5 Easy Ground Beef Recipes That Aren't Tacos or Spaghetti | Allrecipes

Before you make tacos or spaghetti again, let me show you five new ground beef recipes that deserve a spot on your weekly rotation. I'm starting with Big Mac Pot Pie. Yes, please. It's pretty self-explanatory. You're gonna get all the flavors of a Big Mac into a delicious pot pie casserole. Everyone should have ground beef in your freezer at all times. Buy it when it's on sale. It freezes perfectly. You can do the same thing with it after it's thawed out that you could when it was fresh. While these are all ground beef recipes, truth be told, you can make any of these with ground turkey as well. I've also gone ahead and chopped up some pickles. Everything else happens at the stove. I'm using a lean ground beef for this, adding in a little bit of oil since this is a leaner cut, and then I'm just gonna brown this. I wanna get some color on it, so I like to cook my ground beef at a high temperature and get it kind of caramelized on that first side before I start really breaking it up. Kind of press it out into a thinner layer and then just let it cook without touching it. It's hard to resist just going ahead and stirring, but just walk away. This is worth it. Let it go for about three minutes. See like that? That's what we like. The whole thing won't be like that, but you'll get some pieces like that and it just adds great flavor. I do find I use my potato masher for this more than potatoes. I'm gonna keep my heat high so that I can get a little more browning here and then I'll season it. Just a little salt, pepper, and Worcestershire. When you add the Worcestershire, it almost deglazes any brown bits off the bottom. That's what gives it that burger flavor. One more little stir. Then I'm just gonna transfer this meat to your casserole dish and then to the drippings, the onion. I'm gonna try to achieve a little color on the onion as well just to help develop that flavor. And this will cook down a lot, so just let it go for a few minutes until it takes on some color and softens. All right, now you're just gonna pour these right over the beef. Top with my other favorite burger topping, chopped up pickles and then cheese because this is a cheeseburger. For the bun, puff pastry. You can roll it or stretch it to fit your casserole dish. Then you can trim off any excess or just fold it under. I mean, this is gonna be better than a bun because you get all this buttery topping. The best part of a chicken pot pie also. We're gonna brush it with some egg and this is going to be the glue for our sesame seed bun topping. You can add a little bit of water to your beaten egg just to help it kind of spread a little easier. I'm just gonna sprinkle with some sesame seeds and then you're gonna want to cut a couple slits in there to let the steam escape. And then into the oven we go, 400 degrees for about 25 minutes or until that top is puffed and golden. Everything else is cooked inside, so shouldn't take long. While our casserole's in the oven, you gotta make the special sauce because it is part of a Big Mac. So it starts with mayonnaise. To that, add in some mustard. A little bit of the pickle brine. A little onion powder and garlic powder. Paprika and a little bit of sugar. Contrary to what people think, there is no ketchup in the Big Mac sauce. I personally would like a little ketchup squeezed in here. No need to hit up those golden arches. Now that's a Big Mac if I've ever seen one. Give me a little pot pie. Oh yeah, cheeseburger. And a pot pie. The Big Mac sauce. Lettuce, I love extra lettuce on my burgers. And then some diced tomatoes. Maybe tomatoes are not on a Big Mac, but they are on Big Mac pot pie. That's how to make your package of ground beef a superhero. It's not a burger you can eat with your hands, I'll tell you that. Mm, the puff pastry as a topping makes this a whole different experience, trust me. It's just a casserole of perfect bites. That's all I can say. The pickle reminds you this is not just a typical ground beef dinner. This is all about a burger. And we are off to a fabulous start. Next up, skip the takeout. We're making Korean beef bowls. This is another very family-friendly dish. It's full of those umami flavors. It's one of those, once you start eating, you're gonna have to make yourself stop. And it's like a one-pot meal, which we love. Get that hot and brown the star of the show. Same thing as before, just kinda spread it out and let it start to take on some color. All right, time to add in some flavor. I'm going in with lots of garlic. So we're developing some good flavor in this pan. Then I'm also adding in some ginger, fresh ginger. I've peeled it, and then you just take your microplane and kinda grate it in. That way you don't get like big chunks of it. Now I'm going in with a little bit of sesame oil. A little bit goes a long way. This is one of those pantry staples you need to add to your collection. And it hits you right away. Now soy sauce, I'm using low sodium. This is gonna lift up any flavor that we have built on the bottom. And not in the recipe, but I want it to be just a little bit saucier. So I'm adding in a little bit of beef broth. Okay, so we've got our salty going on and our tangy. Now we're gonna add a little sweet and a little heat. For the sweet, some brown sugar. And for the heat, a little crushed red pepper. I'm just gonna bring everything together, let it simmer for about seven minutes, and it's going to thicken slightly. Something as simple as ground beef can be so flavorful. This smells so good. And now we're about to zhuzh it up. Get some green onions. I like the light and dark parts here. And