A Taste of Home: Korean Beef

I needed a dinner recipe to take advantage of the pre-cooked ground beef I had in the freezer and this one fit the bill.  I figured Sonny D would probably like it for three reasons -- it's Korean, it's meat, and it's served with rice.    I liked the recipe since it didn't call for anything weird, we had everything at home already. 

Ground beef with rice.

Lemme just tell ya that I love having pre-cooked ground beef in the freezer.  It seems like pre-cooking your ground beef wouldn't save much time, but it totally does.  I pull it out the night before to let it defrost in the refrigerator and by the next day's dinner time it's pretty much fully defrosted and we're ready to roll.  It's easy to turn into taco meat, add BBQ sauce for loose meat sandwiches, or even a quick Asian-inspired dish like Inside Out Egg Roll Stir Fry.   

The star of the show, pre-cooked ground beef

Inspiration

Lizzy writes: Korean beef

The original poster likes her dish rather sweet, but we don't, so I reduced the brown sugar from 1/4 cup down to 2 tablespoons.  Otherwise the rest of the ingredients are exactly the same.  I wasn't clear if she meant "sprinkle it on your pizza" crushed red pepper or the Korean version called gochujaru.  I have the Korean version, so I went with that.  Gochujaru isn't spicy, so I knew I could use the full amount.

You could make a vegetarian version using textured vegetable protein or tempeh. 

Ingredients

The main ingredients

• 1 pound lean ground beef (mine was pre-cooked but feel free to cook it from raw)
• 2 T brown sugar 
• 1/4 cup soy sauce (I use low-sodium)
• 1 Tablespoon sesame oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced from a tube
• 1 teaspoon crushed red peppers (gochujaru)
• freshly ground black pepper pepper
• 2-3 cups brown rice, cooked (I made mine in the rice cooker at lunch and let it sit all afternoon on the 'keep warm' function)
• 1 bunch green onions, diced

Looks like plain ground beef, but there's lots of flavor in there!

Directions

Once your meat is browned (or defrosted), add the rest of the ingredients except the green onions.  Let it cook to fully warm up and thicken up a bit.  Serve over rice and top with green onions.

Verdict

Simple ingredients but so tasty!

I loved how quick this was to pull together.  Plus it was so flavorful!  Husband Jeff and I agreed that the flavoring/sauce would also work really well with veggies and crumbled tempeh (fermented soybeans, like a variation of tofu but looks more like ground beef).  Husband Jeff also said that it would make for some rockin' Asian tacos.   Sonny D was way more interested in rice but he did have some and seemed to like it.  Some days with a toddler you just can't tell what's going on.