An Easy Ground Beef Recipe For Kids: Beef and Cucumber Stir Fry
Description
In our seemingly endless quest to find new ways to create toddler ground beef recipes that don’t inevitably end up as burgers or tacos, we’ve recently become masters of, well, the obvious: i.e., why not pair ground beef with something else you have probably have lying around the house and also struggle to use differently? Here, that ingredient is the humble cucumber, which you may already serve in its natural form to your child–what child doesn’t like crunchy and watery, after all?--or mix into smoothies or pressed juices; chances are, though, you’re probably not finding many ways to get them into your main protein or entree. Simple solution: take a cue from east Asia and stir fry ‘em. Stir fried cukes show up in all sorts of Chinese and Korean mains, the latter of which inspires the flavors of the sauce that ties this cow and cucumber together. In Korea, something like this would be served as a banchan, or side dish; in what follows, though, we’ve paired it with some fluffy rice to make for a clean and complete dinner that your child can plow through quickly (like any other ground beef dish you make) and curiously (because it’s both something familiar and something else entirely).
Ingredients
Instructions
Prep
- In a bowl or container, add the ground beef, sesame oil, soy sauce, orange juice, two pinches of sugar, and a spoonful of garlic; integrate the sauce into the meat, using your hands to press and toss the beef until thoroughly swimming in the marinade. Allow to sit for at least an hour, if not more.
- Peel cucumber, then slice into thin-but-not-translucent slices. (Use a mandolin if you have one, set to ⅛”.) Put your cucumber slices in a bowl, shake salt all over the slices; toss to ensure salt covers all slices, then allow to sit–and leech–for an hour.
- Remove liquid from bowl of cucumbers, then squeeze or press cucumbers to shake off any excess liquid. Halve or quarter the cucumber slices to create smaller, more child-friendly pieces.
Cook
- Make rice per package instructions.
- Heat a wok or skillet to High; add in a glug of oil once hot. Add in cucumber slices and stir frequently and furious for 30 seconds. Remove cucumber slices from heat.
- Return wok or skillet to High, then add in ground beef. Cook until the liquid in the pan is mostly gone, roughly 3-4 minutes; chop up beef chunks as they cook to ensure smaller crumbles or nubbins.
Serve
We serve layered, with rice on bottom, cucumbers in between, and pieces of beef on top; you can also serve in a kind of triangle, with each element serving as one corner of the bowl if your child doesn’t like his/her food mixing. If your child likes small toppings on meat and/or rice dishes–say, scallions or sesame seeds–this is a good recipe to add a bit of flourish on top.
Adapt
Thinking of using ground turkey or chicken instead of beef? A suggestion: don’t. Without much fat in the grind, the marinade will burn off in cooking and leave you with dry and pretty flavorless pieces of meat. If you insist, though, look for ground meat with a higher fat percentage–some turkey grinds have upwards of 10% fat–and add a bit more oil or a dollop of mayo to your marinade to ensure a higher percentage of fat.
