One Pot Cheeseburger Casserole

Hello Dear Followers,

What we want you to do first, before you do anything else, is go into your pantry closet and toss out that box of Hamburger Helper and get ready to eat something healthier, cheesier and fulfilling for the whole family.

In full disclosure, Anna and I never had Hamburger Helper. What makes this dish special is that it isn’t filled with all of the preservatives you might find elsewhere, it’s made fresh from our kitchen.

This week, we made a cheeseburger casserole. It was enough for the whole family to enjoy, how lucky is Anna’s husband on Tuesday nights to have this dish when he comes home?

Ingredients

1 LB of ground beef

Parsley – chopped (for garnish)

1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons of tomato paste

3 1/2 cups of Cheddar Cheese – Shredded

1 box of elbow macaroni

4 cups of beef broth

1 tablespoon of all purpose Flour

1 yellow onion

2 cloves of garlic – minced

Salt and pepper

3/4 cup of sour cream

1/2 of whole milk

Instructions

Toss the shredded cheese with 1 Tablespoon of flour and set aside. It must be at room temperature when added to the pasta later.

Season the ground beef with desired amount of salt and pepper.

In a large pot over medium heat, cook and crumble the ground beef along with the onions. Note: A Dutch oven or large high-walled skillet works best.

Add minced garlic and cook for an additional minute.

Add the Worcestershire sauce and the tomato paste and stir until well-combined.

Add the beef broth and the uncooked macaroni, stir to combine.

Cover the pot and heat for 4 minutes. Uncover, stir briefly, replace the cover, and heat for 4 more minutes.

Stir in the room temperature sour cream and half of the milk. Only add the other half if desired.

Reduce the heat to low.

Gradually sprinkle in 2 ½ cups of the shredded cheddar, stirring as you do so.

Once the cheese is melted and you have a uniform consistency, top with the remaining cheese.

Replace the lid and heat for an additional 2-3 minutes, until the cheese is melted.

Top with parsley and serve!

Added tip: If you can find a way to add more flavor to this dish, it will definitely help the overall taste. Be creative!

Until next week!

Recipe by The Cozy Cook

Asian Lettuce Wraps

Hello Dear Followers,

We have to start off by saying that tonight’s dish caused a bit of anxiety for both Anna and I. It started at the grocery store and trying to find the ingredients to make our dish possible.

For Daniela, the anxiousness came because she wasn’t familiar with the grocery store she was in on top of not quickly finding the right ingredients.

We made Asian Lettuce Wraps. We’re sure you’re probably thinking, that’s too easy to cause that much anxiety, but you would really be surprised.

We missed two ingredients in this dish, but to our surprise, it was pretty good. It had a flavorful rich taste. We accompanied the lettuce wraps with rice, which was perfect.

Here is the recipe:

For the sauce: you’ll need one cup of water, 1/2 cup of soy sauce, 1/4 cup of sesame oil, six cloves of garlic (minced), one tablespoon of fresh ginger (minced) , 1/4 cup of brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of sriracha ( we couldn’t find this ingredient and it still came out pretty good), 1/4 cup of rice wine vinegar, 1/3 cup of scallions, sliced.

For the wraps: The recipe calls for tofu ( this is a vegetarian dish, but we substituted it with ground beef.) Fry the ground beef separately until it is light brown put some salt and pepper for taste and once it’s ready set it aside. One tablespoon of sesame oil, 1 medium yellow onion, diced, 2 1/2 cups of shiitake mushrooms, chopped (any mushrooms will do… we just wanted to follow it exactly), 1 tablespoon of garlic, minced, 8 oz of water chestnuts (1 can sliced, drained and finely chopped. One-third cup of scallions, sliced and one head of iceberg lettuce.

To make the sauce, combine the water, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, sriracha, brown sugar, rice wine vinegar, and scallions and stir. Set 1/2 cup of the sauce aside.

If you choose to go the tofu route, crumble the tofu in the marinade, cover and refrigerate for one hour.

In a medium wok or skillet over medium heat, add the sesame oil and the onion and cook for three minutes, until the onions are translucent. Add the mushrooms and garlic and cook for about five minutes, or until the mushrooms are tender.

Again, if you are using the tofu, add it to the pan and cook until the majority of the marinade cooks off. Add the water chestnuts and scallions. Pour in the reserved sauce. Toss to coat and cook until the just heated through. Transfer the tofu mixture to a medium bowl.

If you are going the ground beef route, you would do exactly as we mentioned above with the marinade.

Slice the core off the head of lettuce and separate into individual leaves. This recipe is from Buzzfeed Tasty. The recipe calls for rice noodles, that you can fry with canola oil in a separate frying pan, we couldn’t find it, but it was mainly used as a garnish.

What we realized with tonight’s dish is that all of that work and a bit of chaos can still put out a great dish. We also realized that in a year since we started this, we’re getting a lot better at the choices we’re making for the dishes we’re cooking.

Until next week!