- Today, I'm gonna take a common ingredient
like ground beef, and use it three different ways
to make recipes that can please a crowd.
(upbeat music)
So we all love ground beef,
but sometimes you find yourself
making a lot of burgers and spaghetti,
and think, what else can I do with this great product?
So we've got three different recipes
that are all very different and are great
to feed a crowd.
First off, I've got enchilada meatballs.
Next I've got crispy beef stogies.
And finally, I've got beef larb lettuce cups.
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First, we're starting with the enchilada meatballs.
I've got a 90% lean ground beef.
Usually I use 80/20, but the reason I like it
a little bit leaner for this recipe
is the fact that I've got eggs and cheese
going into the middle of these meatballs,
and I don't want them coming out too greasy.
The first thing I'll do is cube the cheese.
And I'll start off by cutting this in half,
and then in half again.
Now, each of these, I'll cut into three pieces.
And I'll cut them one more time
to make sure that I've got 24 cubes of cheese.
So I'll set this aside,
because I'm gonna use this to stuff into my meatballs.
So now, we'll take the ground beef
and mix it with some crushed tortilla chips.
What I did here is just put them into a Ziploc bag
and crush them with a rolling pin.
This will replace our breadcrumbs in this recipe.
I've got one packet of taco seasoning; easy enough.
And then, two eggs.
Now, I'm gonna put gloves on
just because this does get a little messy.
The other option is you could put it into a stand mixer
with a paddle attachment.
I'm just gonna mix until I can tell
all the ingredients are well-incorporated
and the seasoning is evenly distributed throughout.
Now that I've got everything thoroughly incorporated
into this meatball mixture,
I'm gonna portion it out into 24 equal portions.
So I've got a baking dish,
and I've got a measuring cup that's 1/4 cup.
So we'll use this to roughly portion out these meatballs.
And the reason I portion this out ahead of time
was to ensure that the meatballs
are all the same size, and I have enough
for all the cubes of cheese.
Now we'll get to stuffing the meatballs.
Now we'll grab a portion of the meat,
start to lay it flat,
and then I'll take a cube of cheese,
press it down into the middle,
and wrap the ground beef right around it.
Now once that's in the center,
just kind of roll it into a ball shape,
and put it right back into that baking dish.
So we'll do this with each one
until all the cheese is used up.
Next, we'll just add the enchilada sauce
right on top.
I'm trying to go between the meatballs
a little bit to ensure that they're swimming
in that sauce as they cook.
And now we'll go in to a 350 degree oven
for 30 to 40 minutes.
So for the next recipe, we'll be making
the crispy beef stogies.
Ee have delicious ground beef filling
in a crispy wonton wrapper,
and then a sweet and sour dipping sauce
that really compliments it well.
So I'm gonna preheat my pan
to a medium high heat.
And add a little bit of canola oil.
Now that the pan's hot, I'll add the ground beef.
(sizzling)
So I'm allowing this to get a deep brown on it,
'cause I really wanna develop the flavor
of the ground beef.
I wanna chop it up finely,
'cause eventually we'll be putting it
in to an egg roll wrapper and rolling it up,
and if it's really chunky, it's a little harder
to roll into these cigar shapes.
So now we'll season with a little salt, some pepper.
We'll go in with some yellow onion.
And about two cloves' worth of garlic.
So I'm leaving all that fat in the pan,
because I wanna use that to help saute
all these vegetables that I'm adding.
So this is something that I like using 80/20
and I don't wanna drain it,
because we've got more things adding to it,
and if you don't have a little bit of that fat in the pan,
they won't saute properly.
So this will cook for an additional two minutes.
So next, we'll be adding in the slaw mix,
and soy sauce.
So the reason I really like using slaw mix for this
is because it has two ingredients that I'd be putting in
anyways, which are cabbage and carrots.
But it saves me the trouble of cutting them all up.
And be aware.
This is undressed coleslaw mix, not coleslaw.
So it is just shredded cabbage and carrots.
