Beef Orzo Skillet (Manestra) | RV Cooking & Healthy RV Recipes #26

What's up guys it's Christine with Irene Iron Fitness and today I'm going to make a beef with orzo skillet. Keep watching. So this is yet another one pot meal. I'm calling it a skillet because it has an equal balance of macros. This will come in at about 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat, which on its own is a very well-rounded and healthy dish. I'm actually using my dutch oven because it has a tight fitting lid. I do not have a lid that goes on my frying pans, otherwise I definitely would use a frying pan if I had a lid and then it would be a true skillet. But let's run over the ingredients really fast. I'm using ground beef for this recipe. This one is 90% lean. I'm using chopped garlic and chopped onion, my usual go-to's to create any delicious meal. I have olive oil that I'll use for that. I have some spices, salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, cinnamon, paprika, mint. For the full ratios of these and everything else go check out my blog ireneironfitness.com. And then some canned goods, diced tomatoes, beef broth, tomato sauce. And for the carb, I'm using orzo. Orzo is a pasta. It appears to look like a rice, but it is actually a pasta. So if you are watching gluten or gluten intolerant, this might not work for you. But I like the orzo. It's very easy to work with. We're going to end up throwing it right in here, putting the lid on to simmer, and it's just going to cook right up inside. Some chopped spinach I'm going to throw in at the very end. It's going to add a nice color pop and some micronutrients. And apple cider vinegar I have. You could use like a red wine vinegar. And then feta cheese for the top. Now when you're buying feta, I recommend to always buy it in the brick like you see here. Don't get the pre-crumbled feta. It just isn't as good. And also try to spend like an extra buck or a few so that you're not getting the cheapest version out there. I've done it before and I've always regretted it. It just gives you that squeaky non-flavorful feta. And if you're going to go and like garnish with the cheese, make it a good one so that you really enjoy it. We're just going to use a little bit per serving, like half an ounce on the top of the bowl. And the spinach with the feta and the flavors in this just go so well. So first things first, let's get our pan on medium-high heat so that we can start the onions and the garlic. In goes the olive oil. Two teaspoons, measured out of course. We're just going to use this to get our onion and garlic sweating. I'm using red onion. You could use white onion. You could use shallot. Whatever you like, whatever you have. So this will just take a few minutes. And then we're going to put in our garlic and let that go for a minute. And then next we'll put in our ground beef. Okay, so the ground beef got browned up really fast. I feel like it took like a minute and a half. This pan is awesome. It's a Le Crescent and they are very expensive, but they are a good investment. So if you're on the fence, you should get one. I always get tons of compliments when I use it because it is beautiful, but it cooks so nice and it holds the heat so well and I just love it. So enough about that. The beef is done. Next I'm going to put in my spices and I'm just going to coat it around all the meat. At this point, try to scrape up the bits that are at the bottom of the pan using a wooden spoon. Don't scratch your pan with a metal spoon. Oh, it smells good already. So this is going to toast up the spices. When you do this this way, you get a little bit of a toasty flavor on your spices and you make sure all of those little meat morsels get some flavor. Next, that's all coated. We're going to put in our orzo. Same theory with adding the orzo now. You're going to try to give a little bit of a toast to each little orzo kernel and give it an opportunity to toast up a little bit. Give it an opportunity to suck up some of those spices and I don't know, I'd say maybe like a minute or two for this step. It looks good already. For the meat, if you're not a ground beef person, you could try this with turkey or ground chicken. I think it'd work pretty well. Ground lamb would work really well, but for me, I'm going with straight up beef. So once this is done with toasting, which is any second now, we're going to add in the tomato sauce and the diced tomatoes. And I always try to buy the low sodium or no salt added when possible so that I can control my own salt. And you want to just get these in, see what it looks like. Mine is pretty thick right now, so I'm going to go ahead and add in a cup or two of this beef broth. If you don't have beef broth, you can use water. But I'm going with the beef broth. This extra liquid right here