Fun with Ground Beef

Well, since Mark has asked me more than once to actually share some of my recipes, I thought I'd take this opportunity to describe how I made dinner last night (and for several more days next week). This'll be a "three for one" topic - three different meals from one "block" of ground beef.

When I shop for groceries, I like to buy in bulk (I make a trip to Sam's about once a month for ground beef). I get 6-10 lbs of beef, and when I bring it home, I spend about 15 minutes separating the bulk into "hamburger-sized" patties. These I package in waxed paper and double-walled freezer bags, and stash in the freezer for later use.

I also take a couple pounds of the meat and automatically brown it on the stove. Depending on how much fat is in the beef, I drain it after browning, or just leave the little extra fat in the pan (the last batch I got was extraordinarily lean, with almost no extra pan drippings). This takes anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes, on medium, stirring infrequently.

If I'm making tacos/burritos that night, I then sprinkle the surface of the meat with a layer of chili powder, a light sprinkling of curry powder, and a good shake of garlic salt. Then I add a couple big scoops of fresh salsa, stir it all together, and serve it on large (warmed) flour tortillas with some shredded cheddar, more salsa, and a little sour cream. Nick loves these.

I think I've already described that "recipe," though. What I did last night was chop up a medium onion (fairly small dice), sweat the onion with a little butter in the skillet on medium heat, then add the ground beef (2-4 of the frozen "hamburger patties" that I've thawed in the microwave on "defrost" for about 5-10 minutes) and cook together. I made a big pan, and stirred in a whole jar of spaghetti sauce (I like the Ragu "chunky" varieties - I think it was mushroom & green pepper last night). While that was heating, I got out a 9"X13" rectangular pan and lined the bottom with lasagna noodles. I spooned on some of the meat mixture, then added some more sauce from another jar of marinara (this one was just mushroom, I think). Then I crumbled up some (frozen) spinach over the top of that. Added another layer of lasagna noodles (straight from the box), meat sauce, and additional sauce - followed by most of a container of large curd cottage cheese and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese; another layer of noodles, meat sauce, and additional sauce - topped with a generous sprinkling of mozzarella.

Then I covered the whole thing with aluminum foil and stuck it in the fridge.

Oh, and then I quick boiled a pot of water & angel hair pasta (about 5 minutes) and called Nick for dinner. I mixed the remainder of the "additional" sauce into the remaining meat sauce in the pan.

We also had garlic bread (a loaf of French bread I sliced and coated with a mixture of olive oil & garlic that was leftover from roasting the chicken on Tuesday) and leftover Stove Top with our "pasghetti" (as Nick calls it).

Some time later this week - probably Sunday evening - I'll preheat the oven to 350 and throw in the pan from the fridge. Bake the lasagna for about an hour - take off the foil and increase temp to 425 and bake for another 15 minutes until cheese is browned & bubbly... heat up a little more garlic bread, and viola - instant Italian dinner.

Mmmm... I'm hungry already.