How many portions of bolognese or chilli do you get from 450g mince?

[AbsentmindedWoman]

Thinking of batch cooking a large pot and freezing some portions. It's only me that eats meat at home, so don't want any waste. Decent quality beef mince is about $7 a pound, how many portions would you get from this?

I have not cooked with mince for years and years!

I wouldn’t usually make a chilli or spag bol with just 400g of beef mince. I would however use 2 x 400g beef mince plus 1kg of soffrito (diced onion, carrot, leek etc) and make a huge batch of chilli / spag bol in my slow cooker (6 litre). 3 tins of toms…really bulk it out. I usually get 10 portions out of this - great for freezing portions.

Family of 4 here (2 adults, a hungry teen and picky 11 year old) and 500g normally makes a meal plus leftovers for eg baked potatoes the following day.

Eight, exactly 2 meals for the 4 of us, but I use lots of veg for bolognese and beans and chickpeas for chilli.

@NothingIsWrong

I feed 5 with that, and can squeeze a tomorrow lunch of leftovers portion as well.

However if I wanted to stretch it, I'd chuck a can of baked beans and some chilli powder, sweetcorn and an extra tin of tomatoes. Prob get 8 portions of that

This!

10-12 adult portions.

Bolognese would have onions, peppers, courgettes, mushrooms, 4 tins of tomatoes, tomato puree and seasonings. I would divide it between lasagne and spag bol.

Chilli would have onions, peppers, sweet potato or butternut squash, 2 tins of pinto beans, 4 tins tomatoes, tomato puree, seasonings. Serve with rice, make some into burritos, and make a cornbread topped pie.

6/8. I would pad it out with veg and beans or lentils.

Some of the things people are "padding" these meals out with (as opposed to adding them for flavour) are as expensive as spending the extra £1.50 in Asda and getting 600g-700g of mince!

@nocoolnamesleft

This is mumsnet. You could feed the 5000 with that. And still have leftovers.

That would be because they filled up on that huge metaphorical Mumsnet salad at lunchtime 🤣

@BulletTrain agreed, but I think the bulkier additions are to make for a bigger pile of food that'll go round more plates.

3

3-4 here

I would usually use 2 x 500g mince for batch cooking and with veg added, would get 6 portions of bolognese, 8 of chili

4-6 for bolognese. 6-8 for chilli.

If it’s spag be. 8-10 portions. But i add carrots, onions, courgette, aubergine, mushrooms and sometimes red peppers. Then I add 2 jars of dolmio and 2 tins of chopped tomatoes plus a lot of seasoning and spices. For chilli 10 potions as I add 2 cans of kidney beans

It’s not necessarily about cost. I generally use mince-based meals as ‘filler’ meals, in a way. It’s about delicious food but without a huge amount of meat, so that there’s a better balance overall. The cost matters too but it’s not the only motivation. Yesterday we had a roast beef joint, a lovely piece of meat. £22. We had very generous portions, because that’s a real treat for us (the Yorkshire puddings turned out perfect, if I do say so myself!). There’s enough left over for at least 3 (generous) lunches and one more dinner. But it is a lot of money, and a lot of meat. It’s not good to eat that way every single day, or even every week, even though we’re both big meat lovers - we both have health conditions that we have to manage, no matter how fit and well we feel. So we mix it up quite carefully, ensuring that we get nutrients from as wide a range of foods as possible. I don’t have huge portions of pasta sauce because I don’t often eat pasta. I am happy with 100g and could take it down to 50g if we needed to. It’s still plenty of protein for a meal. I try to remember to have one vegetarian meal per week, partly to offset cost of the meat we buy but also for environmental and nutritional considerations. Whereas others might bulk every mince dish with pulses/legumes/vegetables and lower their meat intake that way as well as benefiting from the nutrients in the bulking agent(s).

We must have huge portions because I get 4 portions from 450g. Which makes each portion around 112g mince which seems a fair amount of meat to have with a meal. I make my bolognaise with passata, tinned tomatoes, mushrooms, and a blended onion (DP doesn't like the entire of onions but I need the taste), and the obvious like garlic, oxo, seasonings. If I grate a couple of carrots into it, I might get 5 portions.

I much prefer a bigger portion of meat than pasta, though. I find carbs don't keep me full for long, whereas protein does.

Add lentils too

What I meant with the portion size is because I don’t eat pasta I don’t want to sit and eat my way through a huge portion of sauce, no matter how tasty it is, because it makes me miss pasta too much! So I might have a roasted aubergine and a reasonable serving of the sauce. It’s plenty, and very satisfying.

Not a mumsnet chicken but I’d easily get 10-I bulk both dishes out with lentils. Bolognaise has carrots and peppers etc and chilli both baked beans and kidney beans as well. And I use a soy mince not real-cheaper and better for the environment.

450 grams of mince made into a bolognese would feed one of my sons .

@TokenGinger

We must have huge portions because I get 4 portions from 450g. Which makes each portion around 112g mince which seems a fair amount of meat to have with a meal. I make my bolognaise with passata, tinned tomatoes, mushrooms, and a blended onion (DP doesn't like the entire of onions but I need the taste), and the obvious like garlic, oxo, seasonings. If I grate a couple of carrots into it, I might get 5 portions.

I much prefer a bigger portion of meat than pasta, though. I find carbs don't keep me full for long, whereas protein does.

You don't, you are quite normal, the competitive eeeking out of food on Mumsnet is ridiculous.

I don't understand the point of all this bulking out with lentils and whatnot.

Make proper bolognese that tastes like proper bolognese - 500g for 4 portions. Yum.

Next day make a pasta with tomato and vegetable sauce and eat that. Yum.

The day after that make a wonderful bowl of lentils. Yum yum.

Why make 12 portions of ersatz bolognese with a miserably small amount of meat? Just why?

There's 3 of us.... I always put extra tomatoes into spag bol then add beans and chillies etc to make half into chilli.

So I get 6 adult portions, 3 chilli and 3 spag bol

🙊 I could easily use that between just 2 adults…although now I try to be a bit more economical and would split it 3 ways (one meal in the freezer for shift work)!

if I use 2 tins of tomatoes plus onions etc, I'd get 6 or 7 portions of spag bol, and I might stretch it to 8 with more veg. That's adult sized portions.

450g could feed 10 portions easily if you bulk out with lots of veg and pulses, but then it stops being bolognese and starts being something else and does lose the meaty flavour.

A meat portion is usually around 200g, for a basic bolognese meat sauce without excessive bulking 450g would be 3-4 reasonable portions.