Hamburger soup is a wonderful soup that is easy to make and that will warm you on a cold evening.
Ingredients:
1 lb. hamburger
2 stalks celery
2 potatoes
2 carrots
1 yellow onion
2 cloves garlic
Salt
Pepper
Brown the hamburger, with a lid on the pan, and lightly season with salt and pepper. While the hamburger is browning, wash and slice the celery, and peel the potatoes, carrots and onions. Slice the veggies into bite-sized chunks. Peel and mince the garlic cloves.
When the ground beef is cooked through, drain the broth into a bowl, cover, and put in the fridge for later use (when ready to use, lift the hardened fat from the top and you have a wonderful broth for whaterver). Place the ground beef and minced garlic into a three quart pot with the cut veggies. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Turn heat to simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Season with sal tand pepper to taste. Serve.
You can add other veggies as you desire to this soup.
Another great and unconventional use for ground beef is to use it in a meat pie. Again you are using the same ingredients as in the above recipe. But this time, After the meat has browned, add the veggies to the same pan, cover, and cook for ten minutes. Place the mixture into a pie shell, cover with pie-crust, and bake for 40 minutes. Serve with ketchup or gravy.
You can substitute ground beef for the meat in Cornish pasties as well. Again, use the same ingredients as above, with the addition of diced rutabegga. Place a generous four tbs. of the cooked mixture into a 9-inch circle of pie dough. Fold the pastrie in half and roll the edges inward until the pastie is slightly stretched by the filling. Bake for 30 mintues at 350' F. Serve with ketchup or gravy.
You can add various seasonings to ground beef and make your own beef sausages. You might have to add extra fat to the mixture though. Google search "Ground Beef Sausage Recipes" and you will get many recipes.
Use a mixture of ground beef and tomatoes to make slumgullion, or goulash (not the real thing of course). You can also combine ground beef, cheese, and mushrooms with a bit of cream and garlic and serve over noodles or rice.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Use your imagination and you just might surprize yourself.
You cn even use ground beef to model things, like you would clay. Then bake it.
Seeeeeya; Goodweed of the North