10 Great Ways to Cook Our Ontario Grass-fed Ground Beef
posted on
November 4, 2022
Our Ontario grass-fed ground beef is one of the most versatile meats we produce and sell here at Meeting Place Organic Farm. It’s a good thing too because you get a lot of it when you buy bulk beef from us as a ¼, ½ or whole. We dry age our beef at least 14 days and grind our ground beef twice resulting in a finer texture, more consistent cooking, and a delicious product.
We often tell new customers that there is a learning curve when it comes to cooking grass fed beef versus conventional beef. Ground beef though is more forgiving than the other cuts of the animal. It can be used in all your favourite ground beef recipes without adjusting the recipes. Two small tips are that grass-fed ground beef is leaner so it won’t have to be drained nearly as often and in recipes where fat binds ingredients together (like burgers) if can actually help to add back a bit of healthy fat like butter, olive oil or avocado oil.
Here are 10 great ground beef recipes to add to your dinner rotation:
Stuffed Peppers - Delish.com Classic Stuffed Peppers Recipe
This is amazing recipe for when the garden is overflowing with peppers and tomatoes. The filling alone with our grass-fed ground beef, lots of veggies and spice, makes a hearty fast dinner. It great for weekly dinners but is also a show stopper at bigger occasions.
Five Marys Farms Grass Fed Beef and Pastured Pork Ricotta Meatballs
Five Marys Farms is a great resource for cooking all kinds of grass fed pastured meat. They raise cattle, sheep, and Berkshire pork in a similar way to our farm but they also have their own abbatoir on site and own a few restaurants so are fully invested in creating recipes that showcase the amazing taste of grass-fed and pastured meat. This is one of those recipes that combines grass-fed ground beef with pastured pork in an exceptionally delicious way. Check out their other recipes as well.
Pasta with Simple Meat Sauce
This can be as simple or complicated about as you want to make it. Start by cooking some diced onions in a large frying pan, then add and brown a pound of our organic grass fed ground beef (there shouldn’t be much extra fat to drain because grass fed beef is naturally leaner), add homemade marinara or jarred sauce next, garlic, spices. Cook your favourite type of pasta and combine everything. You could add diced peppers or mushrooms to help veggie load it. This is a great everyday meal to tailor to your specific household.
Beef Ramen Stir Fry - Chelsea's Messy Apron
You don’t often think of ground beef and ramen going together but they do and it tastes so good.
Sweet Potato Shepherd’s Pie - EatingWell.com
Another hearty, soul-warming classic. This recipe uses sweet potatoes as a topping to give some added health benefits and sweetness to the traditional recipe.
Ukrainian Inspired Cabbage Rolls - Your Best Life with Lisa
Health coach, Lisa, made this recipe specifically with grass-fed ground beef but it is the combination of beef, fresh dill and sauciness that make it so good. The more sauce the better.
Deconstructed Cabbage Roll Casserole - Small Town Woman
Yes, a second cabbage roll recipe but this one is more go-with-the-flow and I often add in some of our pasture raised ground pork. I am not much of a recipe follower I must confess so recipes like this hit the spot.
Ground Beef Bulgogi Bowls - SlenderKitchen.com
This is a take on traditional Korean Bulgogi using ground beef instead of thinly sliced steak. If you haven’t tried it before put this on your dinner menu sometime soon.
Walking Tacos - Neighbourhood Food Blog
If would have been easy to include a regular taco or nacho recipe on this list but these walking tacos are much more fun. Not for every week certainly but definitely a fun, kid-friendly, novelty recipe that is perfect for a busy summer afternoon or evening and should be eaten outside.
Chili - The Best Classic Chili - The Wholesome Dish
This is the base recipe I start with and then modify it in the following ways. I use soaked from dry kidney beans, add in an extra 1 pound of our pastured ground pork and 1 pound of our pastured sausage. I also add a cup or two of sweet peppers – a great way to save your peppers when you know they are about to go bad is to dice them and freeze them for this exact purpose. We preserve our own tomatoes in various ways and use them instead of the canned chunk in this recipe.
Chili is such a fantastic and versatile recipe that can be made in bulk in the fall so you can have frozen, easy, heart-warming meals throughout the winter. You should always change it to suit your family’s tastes whether that means adding more veggies, removing some of the beans, or spicing it up.
When you are in a rush and you just don’t know what to have for dinner, take a pound or two of ground beef out of the freezer in the morning before you head out the door. It is so versatile that when you get home you will thank yourself for your forethought and enjoy a simple dinner.
The reason so many family’s comfort food recipes contain ground beef is because it has always been a versatile and relatively cheap cut of meat. Check out our store where you can buy our Ontario grass-fed ground beef by the pound or get a bulk discount when you stock up your freezer with 10 pounds of our delicious ground beef.
If you are interested in buying a ¼, ½, or whole beef you can pre-order for our May, September, and November bulk meat dates in our store. We deliver throughout Central and Southern Ontario weekly.