Weeknight Beef Stir-Fry

A stir-fry is one of the quickest and easiest meals to throw together when you just don't have time to cook.  Aside from the rice, you can have a hot, delicious meal in about ten minutes from start to finish.  Take that, Rachael Ray!

I didn't feel up to cooking last night, but I didn't want to settle for a PB&J for dinner, so I poked around in the fridge, grabbed a few handfuls of this and that, and made a wonderful spicy beef stir fry for two, with leftovers for breakfast burritos in the morning!

There is literally no recipe for this meal, only a method, so it is endlessly customizable, and I guarantee that no matter what's in your fridge right now, you can pull a great stir-fry out of it!  All you need is a good sauce, some veggies, and some protein (and the protein is optional).  You can serve it over rice, noodles, scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, or even just on a plate by itself!  The secret is in the way that you cook, not what you cook.

I started by marinating about 3/4 of a pound of beef sirloin strips in my homemade sauce.  I cheated and got the strips pre-cut at the grocery store, but whatever protein you're using (chicken, shrimp, pork, tofu, and firm fish are all really good options), make sure to slice them into uniform, bite-sized pieces.

Beef strips in marinade... yum!

For the sauce, I combined about 1/4 cup soy sauce, 2-3 tbsp each rice wine vinegar and sriracha, and about a tsp each of ground ginger and honey.  Since there was so much soy sauce, there's no need for any more salt in the dish.  I mixed it up in a tupperware, tossed it with the beef strips, and let it sit on the countertop while I made the rice.

Speaking of rice, here's my tried-and-true, foolproof rice cooking method: 1 part water, 1 part homemade chicken stock (that's another post), and 1 part brown rice.  Add everything to a pot, bring it to a boil, and as soon as it starts a heavy roll, put on a TIGHT fitting lid (if your lid does not fit snugly, or has holes in it, cover with a piece of tin foil first), and turn the heat to low (number 2 on my electric range).  After 25 minutes (15 for white rice), turn the heat completely off.  DO NOT take off the lid!  Let the pot sit on the burner for another 15 minutes, then remove the lid and fluff with a fork.  Perfect every time!

When I had turned the heat off for the rice, I started my stir-fry.  I heated a dry wok on high while I chopped my veggies.  This time, I was low on veg, so I just sliced up some yellow onion and had a pack of frozen stir-fry veggies on hand to bulk it up.  Then I added 1 tbsp canola oil to the wok, gave it a stir, and added my beef (just the meat, please... the sauce comes later).  I let the beef strips cook for about a minute, then I gave them a toss, cooked for another minute, and removed them from the wok.  Over-stirring makes for gray meat, and that's a no-no.

Next I added a teeny bit more oil and my onions, tossing them constantly until they were brown but not yet soft.  I threw in my frozen veggies (a blend of broccoli, mushrooms, water chestnut, carrots, and red bell pepper) and let them cook until they had thawed out and the wok was hot again.

Colorful veggies!

Then I added in my beef strips once more, stirred a teaspoon of flour in with the marinade, and tossed in the sauce.  I turned the heat down to low and let the sauce reduce until it was nice and thick.  I happened to have some chopped peanuts in the fridge, so I tossed them in, too, for a little crunch and flavor.

By this time, my rice was done, and it was time to eat!  I topped everything off with some chopped peanuts and red pepper flakes, and we were good to go.

For breakfast the next morning, I re-heated my stir-fry, scrambled some eggs, and rolled everything up in some flour tortillas for a quick and easy breakfast burrito, fusion-style.

Remember that you can make this with ANY kind of protein and ANY kind of crunchy veggies, so make it your way!

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Beefcakes!

When is a cupcake not a cupcake?  When it's a beefcake!