I'm serving this up bowl style. Just incorporating a bowl-type meal into your dinner rotation is just a smart thing to do. It's easy, people can kind of customize their own. Get your kids to eat more veggies, believe it or not. Sit down with some hot rice and delicious Korean beef. Now to add some cool crunch, some cucumber. And what's also good is some shredded pickled carrots. You can easily do this just by grating a carrot, adding in a little vinegar, sugar. And having these fresh components on that saucy, really savory meat is so good. I'm also gonna do a little more green onion. I myself don't mind a little more heat to the sweet. Now does that not look like a delicious ground beef dinner that you have not made before? This is also gonna be a lot cheaper than takeout. Mm, it's a perfect example of making something so simple and taking it over the top. I think this is what I'm bringing home for dinner tonight. Mm. Taking it to the streets with this next one. This is a viral recipe, the Easy Doner Kebabs. It's a way to get that street food experience at home in an easier, cheaper way. Typically the recipe has ground beef and ground lamb. I'm doing it with just ground beef. You can do it however you want. I've also done this with ground chicken. To the ground beef, I'm gonna add in some grated onion. I'm gonna do it on this paper towel so that I can squeeze out any excess moisture. Onions have a lot of water in them. All right, and the onion goes in. Now we add lots of spices. It's about two tablespoons of cumin and paprika. And a teaspoon of coriander. And a couple teaspoons of oregano. And then of course, salt and pepper. And we're gonna add a little more moisture with some olive oil as well as some Greek yogurt. Break out, you know, your best kitchen tools and get to mixing. All those spices smell so good and that's what makes this taste so good. Now, you know, typically these meats are cooked on a spit and then they are shaved off. Most people don't have that at home. So the hack is what comes next. Here's how you do it. Get some parchment paper, cut it into rectangles or you can buy the pre-cut kind. You're gonna divide this mixture into about three or four sheets of parchment. And then you take another piece just to help flatten it out. You can get a can or a rolling pin and you want to roll this out as thin as you can get. When you think you've got it, go more. It can get really thin. That's why when it cooks, it looks like it's been shaved. And it is amazing how close it looks to the real thing. Then we're going to take the top sheet off. Save it for the next one. And then you're gonna roll the parchment into about like one inch folds all the way down. And then you just repeat with the remaining meat mixture and parchment. All right, now you just pop it onto a baking sheet and it goes into the oven for about 30 minutes. It's going to start accumulating some fat in the pan but we want it to get brown. If it gets to be too much moisture in the pan, it won't brown. So you just want to drain it off. Drain off the fat or liquid halfway through if needed. Simply magical. So now when it's done, you just unravel the paper and you get these little sheets of beef. You wouldn't think that was started as just ground beef. When you drain off some of the liquid that accumulates in the pan, you don't have to throw it out in case you want to add more back later but it helps get the browning and the little crispy bits if you do drain it off. Now we got to get all the accompaniments. Just before serving or while your meat is still hot, take a lemon and just kind of squeeze the juice over. And then we also need to make a little sauce. So I've just got some more of our whole milk yogurt. To that, go in with some more lemon juice. A little bit of garlic. It's like a garlicky lemon sauce. Okay, and then just a little bit of salt. And then if you want to thin it out a little bit, just go in with a little water. Okay, so now we build. Grab you a pita. You can microwave it to soften it up a little bit. And down goes our meat. This meat is so tender, I'm telling you. Can you believe that was in a ground beef package a few minutes ago? Then I'm doing some red onion. You could do pickle, some fresh tomato. Season those tomatoes. Then I'm going in with some fresh parsley leaves as my lettuce. Come in our yogurt sauce. Roll it up. Don't you want to take a bite of that right there? I'm a dipper, so you know, I'll be like, sauce on every bite. It may not be the traditional way to make a donor kebab, but I am here for this all day long. If you haven't made it in a while or if you've never tried this little hack, 100% do this tonight. Start here of all these recipes today. It's like a 13 out of 10 solid, solid dinner. Don't let the name of this next dish scare you, but we are making dirty cabbage. If you know Cajun food, then you've heard of dirty rice. This is almost like a healthier version because we are using cabbage. It's packed with ground beef, sausage, sometimes livers, and I'm chopping up a whole head of cabbage. It's gonna cook down. You have so many other things going on in this dish, you don't even realize how many veggies you're getting. So get yourself a big Dutch oven, add in a little oil, and then in with our ground beef. We're gonna crumble it, we're gonna brown it, and we're gonna add in the sausage. The fat will start to render from the sausage and really start to create this amazing flavor that's gonna carry through the rest of the dish. All right, you can see the flavor building. This is why I love a one-pot meal, and the Cajuns are known for their one-pot meals. The jambalayas, the gumbos, the dirty