This is done cooking now.
The cabbage has wilted a little bit.
We've got a little bit of cook
on the onions and the carrots.
And that's all we're looking for here.
We just want everything nice and pliable
so that when we put it in that wrapper,
it's easy to manage.
So now, I wanna let this cool down,
because it's gonna go into an egg roll wrapper
and we want it to cool down
so it's cool enough to handle.
It doesn't have to be cold.
It doesn't have to be quite room temp.
You just wanna make it manageable to handle,
and not too hot,
because it'll make the egg roll wrapper sticky.
So while that cools, we'll go on to make the dipping sauce
for the stogies.
It's really simple.
We take two teaspoons of cornstarch,
and add it to our remaining two teaspoons of soy sauce.
I'm using this as the base for my slurry,
which is the thickening agent in the sauce.
So now, to our sauce pan,
we will add a half cup of water,
white vinegar, sugar, and sambal.
So sambal is a fermented chili paste
that is one of my favorite things to use
for a little bit of spice and a ton of flavor.
So now, we'll stir this while we bring it
to a quick boil.
We wanna make sure the sugar fully dissolves
and everything's kind of incorporated.
It's always important to remember,
when you're making a cornstarch slurry,
you wanna use water or, in this case,
I used soy sauce, that's no warmer than room temperature.
Cold is also good.
You don't want it to be warm,
or else it clumps.
That's come to a rolling boil.
Give this one more quick stir
to make sure all the corn starch is off the bottom.
We'll add that in.
Again, whisk it.
Let it boil.
And cornstarch works really fast,
so it only takes about 30 seconds and the sauce is done.
All right, it's good to go.
We'll remove that from the heat.
We'll let that cool a little bit
while we make our beef stogies.
Now that the filling is cooled down enough to work with,
I'll start assembling the stogies.
What I have here are just some egg roll wrappers
that I bought at the grocery store.
I'll take about a 1/4 cup of the filling,
I'll put it on one side of the egg roll wrapper,
and then on the opposite side,
I'll brush with just a little bit of water.
That'll act as my glue.
Then I'll just take it, roll it,
and here's the important step.
You wanna kind of pull back to get these tight.
And I'll even do it a couple times
just to ensure that I get a nice, even cylinder.
It's okay if a little bit of the filling sneaks out.
It'll still be on the inside.
And then just start rolling.
You just wanna keep it nice and tight.
And then roll right across that watered edge.
Maybe push in from the sides if any of the filling
starts to come out,
and then put them on your baking sheet.
And now I'll just repeat that
until I've used up all the filling.
Now that these are all assembled,
I'll just take some butter
and lightly brush the tops of each one.
These will help them to become very crisp and delicious.
So now I'll put these in to a preheated 425 degree oven
for 10 minutes.
After that, I'll rotate the pan 180 degrees
and put them in for another five
or until they're golden brown and delicious.
Next we'll be moving on to the beef larb.
It's very aromatic and has lots of fresh flavors.
And when you're using this many nice ingredients,
it's important to use quality beef.
So I'm using Certified Angus Beef,
80% lean ground beef.
But first, I'll be prepping the aromatics,
so let's get this out of the way.
So I'll start with the shallot.
So I treat a shallot much like just dicing an onion.
So I'll make a few slits with the grain of the shallot.
Then a couple of vertical, so that I can finely mince this
as I go through it.
Next we'll go to the lemongrass.
So the lemongrass is a little bit stocky.
It is actually like a grass,
so you've got a lot of layers to it.
And the outside layers are very woody.
So I usually peel back one or two layers,
and then some of this top stuff,
you probably won't end up using it.
It's extremely woody.
It may not be something that you cook with very often,
or at all, but if you can find it,
I highly suggest using it.
It's extremely aromatic, has a ton of flavor.
So my tip with this that I like to do
is I use a sturdy knife,
and I actually take the blunt end of the knife
and break up the lemongrass before I start trying
to chop it.
Like I said, it's very woody,
so by doing this, you start to break up the fibers.
