Quote:
Originally Posted by whitelikechalk
Sounds like a goood idea with the ground beef. Do you think possibly ground turkey would work well?
I'm sure it would. I use ground beef, bison, pork, lamb, chicken, and turkey interchangeably in recipes (and would use goat if it were easy to find - goat is my favorite meat. It's leaner, but tastes richer than beef).
I have never had a problem substituting one meat for another.
For recipes using browned ground meat, I use a mixture of meat and dry tvp (soy protein) granules - looks like grape nuts cereal. I brown the meat and tvp together with seasoning veggies (any combination of onion, celery, bell pepper, carrot and mushroom), and then add hot water or broth (in the same measure as the tvp - becasue tvp is a dehydrated product that needs reconstituting).
Usually I use at least 1 to 2 cups of tvp for every pound of meat. If I use more, hubby complains. The tvp picks up the flavor of the meat, so most people won't realize it's not 100% meat (everytime I make tacos for a crowd, I'm asked for the recipe, because the meat tastes good but not greasy).
Then I freeze the ground meat/tvp mixture in ziploc freezer bags, squishing around the bag every 20 to 30 minutes or so, so it freezes into crumbles, so I can use it in any recipe calling for browned ground beef (tacos, spaghetti sauces, loose meat bbq, sloppy joes, added to soups or for taco salads...)
I've even used chorizo and other sausages in place of the ground meat. With the tvp, it's still low-carb, but not quite as low as meat only - but it's a lot cheaper per pound, especially since the tvp is fat free I can buy fattier sale ground meat and by combining it with the fat-free tvp, end up with the equivalent of mid- to low-fat meat.
Unless I find a raw sausage at a tremendous price, I generally prefer to use an unflavored meat, because the spices in the sausages does limit the versatility a bit.
For a quick taco salad, I'll stir a few tablespoons of the ground meat mixture into some salsa, and microwave it until it's hot. Pour the mixture over a salad (lettuce, onion, tomato, a bit of shredded cheese) and add a bit of sour cream and stir. The sour cream blends with the salsa to make a salad dressing.
If I'm really missing the crunch of taco shell or croutons, I'll make a cheese cracker by microwaving a piece of cheddar or montery jack cheese (or a thin circle of shredded cheese) until it's bubbling and turning light brown all the way to the center. With a little practice, you learn how long you have to microwave it to get a cruchy "cracker," that after you cool for a minute or two, you can crumble into crouton-like bits.
There are youtube videos on how to do it, and I even saw one guy make taco shells out of them (I think that was on tv though, but there may be a youtube video too).
I've also microwaved crumbles to make "Big Mac in a bowl." I heated the beef mix and added it to a bowl of lettuce, cheese, fresh or rehydrated dried onion, and reduced-carb or low-cal thousand island dressing. I make my own with Hellman's canola mayo (about half the calories of regular mayo), a tiny dab of catsup, and a tsp of sweet or dill pickle relish or diced pickle).
I'm not usually a fast food fan, but every once in a while I get a craving for a Big Mac, and the salad (to me) is even better than the original (well, especially now that I realize I'm allergic to wheat - if I eat a real Big Mac I have a swollen, itchy, broken out face the next day).