Tag Archives: beef

Eggplant Boats

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Sometimes I buy random things at the grocery store without a plan. When I picked up these cute little mini eggplants I wasn’t quite sure what I felt like making. I didn’t feel like making more spicy babaganoush, so I made up this recipe using things I had on hand. I think this was the first dish I made with my beef delivery. Yeah, it’s been in the hopper for a while…

Eggplant Boats – serves 4-6

  • 4 small eggplants, cut in half
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
  • one small onion, chopped
  • 1/4 cup of basil, chopped
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  • one pound of ground beef

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix together chopped tomatoes, basil, garlic, onion. Drizzle on some olive oil. Let it sit while you finish prepping.

Slice your eggplants in half and scoop out the flesh. I scored them with a knife to make this easier.

All scooped out.

You could bake them to soften them up, but I put mine in a pan for a while, brushed with some oil. Cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes.

Mix the eggplant innards with the tomato mixture

Toss it all in a pan and reduce, as the tomatoes will let off some liquid.

Add ground beef and continue to cook until it is browned. It’s okay if it’s still a bit pink in spots because it will continue to cook in the oven.

Place your hollowed out eggplants in a pan

Fill with the mixture and top with cheese (optional). Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes, or until the eggplant is soft all the way through.

Serve hot. With a cold drink.

 

Bacon Mushroom Burgers

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So I’ve never really been a burger fan. Until recently! Now I’m excited by all the burger possibilities. I like lots of toppings on my burgers, too! But all those pesky toppings sometimes fall off, especially when you are eating it sans-pain (that’s bread-free, fools!), like I do. To continue my love affair with the NomNomPaleo.com ipad app, this was inspired by a recipe there for “Big-O Bacon Burgers”

Chop up the ingredients and put them IN the burger!

Bacon mushroom burgers – makes 6

  • 1 lb grass fed ground beef
  • 6 slices of bacon
  • 1/2 lb of mushrooms (maybe more, maybe less?)

This is simple. Chop all the ingredients and mix them with the beef. Don’t do as I do in the pictures. I want you to chop the ingredients fairly small. The recipe on the iPad app pulses the bacon in the food processor. I think I will do that next time. Mix it all together and form into patties. BBQ them!

I sauteed the mushrooms and bacon before I added them to the beef. I want my bacon nice and crispy.

Toss them on the grill. Look at those flames. That’s called a fire from dripping bacon grease, yes it is!

Serve on a bed of lettuce. I added tomato, onion and dijon to mine. The rest of the family had theirs on buns. Yummo.

Beef Jerky!

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I love beef jerky! MMM JERKY! I whipped up some jerky in an attempt to stock my pantry and fridge with snacks. Classes resume tomorrow so I will need fuel to get me through my days which are about to get a wee bit longer and busier.

I always lose my go-to jerky recipe. I keep pinning it but can never find it when it’s time to make the jerky. This time, I wrote down my modifications… and then thought after the fact, DUH, I should blog it! So no progress pics because this was more of an afterthought. I follow the recipe pretty closely, but use different quantities to result in a slightly different and more robust flavour.

Beef Jerky – modified from latestinpaleo.com

  • 1 inside round steak (mine was about 450g, or one pound). You can use any lean cut of meat with the visible fat trimmed. Flank steak works well.
  • 1/4 cup tamari, coconut aminos, or soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2 T Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 T liquid smoke (optional)
  • 1 T each of onion powder and granulated garlic
  • 1 t cayenne pepper or hot smoked paprika
  • hot pepper flakes (optional)

Mix all ingredients together for the marinade.

Approximately one hour before you are ready to cut your beef, put it in the freezer to harden slightly. This makes it easier to cut. Using a very sharp knife, cut thinly into strips. You can go with or against the grain. I tend to go with the grain. Against the grain makes it a different texture, almost more crumbly (weird, I know). Throw your marinade into a container with your beef strips. Mix around and leave in the fridge overnight.