And then again, if I see really fibrous stuff,
I'll go ahead and peel that off.
So now this is a little bit more tender
on the inside here.
And you wanna finely mince this,
because it is, it can still be a bit woody,
but the flavor you're gonna get out of it
is so intense that you won't notice the texture
if you get it nice and fine.
(chopping)
All right, there you go.
Lemongrass is done.
Finally, we use the ginger.
So I'll take the end off of that
'cause the end tends to be a little dried up.
And then what I'll do is I'll use a teaspoon
just to peel the ginger.
The contour of the spoon just will take that rough peel
of the ginger right off.
Then I'm gonna use about an inch to an inch and a half
of that ginger, and what I like to do,
kind of treat it like garlic.
Cut it into some small medallions.
I just give it a quick crush
with the side of my knife.
(banging)
Again, this helps to break up the fibrous-ness
of the ginger, 'cause it technically is a root,
so it is a bit fibrous.
And then I'll just go through and give it a quick mince.
All right, and there we have it.
All of our aromatics, nice and finely cut.
I'm gonna preheat my pan to a medium high,
and I'm gonna add some canola oil.
Just a little bit just to kind of get a nonstick layer
going on in that pan.
So I'm just gonna move the oil around.
You want it a little fast so that way I know
that's gotten nice and hot.
So now I'll add in the ground beef.
(sizzling)
So now that we've added the ground beef,
we're gonna brown for three minutes,
and I'll season it with some salt and pepper.
So now that' I've got a good brown on that,
I'll add in my aromatics.
So I've got the ginger, lemongrass and shallots
I just chopped up.
Those will all go in.
As well as some garlic.
And then I had sliced some scallions,
so I'd actually separated the whites from the greens.
The greens I'll use as a final garnish,
and the whites, I'll put in some of the whites now.
Because those can kind of handle the high heat,
whereas the greens will wilt, get a little slimy,
so I like to use those as more of a final garnish.
So now I'll let this saute for an additional three minutes.
You can really smell all those fresh ingredients in here.
So now that I've let those saute for another few minutes,
I'm gonna add in some of the liquids.
I've got a tablespoon of soy sauce.
(sizzling)
Tablespoon of sambal, chili paste.
And then the juice of one lime.
So now, I'll turn the heat down just a little bit,
'cause I just want that to simmer
for a few minutes, reduce, and kind of coat all the beef,
make a little bit of a sauce.
Now that this has simmered for a couple minutes,
I'm gonna turn off the heat,
and then I'll plate it up and serve it
with some bibb lettuce leaves.
So I just pulled the enchilada meatballs
out of the oven, and some of the cheese
is kinda oozing out, but there's plenty in there,
so I wouldn't be worried about that.
Sour cream can be a little messy to deal with,
so I'll put it into the bag,
get it all down to one side of the bag.
Take some kitchen sheers, just cut the tip
of that bag off,
and then I can just squeeze it right on to these meatballs.
And that way you get that sour cream
kind of evenly distributed over across the top.
And now, got some of these scallions
I cut up earlier.
Because a lot of these dishes have scallions in them,
I went ahead and cut up a whole bunch.
So I'll just garnish over the top.
And there you go.
The finishing touches on the enchilada meatballs.
So next, we got the larb.
So we got the sauteed ground beef
with all those aromatics.
This one's nice and easy.
The dish itself is done, but you just wanna give it
that final touch of some fresh herbs.
So, here I've got some cilantro and mint
that are chopped up.
I'm gonna go out heavy with those.
And then, some more of those scallion greens from earlier.
Finally, I've got the crispy beef stogies.
Just get these on the platter here.
And then you see we've got our dipping sauce
all ready to go, which is nice and sweet and spicy.
And there you have it.
Three different ground beef recipes
that'll add a little bit of variety
to your next family function or group gathering.
So remember to like and comment below
on what you thought about theses recipes,
and we'll see you next time in the Test Kitchen.
(upbeat music)