Ground Beef

We’ve all heard of sloppy joes. Well, now there’s a new dish on the block. Instead of serving your favorite sloppy joes on a regular old hamburger bun, have some fun (and some crunch) with them by using Tostitos Baked! Scoops. If it’s easier, feel free to sub in any baked tortilla chips for the scoops. They obviously won’t look the same, but they’ll taste just as great. These joes can also be made with extra-lean ground turkey, but you’ll need to add extra sauce because turkey is drier than beef. Using turkey in this recipe will save you about 3 grams of fat, but keep in mind that the extra sauce will add 95 mg of sodium per tablespoon.

Traditional buffalo wings are fattening, but sometimes you still crave that buffalo flavor. Instead of over-indulging, opt for this burger to get those visions of dripping wing sauce and tangy blue cheese out of your head and into your tummy. Look for preshaped patties (because they’re also preweighed) to save time. This burger can be cooked in a grill pan or on a nonstick grill, but I love outdoor grilling when possible for optimum flavor without added fat.

Buy preshaped burger patties to save time. If your favorite supermarket doesn’t stock the 96% lean patties in the fresh meat case, check the freezer section; they’re often found there. If you still can’t find them, don’t cheat—just shape the 96% lean beef yourself. You’ll save about 30 calories and 4 grams of fat per 4-ounce burger over 93% lean meat and even more over buying a fattier ground beef.

Yes, a bacon cheeseburger. If you buy 96% lean beef and reduced-fat bacon pieces, you’re good to go! Do note, if you’re a fan of BBQ bacon cheeseburgers, just swap out the ketchup in this recipe for your favorite barbecue sauce. It will add about 10 calories but save you around 15 mg sodium. Look for the bacon pieces near the croutons and other salad ingredients in your favorite grocery store. Or, if you love them as much as I do, head to Costco and buy them in a big bag. Just store them in your refrigerator and you’ll have them on hand to curb a bacon craving with less guilt.

Pat: You can shape these burgers into four 1/4-pound patties, but in Memphis, we shape them into mini-burgers so each person gets to eat two (and kids love the easy-to-eat size). Drizzled with a spicy mustard sauce and topped with ripe tomatoes, pickles, and fresh lettuce, these juicy, satisfying burgers fly off the plate every time. Run out of these and you’ll be singing the Memphis blues.

Pat: This is another one of those dishes that take me back to my childhood. I loved my momma Lorine’s lasagna, and to this day, I crave the molten layers of gooey cheese, rich tomato sauce, tender noodles, and beef. The pleasure of this dish is not just in the eating, it’s in the making and baking. When Momma’s lasagna is in the oven, our entire house smells like an Italian grandma has moved in. Lucky for me, my family loves this dish as much as I do, and Gina has learned to make this lasagna as well as my mom does. We like to make ours with cottage cheese, because we love the tangy flavor, but you can substitute the traditional ricotta if you prefer.

Pat: Texas style chili is all about beef, but since Memphis is all about the pigs, we give our pot a little love by adding ground pork as well. The combination of the two meats is, well, paradise for a guy like me, and it gives this chili a robust flavor and satisfying depth. Plenty of garlic, pure ground chile powder, and a bottle of beer make this one kicking combination. We call for kidney beans, but you can use black beans instead. A dollop of sour cream helps cool the fire.

Peppers with a slight kick to them, like the cubanellas or banana peppers suggested at left, are wonderful for this dish. If you can’t find those, choose the long, thin-skinned peppers often sold as “Italian frying peppers” in supermarkets. You can serve the peppers alone or with a side of rigatoni, dressed with some of the sauce from the stuffed-pepper baking dish, grated Pecorino Romano cheese, and a drizzle of olive oil. This is a favorite dish at Becco, our restaurant in New York’s Theater District.

