K's Famous Ground Beef Stir-Fry

March is National Frozen Foods month and frozen foods are on sale and retailers are offering coupons every day on fantastic items. This is a great recipe to use some frozen green beans, frozen onions, or even frozen ginger. My friend K taught me to make this dish many moons ago and it is a perennial favorite in our house!

Ingredients:

1 pound hamburger meat
1 14-16 oz. package of frozen green beans
salt, pepper, red pepper flakes
1 TB stir-fry sauce OR hoisin sauce OR apricot jelly
1/2 inch of peeled and minced fresh ginger OR equivalent ginger from a tube
1/2 of a chopped onion (optional)
Brown rice made according to package directions
Olive or sesame oil
Soy sauce

Start your rice on the stove top. We make brown rice which takes about 45 minutes so I wait until the the rice is about half cooked before I start cooking the rest of the meal. You can use the intervening time to chop up your garlic, ginger or onions as needed.

Take a pound of hamburger meat, season it with salt, pepper and a few red pepper flakes (optional.) Cook in a nicely seasoned iron skillet or other non-stick pan. If you are using a low fat kind of ground beef you may need to add a tablespoon of oil or fat to the pan. Once the meat has been fairly well browned but not cooked through yet add several dashes of soy sauce, a half inch of minced fresh ginger and two minced garlic cloves. When the meat is cooked through, set it aside in a bowl. In the same pan add a bit more oil and sauteed your onions if you are using them, then add the frozen green beans, season with a heavy pinch of salt and place a lid over the pan and let it steam/cook on medium high heat for 3-5 minutes. Remove the lid and stir the vegetables, hit them with a bit of soy sauce, a tablespoon of hoisin or stir-fry sauce or even a dab of apricot jelly (tonight I used a sample I received in the mail of Sweet Chili Sauce). Add meat mixture back to pan, stir again and replace the lid and turn off the heat but leave it on the burner as the rice finishes. When all items are cooked serve rice topped with stir-fry mixture and enjoy!

Dinner redux

I had a big weekend. Family Fun Day event at the Community Park Saturday afternoon, party on Saturday night, Sunday morning church and Sunday school, Sunday afternoon cleaning out the shed and re-organizing it (after we discovered a snake in there), then calming down and stopping screaming, then the darling girl's basketball game, then back to the shed, then going to see a friend's new baby. And now dinner!

The best thing about parties is leftover party food, am I right? I took the veggies off the kabobs and started stir-frying them in a pan with olive oil and spicy sesame seed oil. I shredded a bit of red cabbage and added that to the pot and added some salt and pepper and soy sauce. When everything got nice and soft I added the bag of boil in bag rice I'd made. At the very last I added the chicken teriyaki kebab meat and stirred everything together.

You know what? Fun makes me tired! Goodnight!