When you buy a side or a quarter of beef off a cow, you usually get about 60-70% ground beef, depending on the other cuts. This might seem overwhelming, but it’s also part of the reason steaks are so expensive and ground beef can be so inexpensive. It’s a matter of quantity.

Below we’ve listed some home-style ways to use up your ground beef, as well as some more adventurous ideas that we’ve come across in our quest to make ground beef more exciting. We’ve found that recipes that call for ground lamb, can usually be made with ground beef without compromising the taste. Some of the recipes below are ones in which we’ve successfully made this substitution.

• Spaghetti and meatballs
• Cocktail meatballs
• Agrodolce meatballs
• Swedish meatballs
• Shepherd’s pie
• Meatloaf
• Bolognese Sauce or meat sauce (use it to make homemade lasagna, or stuffed shells)
• Stuffed bell peppers or zucchini or eggplant
• Sloppy joes
• Hamburgers
• Ground beef tacos
• Cabbage rolls
• Chili con carne

Or try something a little different

• Pastitsio- ground beef pasta casserole
• Beef and potato empanadas
• Jamaican beef patties
• Braised eggs with beef, smoked aubergine and tomato
• Korean beef
• Lahmacun- Turkish pizza with spicy minced beef and salad topping
• Cuban beef casserole with corn-scallion biscuit topping
• Beef tamale pie with cornmeal crust
• Adana kebabs– turkish ground lamb kebabs
• Gyros
• Japanese-style dumplings