Ground Beef Recipe Roundup | Not a menu plan #20140215

This week, I have general ideas and plans, but I’m not doing a *real* menu plan. I still wanted to ramble on the internet a bit, so here we go! Note: Grammarly tells me that I use too many unnecessary commas.  If it really knew me, it would tell me that I use an excessive amount of hyperlinks, but you already knew that.

This week, being Valentine’s week, there were many wonderful sales at the grocery store. Fresh strawberries, steaks, chocolate cakes, and all the other foods-of-love. Ground beef was also on sale. It is not a food of love. It is something that I buy when it gets to a certain price (2.99/lb for ground chuck), and then squeeze into my meal rotation for variety. Everyone other than my youngest son is tired of burgers. No one wants ground beef in their tacos, they’d rather have a burrito with sliced-meat-of-some-sort. They still maintain they are not picky.

Everyone other than my youngest son is tired of burgers. No one wants ground beef in their tacos, they’d rather have a burrito with sliced-meat-of-some-sort. They still maintain they are not picky. Here, you can imagine that I am rolling my eyes, or more likely, that I am making a face that looks like something smells bad. We call in a stink face.

So, what do I do with ground beef that is actually well received? Here is a handy dandy list:

1. Most of the time I just make burgers and tell people to get over it. I occasionally add extra topics to try and amp up the tasty factor, but most often it’s just served with some salad and called dinner.
2. When I’m feeling really fancy and plan in advance, I make pie crust and then make pasties. This is rare, and happens at most about every three months.
3. Lasagna! I have yet to settle on a “real” recipe, usually, I just adapt whatever is on the back of the Creamette noodle box. This only happens if I can make it on a weekend day, and then reheat during the week.
4. More often than lasagna, stuffed shells with meatballs happen, but I add cooked/seasoned spinach to the stuffing mix. For the meatballs, I often get frozen and am less than satisfied with the result, but sometimes I’ll actually make them with this recipe, subbing in Panko breadcrumbs and Italian herbs. I’m not sure that this method is actually any easier than Lasagna, but it easily makes a double recipe so I can freeze a pan for later.
5. Meatloaf. I always add ketchup to the mix and on top, and I should really make this more. It’s probably happening this week.

The list of things I wish the rest of my household would enjoy is quite a bit longer. I generally try to not dwell on this too much, but I think it would be helpful to have a list of “stuff I should make just for my lunches, because I’m worth it” so here it is:

1. Stuffed peppers! I think these are rejected because of the watery-ness of the peppers, but I think they’d be great. Here’s one recipe I’d like to try, or maybe I could find some kind of stuffed poblano recipe with a bit more research.
2. Chili. The medium one loves it too, the big one gets heartburn, and it’s always too spicy for the little one. I really just need to make myself a smaller batch, and then freeze portions for later. My problem is that I can rarely make something that I prefer to Wendy’s chili, so maybe it’s time to start testing out knockoff recipes.
3. I would also make some kind of “taco pie” but that usually ends up giving me indigestion 😦
4. Cabbage roll casserole, but with the rice cooked on the side. I have a handwritten recipe that calls for ground beef, chopped onion, chopped cabbage, and Campbell’s tomato soup. It’s mighty tasty right out of the oven to me, but the texture bothers others and it doesn’t reheat particularly well.
5. Salsbury steak, Swedish meatballs, and beef stroganoff. I haven’t ever really attempted a recipe for these, but end up really really enjoying them when I happen to have them at Ikea, some hole-in-the-wall-diner, or if I splurge on a frozen dinner. The problem with making them is that I am resonably sure that I would be the only person eating it, and I don’t prefer these as leftovers.

Welp, that’s all for now. If you have a favorite ground beef recipe please share it with me!