In the morning, drain the meat and pat dry. Lay out on the racks of your dehydrator and turn on. Try not to let it touch. You can also sprinkle more red pepper flakes on the meat, at this time, but Mr. Foodie and the Kiddo find it too spicy when I do this. I put my dehydrator at about 150-160 degrees Fahrenheit. Begin checking on it after 3 hours or so. If you peek in you can see it starting to dry. I can never resist tasting it as we go along as the smaller pieces finish before the larger pieces. It takes usually 4-8 hours to cook with the smaller, thinner pieces finishing faster than the bigger ones. I just remove them as they are done and leave the ones that take longer on longer. Easy.     

Italian Sausage Stew

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I love sausage. A lot. Italian, bratwurst, Polish, chorizo, garlic, fresh, cured, pepperoni, pepperettes… links, patties blablabla. I loooove sausage. Now, get your minds out of the gutter. I’m talking about the delicious, flavorful meat! My professed and unabashed love for sausage has been the butt of many jokes and many awkward moments.

Looking in my fridge the other day I had half a pound of ground beef, and half a pound of ground pork. I needed a recipe to use it up. Because I’m obsessed with Well Fed, I flipped through it in hopes of inspiration. Bingo. Italian Sausage Seasoning. Well Fed has this uncanny knack for making the simplest ingredients (lonely abandoned ground meat) into a flavour party. Seriously, what are you waiting for? Go buy it or at least read the 30 page free sampler.

Using these delicious sausage flavours, I created a thick stew, almost like a chili. Now, given that we got a dump of snow last night (ugh), it feels like this is an appropriate dish for today! Warm, spicy and stick to your ribs goodness.

Italian Sausage Seasoning from Well Fed

4 teaspoons dried parsley
1 tablespoon dried Italian herbs
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
2 teaspoons coarse (granulated) garlic powder
2 teaspoons paprika
4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seed (listed as optional, but in my humble opinion this ingredient is crucial in an Italian sausage! )

Mix these ingredients together and add a few spoons to your meat. I doubled the recipe and it filled a mason jar so I could use it again. Delish. You’ll want to mix it up well, of course.

Italian Sausage Stew

  • 1/2 lb of ground beef
  • 1/2lb of ground pork (you could use all beef or all pork if you wanted)
  • 1/2 a medium onion, chopped
  • 1 c of frozen chopped spinach or kale
  • one can of diced tomatoes (the large-ish ones)
  • one small can of tomato paste
  • vegetable broth, as needed

Add a few big spoons of the seasoning to your pan with the meat. Cook over medium heat until browned.

Add the tomatoes, paste, your frozen spinach (I used kale) and a bit of vegetable broth as needed to get your desired consistency. Simmer until reduced slightly and thickened.  Serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese. [I assume] this freezes really well. I ate this with a spoon, but you could also add some plain tomato sauce and use it as a sauce to top some zucchini noodles, butternut squash, or any other type of pasta.

 

Gluten Free Jamaican… tarts?

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I saw this recipe for gluten-free jamaican patties on pinterest, and after reading through decided that all the ingredients sounded good enough to me.  I became obsessed with making them. I thought about them constantly for two days until I went and picked up a scotch bonnet pepper and cream cheese so that I could make them.

I won’t write out all the ingredients and recipe, because you can find them on I Breathe… I’m hungry… and I actually did follow the recipe, but with one pretty significant change. That dough was a b@#h! I could not roll it out without it crumbling apart! It was pretty disastrous, actually. I was about to throw it out and just eat the yummy filling when I thought about cramming them into muffin tins to make Jamaican-patty inspired muffin tart things. Ahhh, success.

They aren’t incredibly pretty, but they sure did taste good. Here’s how the process looked.

Spices!

Scotch Bonnet Pepper. Yes, I am wearing rubber gloves, and you should too. If you don’t have them, go out and buy them before you dare cut into that pepper. A Scotch Bonnet is HOT. To quote my good friend Wikipedia, “Most Scotch Bonnets have a heat rating of 100,000–350,000 Scoville Units. For comparison, most jalapeño peppers have a heat rating of 2,500 to 8,000 on the Scoville scale.” If you get that heat in your hands or eyes it will hurt. Ask my mom about the time I cut a habanero pepper without gloves and then touched my face. She walked into me smearing sour cream all over my face to try to neutralize the burn. True story.

