Living Well

While there’s a lot of taste satisfaction with roasted or slow BBQed meats – who has the time for these, even on weekends these days?

By using ground turkey, chicken, pork – individually or blended combos – along with the classic ground beef; you can vary your dinner options with a minimum of on-hand components.

Serve with salad, veggies and your fave starch – potatoes or rice or pasta.

Simple Burgers

Into your ground meat, mix chopped onion, salt and pepper. Fry into patties and stack them on a platter in the oven so they stay hot.

In the same frying pan, add to the grease one half cup of cream and three tablespoons of bottled sauce. Stir and simmer.

Pull out the platter of patties and pour the sauce over the patties.

In addition to varying the meat used, there’s a huge selection of sauces available from a wide range of cuisines.

The tried and true English Classic Worcestershire, American classic BBQ or ketchup are excellent choices. But to really perk up the taste buds, be creative and try sauces from a variety of cuisines:

• Indian or Thai curries,
• Butter chicken,
• Korean BBQ,
• Sour Cherry,
• Teriyaki and other soy sauces;
• Chipotle and other chillis
• Fancy or spicy mustards

Speed Balls

Mix together:

1 lb ground beef

2 tbsp breadcrumbs (or try Japanese panko crumbs)

1/2 cup milk

Shape into balls and pan fry in butter until browned.

Sprinkle a package of dry onion soup and 1 cup of water.

Mix the balls around to stir in the powder, but don’t break the balls.

While it simmers, you can microwave yams or potatoes or prepare fast cooking rice.

Cheesey Burgers

Prepare your ground meat as you’d do for your fave burger seasonings.

Make the patties very thin and line them up in pairs.

Down one line of patties, put a thin slice of onion and a slice of your favorite cheese. Make sure you’ve got about a 1/2 in around the edge for sealing. You don’t want the cheese to leak out.

Transfer the other line of patties on top of the onion/cheese patty and crimp the edges together.

Fry, boil or BBQ.

Fast Skillet Dinner

I know, it’s a lot to ask for 2 things at once, but you can do the rice first, then as it boils – it’s cooking itself while you cook the meat.

Cook a half cup of rice while you fry one pound of crumbled ground beef with 2 chopped onions in 2 tbsp butter.

Once the beef is browned and the rice is puffed, toss the rice on top of the meat mixture.

Add:

1.5 cups of tinned tomatoes

0.5 tsp mustard

0.5 tsp chili power

0.5 tsp salt

0.25 tsp pepper

1 package of frozen veg – peas, beans, corn, carrot or a mix!

Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes

Enjoy – burgers are absolutely a good enough thing for dinner.

NancyWh