Easy Recipes for Ground Beef

A great dinner doesn't need to cost a lot of money and with easy recipes for ground beef, dinner is just a few minutes away.

Where's The Beef?

Stretching your dinner dollars can be tasty and easy. One great way to make a fabulous and affordable dinner is to use ground beef. Ground beef is inexpensive and versatile. It can be made into meatballs, meatloaf, and even a pie.

When shopping for ground beef for most recipes, you should look for ground chuck with 30 percent fat. I know that in today's diet-conscious world, fat is something to be avoided. But, any beef with less fat will end up being dry and tasteless before it is done cooking. You can and should drain off any fat released during the cooking but the flavor will stay with the meat. Ground chuck is a very good choice for any ground beef recipe that affords the meat a chance to drain the fat while it cooks.

For other easy recipes for ground beef that cook the beef in a pan, like a casserole or hamburger pie, a leaner ground beef is needed because the fat has nowhere to drain and collects in the pan, which results in a greasy dinner and not a tasty meal. For these kinds of recipes, a leaner ground beef is the best way to go.

Either way, your butcher should be able to advise you as to which kind of ground beef is the best for your recipe. If your market doesn't have a butcher available to talk to, you can just go with the hamburger mix, which is usually a ground mix of the scraps from the other cuts and can contain some very good cuts of meat.

Hamburger Pie

Whether you call it hamburger pie, cheeseburger pie, cheeseburger casserole, or just plain dinner, this is one of the best easy recipes for ground beef that I have ever found. My sister used to make this recipe and I always managed to get myself invited over for dinner when she was cooking her cheeseburger pie.

I like to sweat the onions before adding them to the recipe. Sweating is when you slowly cook the onions over a low heat until they become soft and translucent. The best way to do this is by dicing the onions and then placing them in a pan with a little vegetable oil and sprinkling them with salt. Place the pan over low heat and let them cook. Stir the onions occasionally. Once the onions are very soft and rather clear, you are ready to add them to your pie.

This recipe calls for 3 cloves of minced garlic. For the best flavor, I like to add half of the garlic to the onions just before they are finished sweating. This brings out the garlic flavor but tempers it with the sweetness of the sweated onion.

Ingredients

• 1 pound of ground beef
• ½ cup of milk (or cream if you are not too worried about calories)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3 cloves of garlic, crushed in a press
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
• ¼ teaspoon dried thyme
• ¼ teaspoon dried oregano
• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• ½ cup ketchup
• 1 small onion diced
• 1 cup of Kalamata olives, diced
• ¼ cup seeded, diced tomatoes
• 1 ½ cups sharp cheddar cheese

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Mix together the ground beef, milk, beaten egg, half of the garlic salt, basil, thyme, oregano, and pepper.
3. Press into a 9-inch pie pan.
4. Let rest in refrigerator.
5. Sweat the onions as described above.
6. Just before you are done sweating the onions, add the remaining garlic.
7. Pour the ketchup over the meat.
8. Place the onions in the pie pan over the ketchup.
9. Next add the olives, followed by the tomatoes.
10. Cover with the cheese.
11. Bake uncovered for 30-40 minutes.
12. Let cool before serving.
13. You can add mushrooms if you like. Any mushroom will do, but I have found that button, Cremini, or even Portobello mushrooms add great flavor to this casserole. For extra flavor, try sautéing them before adding them to the recipe.

Easy Recipes for Ground Beef

Other easy recipes for ground beef can include Shepherd's pie as well as any number of soups and casseroles.