Seasoned Ground Beef?

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Dec 21, 2008
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Tulsa, OK
Hi,

Worst cook ever trying to find a simple recipe for seasoned ground beef.

I'm not interested in hot, just flavorful, savory, umami.

I searched "seasoned ground beef" in this forum, but was surprised to see no results.

Can anyone help?

Thanks
 
Salt and pepper of course, but often use onion, ground cumin, and sometimes some form of chili (dried or fresh).

If your looking for a tried and true recipe it may help to know what you are going to use it for.

I brown the beef in a hot bare pan with a small glug of oil and a little salt. This lets me get some real browning on the meat, and a nice fond in the pan. Then remove the meat from fat. Cook the remaining ingredients in the fat, adding a little water, stock, or wine to deglaze the pan and then add the browned beef back in, and cook for a couple of more minutes stirring frequently.
 
Salt and pepper of course, but often use onion, ground cumin, and sometimes some form of chili (dried or fresh).

If your looking for a tried and true recipe it may help to know what you are going to use it for.

I brown the beef in a hot bare pan with a small glug of oil and a little salt. This lets me get some real browning on the meat, and a nice fond in the pan. Then remove the meat from fat. Cook the remaining ingredients in the fat, adding a little water, stock, or wine to deglaze the pan and then add the browned beef back in, and cook for a couple of more minutes stirring frequently.

Thank you for your help.

So I did a local delivered-meals plan awhile back. The food was so-so, except for this one ground beef with onions and diced potatoes dish, which was EXCELLENT. I ate it at least three times a week.

They ended up going out of business, and I could never get them to give me that recipe. I'm trying to duplicate it.
 
A few things that come to mind with ground meat and potatoes is onion and garlic, a little bit of tomato product, beef broth and Worcestershire sauce, dried oregano or parsley, and some thyme or rosemary.

These are pretty common ingredients in a cottage or shepherd’s pie, which is topped with mashed potatoes instead of adding diced potatoes. In fact, if you Google "Sheperd's Pie" or "Cottage Pie" you'll find recipes for a delicious ground meat base in which you can add potatoes and/or other veggies like carrots or peas as well, if desired.

This is a time honored, traditional recipe that you can change up however you like, and always get great results.
 
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Typically, with ground beef and potatoes, you are going to use salt, black pepper, granulated garlic, and minced onion. Other flavors that will work include those given you by ScottinPollock, along with celery, carrot, beef soup base (such as Better Than Bouillon brand), Kitchen Bouquet, Maggi, and maybe some paprika.

I hope you find the flavor you are looking for. Remember to cook both the meat, and potatoes long enough to lightly brown them. That browning is an important part of the flavor. Also the potatoes should be diced, and pan-fried in a little butter until browned , and cooked through. Then, they are set set aside. The neat is then cooked, and seasoned, then the potatoes and meat are combined.

Tip, If you cook the ground beef with a lid on the pan, rich juices will form in the pan. Pour this off and place in your fridge for an hour. The fat will rise to the top, and is easily removed from the gelled broth. Continue to brown the meat with the lid off.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
Along with the what others have said, worcestershire sauce is fantastic in just about every beef dish, so much flavor.
 
OK, so first thank you all so much for your help.

Here's what I ended up doing:

3 + a little lbs ground beef

2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp Accent

1 1/2 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp oregano

4 tsp Worcestershire sauce


I cooked it till there was a little brown showing up on the ground beef ... I like it that way.

I put the ground beef in my strainer thing and gave it 45 minutes for the grease to drain.

Then I poured a little bit of the grease back into the skillet and sautéed the onions.

I tasted the ground beef while the onions were burning (sauteing). It was better than any of my previous attempts, but still not as good as that ground beef dish I used to get from the prepared food service. It felt like it needed salt, and just lacked that "WHANG!", you know?

I remembered soy sauce is salty and has a lot of umami, so I added 2 tsp of soy sauce when I put the ground beef back in the skillet with the burnt (sautéed) onions.

So, here's where I got a little crossed up. My plan was to make 3 lbs of ground beef and use half of it for that potato, beef and onion dish, and to use the other half in Hamburger Helper, which I love.

As the beef cooked, I put the milk, hot water and Hamburger Helper seasoning mix into the blender and let it go on low to get the ingredients all mixed up. After about 5 minutes I went back over to the blender and it was super thick and looked like cream!

I got flustered and poured it over all of the ground beef, forgetting to take half out for the beef, potatoes and onion dish, so I never got to taste the ground beef to see what effect the soy sauce had on it.

The beefiest Hamburger Helper, ever is cooling off now. I'm pretty excited to try it.

Was adding soy sauce a good solution, or is there something better to try? Do I need to add more spices, or just adjust the amounts of what I have?

Thanks again.
 
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My DD and her boyfriend at the time used to make white rice and hamburger cooked up with a little onion and garlic and mojo criollo sauce (purchased). Neither of them could really cook at the time so this was 1 of the few things they would make when hungry and 1 of the moms wasn't around. He was Cuban, so they always had a bottle of mojo in their house and we nearly always did as well. They really seemed to like it.
 
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