Cheap, Easy, Quick, DELICIOUS- Bonus points if not unhealthy

[Harbinger]

I stumbled in to a meal that fit this criteria completely by accident and reluctantly:

My wife likes sloppy joes. I'm not really a fan. But we at least agree on the 97% lean ground beef for all applications other than burgers. Now, I will openly admit that the extra lean beef is not as good in most recipes- but it's still good and I would eat ground beef much less often if the extra lean was not available. Meat is graded by higher inner muscle fat content and I am talking about purposely purchasing meat that costs more and has a lower fat content.

So anyway, I make chili, hamburger helper (beef pasta rules), spaghetti, and tacos regularly using either ground beef or ground venison. The deer is best in chili and hamburger helper and the beef is best in the tacos and spaghetti.

Back to the sloppy joes. I was trying to think of something different to do with ground beef when I recalled that my wife likes sloppy joes. So after a little hunting, I found where the sloppy joe sauces were and proceeded to select one. I've got a 5 and a 6 year old in the house. You know that age: if there is a red or green chunk in their food, you are going to hear about it because they are not going to eat it. So I eliminated a few of the sauces right off the bat simply from the pic on the can. Del Monte had a sauce which appeared to have no chunks. "Hickory" was denoted above the picture. So I took it home.

Couple nights later I'm in that spot where I don't want to put much effort in to making dinner so I decided to try it. A taste of the sauce prior to cooking literally made me think, "Shit. I just bought a can of BBQ sauce to put on ground beef. Yuck."

Wrong! It was really good! Not too BBQ-ey. In fact, this is the best application, by far, for the extra lean ground beef. The texture and lack of grease made it very much like brisket. It was a HUGE hit. WOW! I can't wait to eat it again.

Better than many BBQ restaurant sandwiches and that's a fact.

EDIT- It was Del Monte, not Hunt's. I fixed the typos while I was at it.

[Menolly]

Interesting.

Have you tried the sloppy lentils recipe? I'm thinking you can leave out the peppers, and get away with slipping the lentils past the littles...

[Harbinger]

I think I will try that. I have a bag of dry lentils that could be one year old, or four. Who knows? I cooked LOTS of dry beans in my early 20s. In fact, typing this response has made me decide to make a pot of "soup beans." Thanks.

[Zarathustra]

I don't think I've purchased any ground beef leaner than 85% in more than a decade. For me cost has nothing to do with it. I just don't see the health benefits significant enough to eat something that doesn't taste good. I think I'd rather eat a salad. (Really! I eat a lot of them.) I just don't worry about beef, even fatty beef. There are many worse things you can eat, like Pop Tarts or potato chips. Beef does a body good.

[Harbinger]

I can appreciate your point. I have a ribeye fetish. And I eat them fairly frequently. I balance that out by eating lean ground beef in most non burger recipes. Maybe it's not as good, but it's still pretty damn good, and I really like that there is more edible beef per pound because so little fat renders out during cooking. I like the texture in many recipes. If I slip up and eat a taco or two too many, I don't get that grease overload syndrome.

I also really like the 97% lean ground turkey. Talk about a lot of edible product per pound. It's less dense than beef and ultra-lean. I can feed a family of six (with two teens) on one pound of that stuff if I eat a modest 3-4 tacos. The turkey is a little bland- it just takes a little more (than the beef would) of whatever you're seasoning it with to get a desirable flavor.

Finally, we are a red meat family. I do most of the cooking. I don't cook chicken, turkey, or fish often enough, so I like to cut down on the fat content in recipes where the extra flavor from the fatty ground beef (or chuck) is not going to make a significant difference.

[Zarathustra]

I read that a new study came out this year claiming that saturated fat isn't as bad as people have thought.

How many grams of fat per serving is one saving by eating lean beef, I wonder? How many bites of ground chuck would you have to refrain from eating to get the same amount of fat?

Eh, calculations I don't feel like making, but feel intuitively that it's pretty small. Eating a slightly smaller portion (of something like chili or spaghetti sauce) would probably do it.

However, if you've got a recipe that makes lean beef taste good, I suppose that eliminates the argument for eating the fattier variety. I haven't had a sloppy joe in years, but I bet my son would like one.