Yummy and quick minced meat fixes!
Chicken and corn patties…Bulgogi mince..steamed egg with mince…pumpkin and mince..potato and mince(Shepherd’s Pie)
My life is streamlined around…minced meat!
Do you know what’s nice about minced?
It’s ready to cook! You don’t need to cut it..it’s just ready to fling all into the pan and to just fry!
Minced tofu with minced meat garnished with red pepper (for colour as well as a more ‘spicy’ taste if cannot tolerate the fiery taste of red chillis ) spring onions as well as coriander. An easily assembled dish!
You know why I am squirmish about handling raw meat..because when I was raising my kids with no domestic helper and the ‘bao ka liao’ roles (‘do-it-all-mum’ means part-time working employee, housemaid and mummying roles all rolled into one), my children had food poisoning twice because I did not clean the utensils properly…
You might be thinking..how could I have let my children suffer as such…but all those who are mummies to pre-school children and with no helper or are in a similar situation as me will understand what it’s like to be ‘do-it-all’ or ‘try-and-do-it-all’.And if your husband is seldom at home because he’s out bringing home the bigger bacon you know definitely what it feels to be ‘almost like’ a single mum!
So yes, accidents like that will happen despite the best of best intentions…
Therefore, now, whenever I can, I try to avoid direct handling of raw meat..my style is if I can buy store-bought and it comes all ready to just throw inside a kitchen appliance to cook that’s perfect for me… no chopping boards or knives to clean and wash up…no spreading of germs etc etc
Cooking with minced is also terribly addictive..just open the packaging and drop it into the bowl to marinade.
This is the mixture for the Chicken Corn Patties.
Or even better… just get an extra plastic bag and massage the fellas while all the gooey meat is nestled INSIDE the plastic bag…
Another ideal way, drop it into the wok (like that pumpkin and meat recipe I got from the Internet).
There is also a pasta sauce recipe I cooked in the rice cooker – just shake all the minced from the packaging into one pot, stir stir mix mix and you’ve got a scrumptious dish to feed your family. There are quite a few ‘life hack’ ways to cook your pasta sauce in the most cost-effective way (depending on the cook’s preference)Below are a few links (all tried and tested so no worries:P)
If your intent is to make it from just canned tomato soup, this would be a workable link
If you want something less salty and sugary, but still want the convenience, then this link would suit you (pasta sauce prepared from canned tomatoes)
However, if you want a challenge of living on a shoestring budget and want all-natural ingredients, then make your own tomato soup (ripe fresh tomatoes are really inexpensive; I simply added Italian seasoning to mine, added lesser water and had a simple homemade pasta sauce). This link should provide some inspiration
Another minced meat recipe that just needs one to empty the minced into the wok directly is called Pork Fried Rice and I found this from Martha Stewart (you can use minced chicken instead of pork and it still tastes great!) Hacks to share for frying this rice is just buy a bag of mixed vegetables comprising chopped carrots, french beans, sweet corn niblets and peas and fry it with meat and one has a nutritious family dish!
Having shared so many recipes for minced meat, my mind wanders down memory lane and recalls a main meal comprising minced when the kids were still pre-schoolers (which till now remains a family favourite) I got Violet Oon’s Shepherd’s Pie recipe from a book I borrowed from the local library. I remembered cooking this right after the birth of my first child because it was so easy to do with few ingredients.
My latest recipe find on minced meat must be from a local organisation (the CDAC website) where I obtained a minced chicken with corn recipe – it’s cooked with ‘tau kwa’ (firm bean curd) and is both healthy and delicious. This dish has so many positive qualities: it can be eaten cold and it’s nutritious (it’s got corn and ‘tau kwa’)..great as a halal potluck dish too.
At other times when one has no idea of what to cook..then the Bulgogi recipe from Maangchi where I just marinate the minced with the marinade ingredients conveniently obtained from the pantry…this is for one of those super easy foods easy to whip up when one feels like having ‘something different’.
Finally, when one has childhood memories fleeting into one’s head and when one feelsl like being comforted by a familiar taste and it must be an easy dish quick to whip up? Well, in our family, it was a steamed egg with minced meat dish..i cooked dis aplenty …it was one of those dishes that ‘instantly’ appeared in my mind when I was too frazzled to think about what to cook to feed the family!
So yeah cooking with minced meat means one does not need to wash up boards and knives and be watchful of germs transmitted by raw meat!
It’s really for those days or moments or week whereby the cook thinks ‘I just need a meat protein dish for the kids to accompany their instant noodles’..(not exactly the healthiest but are absolutely lifesavers when one needs a quick meal to whip up at home)
So..I think I pretty much covered all the minced meat family recipes I usually turn to when I want to cook a fast and cost-savvy meal…
For this post I thought I had wanted to organise recipes centred on one ingredient for easy menu planning and I think I just about managed to do that..
Do leave a comment below if you have other cost-savvy nutritious family recipes you cook in your family which have absolutely been life saving..
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