Friday, July 18, 2008

How to use a freezer full of ground beef

Richard found this recipe online, I revamped it to have more nutrition - less fat - and to taste ALOT better. As you can see from the directions, I am not so good at writing out recipes. Basically, you make a meat sauce, and then you layer the meat sauce with pasta, pesto, and cheese - sort of like a lasagne, but with shell noodles. You can buy pesto sauce premade or you can make your own - if you need a pesto sauce recipe, let me know.

INGREDIENTS

3/4 # shell pasta
1# extra lean ground beef
1 onion
1/3 cup red cooking wine
1 can tomato sauce
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 tsp italian seasoning
fresh ground pepper
2 zucchini's, sliced as thin as you can get them
1 cup spinach, chopped very thin
1/3 cup pesto sauce
1/2 cup mozzerella cheese

1. Cook the pasta according to pkg. directions, drain, and set aside.

2 Brown the ground beef and onion in a large skillet. Drain off the fat once it is done cooking.

3 Deglaze the pan with some red cooking wine. If you dont have cooking wine, just skip this step. (deglazing is pouring the liquid over the browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pan and scraping them up off the pan into your meat). Cook for 1-2 minutes to let all of the wine cook off.

4 Sprinkle the meat with 1 tsp italian seasoning

5 Add 1 can tomato sauce and 1 can italian style (or whatever style) stewed tomatoes. Add zucchini and spinach. Continue to cook the sauce over medium heat until most of the liquid is gone and it looks like a thick spagetti sauce.

6. Put a thin layer of meat sauce in the bottom of a casserole dish. Spread 1/2 of the noodles over meat sauce. Dallop 1/2 of the pesto sauce over noodles. Sprinkle with 1/2 of cheese. Repeat layers once more ending with the cheese on top.

7. Place in the oven, under HI broiler until the cheese on top is melted.

Walaa, dinner. Took me 15 minutes from start to finish, and if we weren't such oinkers, then it would feed us for at least 2 days.

2 comments:

Joy said...

I have most of these ingredients, or at least stuff I can improvise. Plus an excuse to buy red wine? Can't pass that up.

Nicole said...

Sherpa

Steven thought we were sinners for having a cupboard full of cooking wine.

Nicole