Day 3–Asian Beef and Rice

I hope you are enjoying these crock-pot recipes as much as my family is.  They love being the ‘guinea pigs’ for my cooking ventures.  Today we are looking at a recipe with an Asian flair.  This recipe started out as an idea I saw on Pinterest and it has been tweaked and adjusted multiple times to suit our family’s taste.  One of our kids said the meat mixture should be called ‘Asian Sloppy Joe.’ I mix it up with rice, but it would be good on a bun like a sloppy joe, so I guess that name could be appropriate.  You have probably figured out by now that I like simple recipes that taste good.  With six kids, I don’t always have time to do all of the preparation required for a complicated recipe.  That’s why my crock-pot is well used and worn. 

    Today’s recipe begins with browned ground beef.  Just a quick side note – if you prefer to use ground turkey, or ground chicken, or any other ground meat, that will work just fine.  You may have to adjust the seasoning a bit depending on the meat you use. Also, if you are one of the super organized bargain hunter cooks (like I would love to be), you can speed up the preparation of this dish by having your ground meat cooked and frozen in advance. Your crock-pot cooking time would increase accordingly if you used frozen cooked meat.  Ok, enough rambling, on with the recipe:

For a 6-quart crock-pot:

Brown 4 lbs ground meat of your choice.  When just about done, add 6 minced cloves of garlic.  Once the meat is browned, drain all of the grease (I put my meat through a strainer and rinse it with hot water because I hate grease).

Dump meat into crock-pot and add the following:

2 – one pound packages of frozen chopped broccoli

1 chopped onion

1 chopped bell pepper

1 cup low sodium soy sauce

1 cup rice wine vinegar (yes, white vinegar will work, too)

1/2 – 1 cup honey (adjust to your taste)

Crushed red pepper – amount you use depends on your family – I use a lot.

Ground ginger – 1 Tablespoon

Cook on low until the broccoli is tender – about 4 hours.  This is a great dish to put on at lunch time so it will be ready for dinner.  Just before serving time, mix together 1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce, 1/2 cup water, and 4 T cornstarch.  Stir into meat mixture and continue stirring until sauce thickens.  You can serve this over rice or chinese noodles – or – you can take the easy way out like me and go ahead and mix cooked rice into the meat.  I realized that my family just mixed it all together anyway, so I saved them the trouble. If you like onion, a great finishing touch is to sprinkle each serving with chopped green onion.

     You may have noticed that I used low sodium soy sauce and did not add salt to the mixture.  If it isn’t salty enough for your taste, just add salt to it.  We found it was just right for us without additional sauce because there were so many flavors going on.  Also, if you would rather use frozen mixed chinese vegetables instead of just broccoli, that works well.  As usual, thanks to my daughters who know how to take pictures and get them on my computer, here is a picture of the finished product.

Come back tomorrow!  I have a special treat for you!  Dessert in a crock-pot!!!!! YUM!!!!!