Feeding for a family is an endless balancing act between cooking times, ingredient lists, picky eaters, the budget, and your time. Being able to prepare a meal when your schedule allows you can expand your cooking options and help your food budget.
You can cook all beef cuts, entrees and meals ahead of time with the right steps taken to ensure they remain safe to eat. Various storage methods and cooking preparations can influence the length of time the meat stays edible and how much quality it retains.
Can all beef cuts be made ahead of time
Basically, all beef cuts can be cooked ahead of time. Here is a list of the most popular beef cuts you can cook ahead of time:
| Can you cook beef ahead of time | ||
|---|---|---|
| BEEF CUT | Can you cook ahead of time | Note |
| Steak | Yes | Steaks can be made ahead of time, but keeping the rare medium state is a bit more challenging when it comes to reheating. |
| Fillet mignon | Yes | The same as with stakes goes for fillet mignon. |
| Tenderloin | Yes | Whole tenderloin is usually made medium-rare. You should be careful when reheating not to overcook it. You could also serve it as carpaccio. |
| Roast | Yes | The best options for cooking and reheating are chuck and shoulder roast. These will give you the best fall apart roast, and you can make it in a crockpot or oven. |
| Ground | Yes | Ground beef can easily be made ahead of time, especially if you are making meatballs, bolognese sauce, or patties. |
| Ribs | Yes | The longer you cook them the more tender they become. Reheating will make them even more tender. |
| Brisket | Yes | Smoking it in advance, and reheating smoked brisket can be done, but the reheating part will result in less juicy brisket if you smoked it for too long. You could also make brisket in beef bourguignon where the sauce keeps the meat juicy. |
| Shank | Yes | Shank is perfect for making ahead of time. It is best to make it in a stew. |
| Wellington | Yes | Wellington is made medium-rare. Reheating medium-rare wellington and keeping it medium rare can be done in the oven with a food thermometer. |
What if I mix beef with other ingredients
Aside from differences in quality, dried meats will spoil more slowly. Making beef jerky or drying it with salt cuts the amount of moisture and how much is exchanged with the meat, so it stays fresher.
A thick, juicy cut of steak in a rich sauce, on the other hand, is ripe for bacterial growth.
The answer also becomes more complicated if you include beef dishes like stew or rice since the other ingredients may influence how fast it spoils. For example, a leftover container of beef and shrimp teriyaki will go bad more quickly if the shrimp spurs bacteria growth that spreads.
What’s the best way to store pre-cooked beef
The most important thing you can do for preserving cooked beef is to limit its time at room temperature. As soon as the meal is done, start cooling it. Limiting its exposure to air also helps, but you do want to give it space to cool before putting it into the fridge or freezer to keep the overall temperature from shifting too much and disturbing other items.
Flash-freezing your meat reduces the amount of time that it can become contaminated in an environment with active bacteria. Letting the beef sit on the counter for an hour before putting it in the freezer will stop most of the bacteria, but there is a larger window for bacteria growth. Not everyone has a flash-freezer, but they can be worth it if you’re frequently making frozen meals or precooked ingredients and want to improve their quality.
Frozen cooked meats can remain safe to eat for years, although the quality does degrade over time. The loss of quality is less noticeable and easier to mask in ground beef than in a cooked steak, but freezer burn can eventually ruin the meat. If you want longevity for a wider variety of meats, it’s the best way to store them.
If you have limited freezer or fridge space, drying and vacuum-sealing jerky can create packets of protein that will last for months while sealed and a week or two once opened. These are the very edge of cooked beef options, though, and they’re not easy to incorporate into meals.
Lastly, quickly cooling the meal, covering it, and sticking it in the fridge is the best way to prep a meal meant to be eaten within a day or two. If you avoid foods that lose texture in the fridge, like fried ingredients, the difference might not even be noticeable to anyone who eats it.
Can you reheat cooked beef
As long as the meat is otherwise edible, there is no harm in reheating cooked beef. When reheating it, bring the cooked meat back up to 165º F (74º C) to remove any resurging bacteria. Freezing or cooling the meat will keep the bacteria from growing, but it doesn’t kill many of them.
How many times can you reheat cooked beef
Once you have reheated the meat once, the risk of it becoming contaminated and losing quality dramatically increases. Bacteria can find a home in the meat in between rounds of cooking and cooling, and you might not reheat some portions of the meat properly. Try to use as much of it as possible on the first reheat, and consider splitting it into smaller portion sizes to limit the number of reheats each bit receives.
How long does cooked beef stay edible
The amount of time that cooked beef stays edible will depend on how the meat was cooked and the steps that you take to preserve its integrity.
If you leave most cooked beef out on the counter, its integrity becomes questionable after just a couple of hours, and that time goes down to an hour in hotter locations that run over 90º F (32º C)
Refrigerated meals tend to stay good for 2 to 4 days, depending on the construction and how often they’re pulled out to grab a portion.
If you put the meat into the freezer before any of these spoiling events happen, the dish can reasonably last for up to three months. Freezers that see frequent use may bump that time downwards since the freezer is invaded by heat every time its drawer is opened.
How do you tell if cooked beef has gone bad
The best way to tell if cooked beef is bad is to follow the recommendations of groups, like the USDA or the DHHS’s food safety website.
A contaminated piece of meat is not always obvious, and the time-based guidelines help prevent deaths due to lurking bacteria.
Extreme cases will make themselves known with rancid smells, filmy or slimy liquids, and various molds. If it’s hard for you to detect any of these, then there’s a lower risk that the meat is contaminated.
Sometimes, it can be hard to tell if your nose is imagining a smell, especially if you’ve previously had spoiled meat, so don’t be afraid to ask for second opinions.
If you’re checking frozen beef, you may notice darker spots around the edges where the beef gets freezer burn. These parts are damaged and will suffer in quality, but they don’t make the entire portion of beef inedible.
Cooked beef meals can serve as prepared options
With the right cautionary steps, it is fairly easy to create a cooked beef meal ahead of time that is tasty without putting anyone’s health at risk. The head start you get depends on the type of meal and the intent. You can go for long-term storage of items like meatballs in the freezer to make a fast spaghetti meal without fresh meat on hand. You could also prepare a beef stew to bring to the potluck that’s a couple of days away.