If you have trouble finding ground pork, or if you prefer to grind your own, it’s really very easy. (And if you buy a piece of bone-in pork to grind, you’ll have the bones you need for the sauce.) Remove all bones and gristle from the meat, but leave some of the fat. Cut the pork into 1-inch pieces, and chill them thoroughly. Grind about half at a time in a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Pulse, using quick on/off motions, until the meat is ground coarsely. In my region of Italy, tomato paste is usually added along with the onions to caramelize a little bit. But around Naples, and the rest of southern Italy, tomato paste is stirred right into the sauce. That’s how I do it here. When the sauce is finished simmering, you can pull the meat from the bones and stir it into the sauce, or you can do what I do—nibble on it while the sauce perks away. This makes quite a bit of sauce—enough to feed a small crowd and have enough left over to freeze in small quantities for a quick pasta meal for one or two.

Bolognese is a very versatile sauce. Not only can it dress all shapes and sizes of pasta, like fresh tagliolini (page 180) or dried spaghetti or rigatoni, you can also use it instead of the Italian-American Meat Sauce (page 144) in the lasagna on page 156, or in a meaty version of the pasticciata on page 158. This recipe makes enough sauce to dress 1 1/2 pounds of dried pasta or one and a half recipes of tagliolini—good for feeding a hungry crowd. It also freezes well, if you’d like to enjoy it in smaller quantities. Warm the sauce while the pasta is cooking and toss it with the cooked pasta, adding a little of the pasta-cooking water if necessary to make a creamy sauce. Toss in some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano just before you serve it.

I like a mixture of beef and pork for meatballs, but you can use all of one or the other if you prefer. If you do use all beef, try this: moisten the bread crumbs in milk for a minute or two before adding them to the meatball mixture. It’s not traditional, but it will help with the somewhat drier texture of beef. You can use a spoon or spatula to mix the meatballs, but I like to use my hands. I think it’s the most efficient way, and I can feel the texture of what I’m mixing. The mix of vegetable and olive oils gives you a higher smoking point for the oil with the benefit of the flavor of olive oil. The reason for flouring and browning the meatballs is to add flavor and to seal them so they hold together in the sauce, not to cook them all the way through—they will finish cooking in the sauce.

You have all seen those large, wax-coated provolone cheeses hanging like oversized pears in Italian groceries. When the same cheese is made into smaller shapes, which are hung to dry only briefly, they are sold as a softer, milder cheese known as provola. The wonderful soft texture of the cheese is perfect for this reinforced soup. If you cannot find provola, substitute a young soft cheese like Fontina or fresh Pecorino. You can use fresh mozzarella, but it will be very stringy when ladling and eating the soup. Boiling the meatballs before adding them to the soup may seem a little odd, but it removes some of the raw-meat flavor and helps keep the clear flavors of the soup intact.

Usually, when I make meatloaf, I just press my mother’s meatball mix into a loaf pan—but that calls for pork, whole eggs, and white breadcrumbs. Not exactly spa cuisine. Instead of going for ground turkey here, I wanted to use lean beef for a richer taste. The Portobello mushrooms add moistness, flavor, and bulk—in exchange for very few calories.

Swapping the traditional crown of mashed white potatoes for a topping of seasoned cauliflower puree made with Greek yogurt saves a load of calories and carbs—enough to enjoy this English pub dish with a nice pint, if you like.

The Big Mac is a great burger—juicy, delicious, and an icon of American culture. So how do I re-create the grandeur of the Big Mac while stripping away a lot of the fat and calories that go with it? First replace the bun with a nutrient-rich, high-fiber sprouted-grain hamburger bun. My “special sauce” is made with charred eggplant and low-fat yogurt, and the beef is extra-lean. A little low-fat Russian dressing, which I consider to be my special sauce, gives it some zest—and all the rest is healthy on its own. (No cheese needed.)

This meat and spinach casserole hits the same flavor notes as lasagna, hold the noodles: No-sagna Lasagna! Serve it with a simple salad of mixed greens.

This burger and the side that follows are fancy enough to entertain with and much more affordable than steaks and lobster for your crew!

Serve the Seared Peppers and Onions (page 46) with any or all of these Fajita Burgers. They’re hot! Wrap the pepper and onion topping in a warm, soft tortilla with a burger, or pile a quarter of the mixture on each plate and garnish with a little cilantro. Top with a burger of your choice.