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| Tomato and Ground Beef Faux Risotto |
Start by reheating the ground beef. I like to do this by taking the frozen beef out of the bag and putting it into a large skillet with a bit of water. It takes about 10 minutes of cooking covered on medium high to get the beef from frozen to hot and ready to use.
While that's reheating, grab a saucepan and pour a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes into it. Add 3ish cups water and put that on medium. Once it starts getting a little bubbly, turn it down to a simmer.
Take the cover off of the beef. Add 1/4 cup cooking sherry (or white wine, if you have it, but I don't keep white wine around the house). Add 1 cup uncooked rice (full disclosure - Smitten Kitchen calls for Arborio rice, and I just use plain old short grain white rice, which is why I call mine faux risotto), and stir to coat it in all the beefy juices.
Add about 2 cups of the tomato/water mixture to the beef. Cook until it's mostly absorbed, which should take 5-10 minutes. Keep adding the tomato/water mixture, about a cup at a time, until the rice is cooked. Stir lots, or you might end up with rice crust on the bottom of the pan.
Once the rice is fully cooked, add spinach. I like to use a bag (or two, if I'm feeling particularly healthy) of baby spinach. Smitten Kitchen says to remove the pan from the heat before doing this, but since I don't chop the spinach (why bother?), I like to keep it on the heat to cook it quickly). The spinach should wilt down pretty quickly, stir it in and remove it from the heat.
Add 1-2 tbsp. butter or margarine and 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese. To serve, I like to top with more parm and salt and pepper to taste.
The nice things about this recipe are:
1. You can substitute at will. If you prefer pork sausage, or ground turkey, or vegetarian ground "meat", you can use any of those. You can also add spices, use more or less spinach/cheese/butter, just to name a few options.
2. It's delicious. Cheese, meat, and veggies, yum!
3. It's healthy(ish). You can decide how healthy your meat is, and adding lots of veggies (like my additions of shredded carrots and chopped onion to the beef, as well as spinach to the dish) makes it a more balanced meal than many other options.
4. My 14-month old loves it!
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| She proceeded to eat all of that. |
