Beef Taco Seasoning | RV Cooking & Healthy RV Recipes #32

What's up guys it's Kris with Irene Iron Fitness and today I'm gonna share my recipe that I use for beef taco seasoning. Keep watching. So today we're making beef taco meat. I'm gonna share my seasoning recipe that I use and really the topic for today is more so for prep and the importance of prep and getting comfortable using spices. So one of the things that I really love to eat on a weekly basis is beef taco meat and it's very easy to make. You just buy ground beef and you make your own seasoning at home. I love using my own seasoning mixes. I never buy those nasty packets. They're full of garbage. I have all my spices up here that I use space for so I put them to use and I love making my own tacos because then you can control the flavors. You can shake it up. You can make it whatever you want them to be but the number one thing to take home is when you prepare your proteins for the week and you have cooked proteins that are prepped in your fridge you are so much more likely to include them at every meal and you're so much more likely to stick to your to your goals for that week of eating healthy. So taco meat is great if you get sick of chicken. We all get burnt out of chicken and beef is great. I love to have 93% lean beef or leaner. It's really healthy to incorporate into your diet and get some variation of protein sources and you can use taco meat not only in tacos but you can use them in scrambled eggs, crustless quiche. You can use them in omelets. Those are some great breakfast ideas. You know a lot of people struggle with breakfast trying to get their target protein consumption in at breakfast time. I shoot for 20 to 30 grams of lean protein at every meal. So adding that into your breakfast is going to help boost it up without relying on fatty sausage or bacon. Other things that you can put this beef in. Fajita bowls, tostadas, salads, quinoa salads, pasta salads, green lettuce salads, enchilada casseroles, shepherd's pie, and fajita bowls. You can probably think of a handful of other things that you can throw this versatile meat into but the most important thing is that you have it in your fridge so that you can put it to use quickly and whip up something really fast. Now I really encourage to make a big batch of this. It takes you the same amount of time to make one pound of this that it does of four pounds of this. If you're cooking for yourself you might just want to do two pounds but if you're cooking for another spouse or partner or kids don't be afraid to do like four or five pounds at a time of this because if you're eating enough protein and other people in your family are sharing it you will go through it. So whip up a big batch at the beginning of your prep week and have some healthy food in the fridge that's ready to utilize. So let's get this started. I'm going to start up my pan and I'm going to get it warmed up. I'm just going to make a single batch today for the purpose of demonstration but I will talk about my spices. My taco spice is heavy on the paprika. It's a paprika based and let me tell you the best thing I ever did with paprika is switch to the smoky style. I used to just buy regular straight up paprika. I honestly didn't know that there are different variations of it and once I switched to smoky my life changed. It is so good. It just smells smoky. It adds an extra depth of flavor to whatever you put it in and I really like paprika because it adds just a nice color pop to your meat. So paprika is number one. You've got to have that for this recipe. The other spices that I'm throwing in you can be a little bit more loose with. You don't have to use the exact quantities that I use but to see those quantities go to my blog ireneironfitness.com. You can print it off, go to Pinterest, have a digital Rolodex of all of my recipes right at your fingertips. The other things I like to put in is cumin and coriander. I love coriander. It adds a nice bright floral citrusy fruity aroma. Chipotle chili. I love chipotle chili for the same reason that I like smoked paprika because it has a nice smoky effect to it. This is where I'm going to get my spice from. You could use regular chili powder, you could use cayenne, you could use red pepper flakes but something to give it a little bit of spice. Garlic, salt, pepper, and oregano and that's what I'm going to put into mine. I've shared this tip before but if you're on a budget and you're trying to build up your pantry closet and you just can't fathom buying all of these spices I really encourage you to go to the Hispanic aisles where they have these bulk packages. Some grocery stores have their own bulk branding spice where you don't need to get it in the Hispanic. The store just offers it as a regular bulk spice but I find that I really need to go to the Hispanic section to find these bulk spices and these are like $1.19 and some of these jars that you buy can be very expensive like six seven dollars a piece. If they're not on sale they can be robbery so I always try to find these and what I like to do is keep my jars and refill these so that they are still a nice like classy feeling spice jar and that's a great way to build up your spice pantry. All right so the pan is hot over medium high heat. I'm just using my 10 inch. If you are doubling, tripling, or quadrupling obviously use a big large skillet with tall walls so you can fit everything in without juggling overboard beef coming out of the pan. So just put your beef in and you want to break your beef up into the pan. Get it crumbly. Get it crumbled up and get it browned through and that's the first step. You want to get it all the way cooked brown and then add the spices in. Okay so that was literally like four minutes. That's all it took to brown this up and I like to have my meat browned up before I add the seasoning in so I can really see when it gets cooked through because you could make this recipe with like one pound of beef, one pound of turkey. You can mix beef with lamb. You can mix beef with pork. You don't have to do like a full triple thing of beef. You can mix in whatever you have and because you're seasoning it, it's going to taste really good. So don't be afraid to mix different types of proteins together while you're at it. But we have this done. I'm going to add in my spices and mix it up. So just in everything goes. This is where you might want to make some personal adjustments but I've been making this taco meat for so long I usually don't measure anything. I just throw it all in and it's so good. For me it's just a really nice change up from chicken because we do eat a lot of chicken. I like beef. I like to eat ground beef. I like to eat steaks. I like the lean versions and you know lean steak like sirloin and tenderloin can get expensive. So a nice lean ground beef is a nice budget friendly way to shift up your diet. Okay so you want to mix the spices in really well with the meat and get any more large chunks that are remaining in your beef broken down. I love to use this rubber spatula. I use it for 75-85% of my meals just because it really scrapes your pan. You prevent scorching. You don't waste anything. You want to get all this meat nicely coated and depending on your meat you might have a lot of liquid in your pan at this point. You might have zero liquid in your pan at this point. So this is where you might want to take like a quarter cup of water and add it in and mix it around to simmer and when you do that the water loosens up all of the spices so that it can then absorb into the meat and the meat sucks in those spices to flavor every morsel. So that's why you add the water in. If you have a little bit of residual moisture or fat from the meat you might not need to add the water and you will be able to tell if it looks really dry. You know you just need to add a little bit of water to get those spices incorporated and that's it. So like this is done at this point. You just put it into a big Tupperware for a bulk batch prep. Bulk batch prep is the easiest way to prep. So if this was four pounds of beef you just have a big container in your fridge throughout the week. Your family can dig in. You can dig in. You can reinvent it three times throughout the week for big meals and save yourself some time and feel good while you're doing it and enjoy what you're eating. So thank you so much for watching. If you have any questions on food prep or recipes drop a comment below. Hit that like. Hit that subscribe and meet me next week for a new recipe. Thanks so much for watching. Bye.