we are looking forward to the day we can go to the freezer for a ribeye from the last steer we butchered, I think we’ve both learned a lot about making the most of what we have through preparation and different cooking methods. I hope this little description has given some perspective into the options we have at the Frobose house for our “center of the plate” selections.

-Hyatt

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