rices. Okay, now I'm gonna add in some veggie. Red and green bell peppers and celery. Also gonna go in with lots of garlic. And here I've got my heat up high because I am trying to keep developing color on everything. Okay, time to kick it up with some tonis or some Cajun seasoning. Some Cajun seasonings have salt and some do not. This has a lot of salt, so you wanna go a little easier than what the recipe calls for. And I'm also going in with some tomato paste. That's gonna help lift off some of this flavor. And also get some seasoning from the andouille sausage. So all the color, all that browning is going to be lifted off, and it's going to color our cabbage, making it look dirty, hence the name. So we're gonna start working our cabbage in. As it cooks down, we can add more. I promise you will not have had cabbage with this much flavor before today. You can see all of this dark brown on the bottom. You might be going, oh, I'm not gonna wanna clean that pot afterwards. You don't have to, because our liquid is about to do that for us. Now this is not meant to be a stew or a soup, so you just need enough liquid to just kind of bring everything together. Also the cabbage and the vegetables are gonna give off some too. So just about a cup of chicken stock. And after you add it, use your spoon to start scraping up that flavor. I mean, it just lifts right up. We're gonna cook it until that cabbage kind of smothers in all that flavor. So I'm gonna cover it and let it go for about 20, 25 minutes. Look how tender. See, the cabbage has cooked down to where it's more meat than cabbage. Final, final step is to add in a little bit of vinegar. This is just gonna kind of add that balance, that little tang in there to go with some of the savory richness. Just a little bit of salt. It's reminiscent of unstuffed cabbage, if you've ever had, or stuffed cabbage. It's like that with a different flavor profile. Now for me, I'm going on with just a little bit of hot sauce and some more green onion. It's dirty cabbage, y'all. And it all started with a pack of ground beef. I hope I'm solving your problems, you know? It's like you get that pack and you get your normal groceries, your chicken, your ground beef, and you're like, what do I do with it? Here are five answers. I prefer this to the dirty rice because you have more moisture in here. Sometimes the rice absorbs so much of the flavor. This still has almost a sauciness to it. I don't know what to say, it's just like a flavor bomb. I feel like this is the one you have to trust me on because I don't know that I can do it justice by just showing you. You need to make this, and I know you trust me. So what are you waiting for? What shall we do with our last pack of ground beef? How about something for your Taco Tuesday? How about Taco Bell cheesy potato casserole? You know the cheesy potatoes you get there? You can go get a bunch of those and make this casserole like that, or you start from scratch. So I've got three pounds of roasted potatoes that I have cut and parboiled. Now we're going to roast them so that they get crispy because theirs are deep fried, we are not doing that. So coat them with a little olive oil. Parboiling them like this kind of gives them more of that fried look so they'll be more like pillowy on the inside, crispy on the outside. Down on the baking sheet. I'm gonna hit them with a little salt. Then into the oven to get browned and crispy. And while that happens, we can be making our taco meat. By now, you know the drill. Cook it till it's browned and crumbly. These dinners are meant to be easy, so we take shortcuts. Really at this point, you're just making taco meat however you normally do. In with a packet, and a packet of water. Okay, just let this thicken a little bit, get saucy, and then we build our cheesy potato casserole. See, it's not tacos, but it is for your Taco Tuesday. Potatoes. Took the parchment out about halfway through so that they get a little toasty. Now we're gonna take gourmet nacho cheese sauce. No judgment. Gonna spoon some right on top of the potatoes. And as it cooks, it'll melt down further. You know, measure with your heart if you want. Recipe calls for some shredded cheddar too. I'm gonna put some on this layer and then some on the top, just to make it extra cheesy. All right, then our taco meat on top of that. And then more shredded cheddar on top. This goes into the oven. Everything is still pretty hot, so this will not take long. Take about just another 15 to 20 minutes. And about halfway through, I'm gonna top it with the taco sauce, because when you get your cheesy potatoes, they have that sauce on top. Smelling good in here. Freshen it up with some green onion. Have you even ever ordered the cheesy potatoes at Taco Bell? Might be worth a try, guys. To finish it off, a little more cheese, if you dare. A little more taco sauce. You gotta have some sour cream on your potatoes. I'm just gonna load mine up. Some more green onions. And I thought some pickled jalapenos would be nice. Feel like I need a cold beer with this one. Since I've worked so hard. I mean, can't be bad. It's like you opened a baked potato up and just filled it up with flavorful taco meat, lots of gooey cheese, the sour cream, the green onion, the jalapeno. I mean, it's perfection. It's not tacos, but it is taco-turned comfort food. And I will be serving this up to my family. We've taken that one common ingredient and turned it into five new dinners to add to your weekly rotation. So keep your fridge and freezer stocked with that ground beef. You definitely have a new use for it. Five new uses. Every single one worth trying. Now, where's that cold beer?