Burritos

So that vaguely shrimpy cilantro and lime stuff left over from the last recipe? Here’s where you use it. If you’re cooking this the same day, skip down. For this first bit, I dumped the leftover stuff in a pot and brought it to a boil because meat products, then added taco seasoning, a little bit of chili powder, and salt. You can also totally start from scratch – there’s not a super strong shrimp taste there, so idk exactly how much the shrimp infused it.

Ingredients:

• a pound of ground beef
• a ripe zucchini
• lime juice
• cilantro
• cheddar
• taco seasoning
• flour

Brown the beef, and while that’s going on, wash and slice the zucchini. I did it in rounds and then quarters so they were pretty bite-sized. When the beef’s done, drain it, then add the zucchini and lime juice – or the lime juice cilantro sauce stuff you made. Add a pinch or two of flour so that it thickens up into sauce that sticks and doesn’t drip too much when it’s in a burrito (it’s gonna drip anyway, but you can at least ameliorate it). Add more taco seasoning to taste, and let it go until the zucchini looks done, or at least warm.

Dish that up on tortillas and sprinkle with cheddar and more fresh cilantro. You could do it with the whole refried beans and rice thing, but this was amazing as it.

From tumblr: Beef Stew

This is one of my standby recipes. T actually shows enthusiasm for it, and I can make it in sufficient quantity that I can stick a couple containers in the freezer.

Ingredients:

• two pounds of stew beef
• chicken broth
• garlic
• onion
• beer
• 3 carrots
• frozen peas
• montreal steak spice
• flour

I browned the beef in the big stew pot with a ton of Montreal steak spice. The meat was just shy of completely coated in it, and that lead to a fairly spicy stew: sprinkle it a bit on the generous side for a less spicy but still really flavorful stew. I had to do the meat in two batches so there was only a single layer of meat at the bottom. Took it out, set it aside.

I was sautéing a bunch of onion in another pan (with a little water and salt, trust me on this), so I already had that like halfway good to go. Reduce heat on the stew pot after the meat is out, add diced onion and chopped/crushed garlic (we’ve got a jar of it). Amount of onion and garlic are basically to taste: since Tristan generally hates onion I added about two teaspoons of diced onion and two tablespoons of the garlic. Sautée those with the beef remnants until brown, then add a little chicken broth. Add a couple tablespoons of flour and mix until smooth – this is basically your roux substitute, and is what means it’ll thicken later.

Add the rest of the chicken broth. I wanted this batch thick, and wanted not to open another box of chicken broth, so there was like a cup of chicken broth. Then I added a can of beer – ideally it’d be a nice dark beer, but the only beer in the house was the Miller Lite we bought for Tristan’s dad when he helped us move last summer. So I used that.

Then I added the meat back in!

Then I chopped three carrots into thin rounds, and dumped those in, and like a cup and a half of frozen peas? Idk, some quantity of frozen peas.

Salt, pepper, and more Montreal steak spice to taste, and let that simmer for the length of a couple episodes of your favorite Netflix drama.

You could probably eat it right away and it’d be fine, but soup/stew is always better the next day, so I just turned off the stove and let it cool to room temp and then stuck it in the fridge. It’s decent over pasta, but really amazing over boiled potatoes.