Freezable All Purpose Ground Beef with Veggies

We all know fresh food is the best, but sometimes you’re too busy or too tired to whip up a culinary masterpiece completely from scratch. And that’s OK. Just please don’t abandon all hope and resort to fast food. No, don’t do it. With a little preparation, you can pull something quick, easy, and nutritious out of your fridge that won’t negatively impact your health like fast food would. Plus, it’s likely to be much cheaper and tastier. This recipe is a good place to start while you’re learning the do’s and don’ts of make ahead cooking. It’s also a good way to smuggle extra veggies in on picky eaters. You can separate the beef into containers that hold single, double, or family sized portions, then freeze it for up to a month or refrigerate it for up to a week. Whether you’re making chili, tacos, sloppy Joes, casseroles, or stews, or even a salad, your meat will already be browned and seasoned. Simply add the rest of the ingredients and reheat.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. grass-fed ground beef
• 2 tsp. sea salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 1/2 tsp. paprika
• 4 Tbsps. organic coconut oil
• 4 cloves fresh garlic, diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 handful of fresh parsley
• 1 cup mushrooms
• 3 carrots, diced 
• 4 celery sticks, diced
• 1 bell pepper, diced

Directions:

1. Put 4 Tbsps. coconut oil in a sauce pan to heat up while you chop your vegetables.
2. Loosely chop all the vegetables and blend them into very small pieces in a food processor or blender. Another alternative is using a knife and some elbow grease to chop them into finely diced pieces.
3. Use a large mixing bowl to stir the vegetables and seasonings into the ground beef. To use this recipe for hamburgers, form the meat into patties instead of breaking it apart before cooking it.
4. Cook the meat mixture in the pan over medium heat for about 15 minutes, covered with a lid, until no pink or blood shows in the ground beef. If you use grass-fed ground beef, there isn’t any need to drain the fat off the meat, since it’s full of omega-3’s instead of toxins. Keep the fat and you’ll keep more flavor for later.
5. Divide the meat into the size of portions that you want, then store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week or in the freezer for up to a month.

27 Jan This entry was published on January 27, 2015 at 10:42 pm. It’s filed under Healthy eating, Recipes, Wellness and tagged Food, Grass-fed, Healthy eating, Nutrition, Organic Produce, Recipes, Wellness. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.