Dirty Rice | RV Cooking & Healthy RV Recipes #17

What's up guys? I'm Christine with Irene Iron Fitness. Today Aaron and I are at the Bridger Teton National Forest where we've been getting some free camping on with a spectacular view right out our door of the Teton Mountains. And I'm going to whip up some dirty rice because we will be hitting the road tomorrow and it's going to be a long travel day and I want to have food prepped so that when we're driving I have something that I can grab and go. So let's get cooking. So here's the rundown. For this dish we're going to use ground beef. I have 85. I was actually hoping to find a leaner beef but they didn't sell it. They were offering buffalo at the store for $14 a pound which is asinine. I'm not going to pay that so I got the 85% and it will be delicious. I'm using some jasmine rice that I already have prepped. You could use some cooked rice if you're you know make it all from scratch but I already have some made up. And then I'll be using the holy trinity of Cajun cooking which is green bell pepper, some onion, and some celery. And I'm also going to add in jalapeno and Cajun spice. Now my Cajun spice I make myself and you can get my recipe or you can just pick up a pre-mixed Cajun spice container. So first we're going to start with browning the beef and then we'll just add in the other ingredients as it comes. So let's get started with the beef. Okay my pan is hot. I'm using my 10-inch skillet today and normally for this dish I would actually use my 12-inch skillet but my 12-inch skillet is getting kind of difficult to work with. It's getting sticky not like the non-stick is not working very good so I just don't feel like wrestling with it. So you just want to start with getting your beef in there break it up. Because I'm using the 85% I'm not adding any oil at all as this has plenty of fat. I'm actually just going to use the fat in the beef for the entire dish like to add to cook the vegetables and stuff later. So the first step is just let this break down a little bit get a little crumbly and once we get some crumble pieces then we're going to add in the holy trinity. Okay so this is crumbly if you want to take a look and see what stage this beef is at. At this point I'm going to add in the vegetables and I'm not going to drain out any of that grease. I'm just going to let it sit in there and use it for the recipe. I'm not going to add in any oil at all because I'm using this 85% so the fat that rendered out is going to help these vegetables cook down and when I add the rice in it's also going to flavor the rice. It's going to be really flavorful. You could use ground turkey if you wanted ground turkey or ground chicken. It's pretty versatile. So now we got these veggies in. Oh I also have one jalapeno. If you don't like spice don't put it in but I used to make this dish regularly back when I was in my traditional house and food prepping for work. I just really like it. It has a lot of flavor. It's really easy because it's a one skillet dish which is what I like to do in the van. So we're going to let this go for five minutes and then we are going to add in the spices and the rice. I can already tell my pan is going to be really crowded when I put that rice in but it's either struggle with a sticky pan or struggle with a small pan and I already washed that big pan once today. I don't feel like wrestling with it again. It's really hot here. I have a good breeze right now. It feels really nice. The weather here has been like low in the 40s, high in the 80s. So I've been freezing in the morning and really hot during the day but it's nice classic mountain weather and I'm not complaining. So we're going to let this hang out for a few minutes and then when we come back all we're going to do add in the spices, add in the rice and we're done. When you add the veggies in it's okay that your beef is not cooked through at this point because you're going to let those veggies cook for like five minutes or so. So while your veggies are softening then your beef or your turkey whatever it is is going to finish cooking through as well. So don't worry about getting your meat browned all the way through before you add that in because it's going to keep cooking along with the veg. Our veggies are at the point where I want them. They're nice and bright. The celery is green. The onions look soft and translucent. So I'm going to add in my seasoning. This is my homemade Cajun. It's really easy. I prefer to just mix my own like blends because I have so many seasonings up in my cupboard. I don't like to get the pre-mixed stuff because then I don't know I'm not using my individual seasonings as much and then I'm just wasting space. So I always make my own. That way too you can control it better. So let's say you don't like spicy then you can leave out cayenne and you can make it the way you want it. So a lot of people don't like spicy and that's okay. The stuff that's in this there's paprika, there's thyme, and there's garlic which when the garlic is cooked it's not spicy. But the smoked paprika and the thyme aren't spicy at all but they're really flavorful. And then when you're using a pre-packaged Cajun or a pre-mixed anything always look to see if there's salt in there because you don't want to be adding salt if there's already salt and vice versa. If it's missing salt you're going to want to add salt in. So my Cajun mix that I just put in does have salt. It does have pepper. You can go to the blog for the full principle recipe of all the ratios that I'm using for my spices. But that's just a tip. If you do buy the pre-made stuff always look at the salt and look at the individual ingredients on it to see if it's something maybe you already have at your house that you can make up without buying the extra one. Or if there's something in there that you don't like then save yourself the money. So we got the spices mixed in. Next I'm going to add in the rice. This is pre-cooked already and it's cold. And I really like adding cold rice to my stir fries because it breaks up a lot better. You could put hot freshly made rice in here but I find like the pre like if you're making it at the same time it's going to be a little clumpier when it's hot versus when it's cold it just breaks apart a lot better. And as I mentioned before there is a good amount of oil fat in here from the beef and it's going to be really flavorful. I would have preferred to have used a lean beef and added in like a teaspoon or two teaspoons of avocado oil. I would rather have the avocado oil or the olive oil versus the animal fat oil. But this is what I had to work with at the store so I'm going to work with it. And I am counting the macros in this dish and I am counting the fat that's in that high higher fat blend. So since I'm already tracking those fat grams there's no sense on like draining it out because then if you are counting it's going to be inaccurate when you draw out the fat from the beef. So here we are mixing this up and look at the beautiful colors from the seasoning that's going to change your rice up here. Traditionally in a dirty rice it gets its dirty look from chicken livers. So if you're into chicken livers or have access to it you can definitely buy some chicken livers and add that in. You would do like half a pound of beef and half a pound of chicken livers. But I'm not feeling that intense with this dish. I'm just going to use the beef and I'm going to be good with that. I would probably like chicken livers because I like everything but I'm just going to leave it at this. It's almost fully mixed. I'm all of that rice coated with the flavors get everything well incorporated. I am going to plate up one plate for me to eat now and then I'm going to have three containers for my lunches. You know what I like to say cook once eat twice at least. In this case I'm going to eat four times. If this is your only meal for the day or like you're only eating two meals or three meals you might want to have two servings of this. So it all depends on your goals for the day and what else you're eating that day. So we'll get this plated up and thank you so much for watching. If you like what you see hit the subscribe hit the like button and check us out next Wednesday for another recipe and fitness and eating tips and on Sundays we do travel and lifestyle videos with Aeron. Catch you next time. Bye.