Making your own lunch meats

[sharr610]

Lunch meats are by far our biggest expense around here as I really want to buy the good stuff. So I've been thinking about doing our own with turkey, ham and roast beef and freezing them.
Anyone ever do this? I'm not a big cooked meat freezer beyond soups and stews. Advice? Should I just cook, pack and freeze? For some reason, I'm convinced its not that simple

[SuburbanHippie]

We did this for ham before. DH found a really nice, all metal meat slicer at a garage sale and we had to try it out. It did make tons of sandwiches (and had leftovers for other things like scalloped potatoes & ham), but it was so good that we ate it super fast. I'm not really sure if the cost offset the calorie intake. LOL.

[simplehome]

I also did this with ham recently. I weighed the (very thin) sliced ham, after using my parents' meat slicer, then packed it in the same weight as the store packages. My mistake was that I put a piece of waxed paper in-between the sections, and this did NOT come off unless thawed. I would recommend perhaps freezing each section of slices separately on a baking sheet in the freezer, then re-packaging them all together.

I notice that after a few months my lunchmeat looks a tiny bit freezer burned, but it still tastes AMAZING. I suggest not doing TOO much at one time.

I don't know about the chicken, turkey, etc., as these always seem to be smoked when in lunchmeat form.

[lil_earthmomma]

We are saving SO much money by making our own lunch meats.

We actually prefer to cut the ham into hunks and freeze, thaw and then slice into sandwich slices. We don't have a meat slicer, but dh has pretty good knife skills and can get the meat nice and thin, without being paper thin. This has been working for us. When we are getting low on slices in the fridge, I just take another hunk out and thaw it.

As for chicken, I cook a whole chicken, freeze the meat in small portions and just make chicken salad as it's needed.

I've never done beef that way, although we LOVE to have hot roast beef sandwiches and bbq beef on a bun. :

[Sasharna]

We do a couple beef roasts on the weekend, slice in the food processor, and eat the slices during the week. We do save money and get higher quality food this way, but we eat too much meat to make freezing worthwhile.

[happyhats]

my husband and I do this pretty often with turkey and ham. We also like to buy chicken and make pulled chicken sandwiches..it's great where there is a deal on drumsticks and such. I'm sure that you could do the same for pulled pork. We would probably do it more often but we don't have a freezer right now.

[cristeen]

Beef - london broil, tri tip, tongue, and other roasts of that sort do beautifully.
Lamb - boneless leg or shoulder roast
Turkey - breast roast is the easiest for slicing
Pork - leg roast, tenderloin, butt, they all do great.

If you have access to a smoker, that's beautiful. I tend to do beef and lamb on the BBQ, and only to medium. The others go in the oven, and to well done. Chill them completely, or even freeze them partially before trying to slice them. Pork especially will just "pull" instead of slicing if you cooked it long enough.

If you have access to an electric meat slicer, that really makes life easier. To freeze them, you can stack them, but you need 2 slices of wax paper between each portion. Or you can freeze the stacks individually or individually bag them.

[Carley]

Originally Posted by simplehome

I also did this with ham recently. I weighed the (very thin) sliced ham, after using my parents' meat slicer, then packed it in the same weight as the store packages. My mistake was that I put a piece of waxed paper in-between the sections, and this did NOT come off unless thawed. I would recommend perhaps freezing each section of slices separately on a baking sheet in the freezer, then re-packaging them all together.

Oh I did that before too! Freezer Paper is totally different from Wax Paper! MUCH larger roll. Get some!

When I make a roast I slice off thick slices (that's how we roll). You can put them on a cooling rack in the freezer, but I've had luck just laying them flat in their freezer bag. 4 big ol slices fit in the bag & that's usually what we use in a time.

I don't know how long it lasts because we use the cooked meat for quick meals (throw turkey/chicken into macncheese, beef for tacos etc) so it's gone within a month!