Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Spicy Beef and New Orleans Red Rice Skillet Dinner


This recipe comes from the Deen Brother's cookbook, The Deen Bros.-take it easy. This dish was pretty good but didn't love it. However, BOTH my kids ate this up and I thought it tasted much better as leftovers the next day.

The cookbook, is a collection of "quick and affordable meals the whole family will love", but I was disappointed that for a family cookbook there were a lot of recipes high in fat, salt, and with too much spice. Also, some of the recipes were a bit unimaginative. For example, they have a quesadilla recipe that calls for you to put shredded cheese in a flour tortilla and the cook it in a skillet...hmmm, I don't know. I just expected a little bit more. I don't have any of their other cookbooks but I'm guessing those are better.

Ingredients
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 pound ground beef
2 1/4 tsp salt (I only used 1 3/4 tsp)
2 celery ribs, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, seeded and diced
2 cups chicken broth
1 14oz can tomato puree
1 1/2 cups uncooked long-grain rice
1 tsp sugar
2 teaspoons Tabasco, or other hot sauce (I only used 1)

Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat. Crumble the beef into the skillet and season with 1/2 tsp of salt. Brown the beef, breaking it up with a fork for 5-7 minutes, until it is no longer pink. Transfer to paper towel lined plate to drain.

Reduce the heat from high to medium and reduce all of the drippings but 2 tablespoons. Saute the celery, onion and bell pepper for 5 minutes or until tender. Add the browned beef, chicken broth, 1 1/2 cups of water, tomato puree, rice, sugar, the remaining salt and Tabasco. Bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat to med-low and cook covered for 40 minutes or until the rice is tender.

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