Okay, there is a little backstory to this one.  Fun fact about Kelly:  I read a lot of food blogs.  A LOT.  I read them to drool over fatty sugary things I would never allow myself to eat, I read them to discover new flavors, I read them for inspiration for my own blog, and of course, I read them to find good recipes.  One of my favorite websites is tastespotting.com, where you simply scroll through gorgeous pictures of delicious food, and if you find something you like, clickety-click, there's the recipe!  The only problem I have with tastespotting is that there is an abundance of sweets and baked goods that I have no interest in.  I mean, sure, I like cake and cookies as much as the next guy, but I don't like them enough to actually make them.  The hottest trend right now, it seems, is cupcakes, and while some of them are very unique and very pretty, I simply can't picture myself whipping up a batch of cupcakes that will ultimately sit in the back of my fridge until they mold.  I was discussing this with my boyfriend (who, incidentally, asked for a meat cake for his birthday), and presto!  The beefcake was invented.

I definitely can't claim the beefcake as my original idea.  Sure, I thought of it on my own, but after doing some research, I found that I am by no means the first one to make them.  To be true to myself, though, I didn't read any recipes... I only looked at pictures for my inspiration, to make sure the recipe was all my own.

The concept is simple:  a meatloaf shaped like a cupcake and "frosted" with mashed potatoes.  They are cute, and they make portioning very easy, not to mention cutting down the cooking time.

For my basic meatloaf, I mixed some ground beef with chopped onions, an egg, Dale's marinade (because I can't make ground beef without it), panko and Italian breadcrumbs, and my extra-special blend of meatloaf seasonings.  I can't give you an exact recipe for my spice blend, because there really isn't one.  I basically just reach into my spice cabinet and sprinkle a little of this and a little of that until I think it's right.  For this meatloaf, I used minced onions, garlic powder, chile powder, salt and pepper, and cocoa-chile blend.

Don't worry.  It may be ugly now, but the transformation is just beginning!

Once the meat was mixed well (by hand, of course), I rolled it into several small meatballs.  I pressed the meatballs into the cups of a muffin pan, forming the bottom and the sides of the "cupcake", leaving a well in the middle for my secret ingredient: cheese!  I shredded some cheddar cheese and pressed a little bit into each well, then topped each "cupcake" with another meatball, pressing along the sides to seal the cheese in the middle.

A word about forming your beefcakes: They will not rise the way cupcakes do in the oven, and in fact will shrink when cooked, so make sure to form a nice mound on top, and make them look the way fully cooked cupcakes do.

I popped the beefcakes in the oven at 350 degrees and started on my mashed potatoes.  Time was of the essence, so I peeled and quartered about 5 potatoes and threw them into some salted water to boil.  Cutting the potatoes up drastically reduces the time they need to cook, and they were fork-tender in about 15 minutes.  I drained them and let them cool for just a minute while I prepared my beefcake glaze.

For the glaze, I mixed some ketchup with some more Dale's, some Sriracha, some honey barbecue sauce, and some brown sugar.  The end result tasted like a thick, sweet and spicy barbecue sauce, and actually would have been delicious on some ribs, but that's another post...  I took the beefcakes out of the oven and drained them (a LOT of fat pools up in those muffin cups!), then spooned on a generous portion of glaze and popped them back in the oven while I made my mashed potatoes.

Cheesy, fatty, oozy goodness, pre-glaze

I wanted the potatoes to be super creamy, so I put them in the food processor with some milk, butter, sour cream, salt, and pepper (Paula Deen would be proud) and blended until they were smooth, then I added some more shredded cheddar and blended again until everything was nice and creamy.  I made a little brown gravy from a store-bought mix (shame!) and put the gravy and the remaining glaze in two separate squeeze bottles, for decorating my beefcakes.

Waiting for them to cool is the hardest part

By this time, the beefcakes were done, so I took them out of the oven and let them cool for about ten minutes (though I probably should have waited a little longer).  I scooped the mashed potatoes into a ziplock bag and snipped off one corner to make a piping bag, then "frosted" the beefcakes and topped with fried onions, glaze, and gravy.

Okay, so they didn't look as pretty as I had hoped... but man, were they delicious!  The meatloaf was moist and had a great flavor, the cheese was oozy and gooey, the potatoes were creamy and cheesy, and the onions provided a nice crispiness.  Scott and I are definitely planning to make this again soon, and experiment a little with the presentation aspect so they look more like cupcakes.  Try them at home, and let me know how they turn out!

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