Pureeing the onion, pepper and garlic with some water

Adding the mixture to the meat

Spices added!

Making that “dough”. Ugh.

My improvisation

Ready for the oven. You aren’t cooking anything here, so really it’s just to heat it up and make the dough crispy.

I don’t think I will ever make these again, but if anyone does and gets them to look like an actual Jamaican patty, do let me know. The filling was delicious, however. It might be really delicious inside a curry flavoured Pure wrap .

Update: These froze pretty well. They were a bit crumbly, and I ate them with a fork, but no softer/crumbly than they were the first time around. I froze them in packages of two, took it out of the freezer the night before and thawed in my lunch bag overnight, microwaved one minute.

Gyros Meatballs and Tzatziki sauce

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I love Greek food. How could you not? So full of freshness and flavours. Feta cheese, yogurt, tomato, cucumber, dill, garlic.. Oh baby. Sure, a paleo purist would balk at the mention of yogurt and feta, so good thing I’m not one of them! ;) My mom and I mourned the loss of this wonderful Greek place near the airport here that we would always go to when I picked her up for visits. They had the most delicious gyros. I love gyros. And Shawarma too for that matter. Every time I see that delightful meat spinning around on a spit I exclaim that I really want a giant meat spit for my kitchen. Alas, they are probably expensive, impractical and not to mention dangerous with a wee one around. I did build a custom coffee bar into my home, but a meat roasting station might be a bit excessive. Not to mention not so great for resale, no?

Inspired by ground lamb on markdown sale at the grocery store tonight ($10/lb regular price, and even tonight I paid $8 OMG!) and from the delicious Deconstructed Gyros Salad from The Clothes Make the Girl (do we see a theme here? I may possibly have a foodie crush…), I set out to make some gyros flavours in my own kitchen.

Gyros Meatballs: Makes approximately 4 dozen

  • 1 lb extra lean ground beef
  • 1 lb ground lamb
  • 1 Tbsp dried mint leaves
  • 1 tsp dried oregano leaves
  • 1 Tbsp ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp cayenne
  • 1 Tbsp coarse (granulated) garlic powder
  • 1 tsp tablespoon salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 Tbsp coconut flour (could probably omit…)

Gather your spices. It seems like a lot, but once you stock your spice cupboard you’ll find so much use for it. Nothing here is overly exotic and should be found at your local grocery store

Add your lamb and beef to a big bowl. Crack your egg over it, toss in your coconut flour and spices.

And mix. Mix mix mix. Use your hands. Pound the crap out of it. Do not be afraid of the slimyness that is raw meat. You will wash your hands later! (sidenote, HOW do food bloggers take photos? I had to pause so many times to wash my hands so I could grab my camera, and I even recruited my husband to take a few of the shots. He thought I was nuts, bien sur).

Use a spoon (or a handy dandy scoop if you have one!) to portion out the meat. Roll gently with your hands to create a ball.

Lay out all your meatballs on a tray. I had initially planned to bake them, but as I was impatiently waiting the oven to heat up I turned on the cast iron pan. Put it on high to heat, but you’ll gradually turn down the heat as it warms up. You’ll want to cook these on medium-ish heat. Turns out, this was a perfect way to cook them and get those nice caramelish crispy bits all over, like a real gyros!

I had quite the little assembly line going to get these babies in and out of the pan. Wear an apron. Not only are they super cute and very underappreciated, they will save your hideously overpriced but oh so cute Lululemon tank top that you had to have clothes from getting splattered with grease. The meatballs will take about 8-10 minutes to cook. Use your trusty thermometer to test them out if you aren’t sure if they are done. Or sacrifice one and cut it open and eat it to find out!

I also made some tzatziki sauce to go on top. This was simple. Greek yogurt, grated cucumber, granulated garlic, and chopped dill. That’s it, that’s all.

Put your cooked meatballs on a slice of lettuce with tzatziki, tomato, and thinly sliced red onion. Or if you’re the gluten-eating type, these would be delicious on a warmed pita. These are delicious hot or cold. I froze most of them for weeknight meals, but there are some packed with a salad for my lunch tomorrow. Can’t wait!