Last night I moved some lean ground beef burgers to the fridge to thaw so I could use them as my protein tonight. At first I had planned on making patty melts (basically cheeseburgers on regular bread since I didn’t have any hamburger buns) but then I realized I had mushrooms in the fridge as well! I decided to use the burger patties in salisbury steak instead that way I could utilize the mushrooms.
I paired the salisbury steaks with mashed potatoes and a caesar salad. You can’t have caesar salad with croutons, so I toasted up 2 slices of bread with olive oil and herbs to make some quick croutons.
In about 30 minutes dinner was served and it was the hearty, meaty, stick to your ribs meal that I was craving, but with less calories:)
Salisbury Steak
What I love about this recipe is that you get a rich mushroom sauce without all the cream and butter that is typically in a rich salisbury steak.
- Season beef patties on both sides with salt and pepper.
- Heat a large heavy bottomed skillet (iron skillet works great) with 1 TBSP olive oil.
- . Once the pan is hot, brown the beef patties on both sides, 2-3 minutes per side depending on the power of your stove. Don’t worry about cooking them the entire way through at this point because they will finish cooking in the sauce later. Remove from pan.
- Add 1 TBSP oil to pan. Add mushrooms, onion, garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Allow the mixture to brown slightly and pick up the tasty meaty bits on the bottom of the pan (3-5 minutes).
- Add about 2 cups of beef stock and dried thyme. You can add more stock here if you want a thinner sauce. Bring to a simmer and add cornstarch (if you used more stock, add a little more cornstarch here. You can’t mess it up- thin with more stock, thicken with more cornstarch. Just keep in mind that you have to cook it a bit before it starts to thicken from the cornstarch. This won’t happen right away). Stir until the cornstarch dissolves and add the beef patties back into the sauce.
- Simmer the sauce and patties until the sauce is the thickness that you want and the patties are cooked through. For me it took about 5 minutes. Simmer longer or shorter until your desired sauce consistency. Serve over mashed potatoes.
Mashed Potatoes
To make these potatoes lower in fat and calories, I used chicken stock to flavor and thin them rather than milk and butter. I added a splash of fat free half and half and about 1 TBSP of low-fat sour cream to give some creaminess.
Caesar Salad
I toasted 2 slices of bread with about 1 TBSP of olive oil, salt, pepper, and dried thyme. I stirred them occasionally until they were crispy. For the salad I used romaine, tomatoes, parmesan cheese, croutons, and store bought caesar dressing. Right before serving I topped the salads with fresh pepper. Easy!
I’m so happy with how this meal turned out. It was a great use of the ingredients I had on-hand and now I’m really looking forward to the leftovers for lunch.
Stay tuned for night 3!
-Kayla
cultivatinghospitality.com 