is what's going to cook into your orzo and bring that orzo to life. So right now it looks like almost it's chilly because of how watery it is. So I just put one cup in to start. I'm going to put the lid on and I'm going to let it simmer for like five to seven minutes. And then I'm going to peek in, I'm going to scoop up some of that orzo, test it for al dente-ness. And also when I do that little taste test, I'm going to see, does it need more liquid? Like if it looks really bone dry, you're going to need some more liquid to cook that orzo. If it looks like it's still pretty loose, then you put in a good amount already. So we're going to put the lid on it and we'll be back to check in on its status. It's been five minutes. I'm going to check on it. I have mine boiling, so I just turn the heat down a little bit. You don't want it sitting and just boiling away, so just keep your eye on it. Turn it down as needed like I just did. You do want to keep it like medium enough heat so that it does cook that pasta through. And it's already starting to thicken up really well, so I'm stirring. Continue to stir and just scrape up any bits on the bottom that might form. And it smells really good. It looks really good. I think it's going to thicken up nicely. I'm not going to add any liquid at this point because there still is some standing moisture in there and I want mine to be like a nice thick standing dish. So we're going to try to fish out a couple of these orzo pastas, give it a taste, see what it tastes like flavor-wise. Do you need more salt? Do you need more seasoning? And then also, how much more time do you think you need for that pasta to get soft? Mine's pretty crunchy. So I'm probably going to go another five more minutes. And I'm going to add a little bit more salt to mine. Now at the end, we are going to add the spinach. That's going to wilt in immediately. I have whole leaf spinach that I just chop up with my kitchen shears. And I chop them up so that when you're taking a bite of the dish, you don't get a big string of a large spinach chunk because that can get messy and it's just not as neat to eat. Also at the end, we're going to add in some vinegar. The vinegar just helps give it a nice pop, gives it a nice acidic bite, and it makes a big difference. So we'll go like five more minutes on this dish and then throw in our finishers. I just gave it another taste test and it tastes good. I added a little bit more salt. Now the recipe that I post on my blog is going to reflect the total amount of salt that I added in. So be cautious, especially on the canned products that you use, because I am using reduced sodium beef broth and no salt tomatoes. So if you are using like the full monte of canned goods with full sodium, you definitely want to maybe pull your salt down by half and then really adjust it as needed. But it is looking good. You can see how thick this is. And it was pretty easy like the first 13 minutes I was actually cooking. And then I threw in the orzo and let it sit. So 10 minutes of simmer time. Pretty easy to like get going and then walk away from. I can't really walk too far in here. So as far as you can walk in your house or your van or wherever you are, you can do a little multitasking. And I'm going to add in the spinach. And you really just want to work that in. If you're really going heavy on the spinach, you know, you can add more than what I add in because it shrinks down so much. You might want to work it in batches. So just fill it up, work it in, wilt it down, and then do it a little more. But this is all that I have on board. So I think this will be a good amount anyway. And then next, my vinegar. And as soon as these are mixed in like the spinach, you just basically need to wilt down and that's it. Because by the time it wilts down, it's going to be warmed through. So I already turned my heat off because I don't want the food to scorch on the bottom of my pan. So I turned it down and the residual heat is going to keep it really nice and hot. So that's about it. It was really easy. And this is something that I would make for myself just to eat all week or my family or company. You know, it's really versatile. It's a good entertaining dish because it's so pretty and rustic looking. But you can't really go wrong with a good one-pot meal. So let me know how you like it. Leave a comment below if you want to see something different. And to those of you that are new here, thanks so much for joining. We've had a large increase in subscribers lately. So I really appreciate you joining us and I truly appreciate those who have been watching us the entire time. All of our original viewers, thank you. And meet us next Wednesday for another healthy recipe and we'll catch you next time. Thank you so much. Hit that like, hit that subscribe.