Indulge yourself in these tasty beef skillet recipes.

Every busy cook needs some stove-top ground beef recipes for busy days. Add bread and salad or fresh fruit to complete a quick cooked meal. Your busy family will be grateful.

Skillet Lasagne

This recipe keeps all the flavors of lasagna together while saving preparation time:

® cup chopped onion
® lb. ground beef
1 16 oz. can tomatoes
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
1 ® cup water
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. dried basil leaves, divided
2 cups cooked wide egg noodles
? cup lowfat cottage cheese
ª cup grated parmesan cheese
1 10 oz. pkg. frozen chopped spinach, thawed (optional)*
Large skillet with lid

1. Chop onion. Crumble beef. Cook beef and onion until beef is brown and onion is tender.

2. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, water, garlic powder and ® tsp. basil. Bring mixture to a boil and simmer until thick, about 25 min.

3. Cook noodles according to package directions. Drain.

4. Add noodles to the beef mixture. Stir to prevent sticking.

5. Mix cheeses and the remaining ® tsp. basil (with or without spinach) and drop by spoonfuls into the simmering meat/noodle mixture.

6. Cover and heat over low heat about 5 minutes. Serves 4 – 6

*If you decide to add spinach, scoop thawed spinach out of package and squeeze hard with your hands to remove all juice. Mix with cheeses.

This recipe also suggests substituting sliced zucchini or chopped broccoli for the meat in the sauce to reduce fat and cholesterol. 

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Skillet Stroganoff 

1 lb. ground beef
1 cup chopped onion
1 10 oz. package mushrooms, wiped clean and sliced*
2 Tbsp. olive or canola oil
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 can condensed beef broth or consomm?
Refilled broth can with water or dry red wine
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 8 oz. container sour cream (full fat, lowfat or nonfat)
3 cups cooked egg noodles
Chopped fresh parsley (optional)
Large skillet

1. Cook sliced mushrooms in oil until lightly brown. Remove from skillet and set aside in a bowl leaving the bit of oil in the bottom.

2. Add crumbled ground beef and onion. Cook until meat is brown and onion is tender.

3. Replace mushrooms in skillet with meat mixture. Sprinkle flour over mixture and stir to incorporate flour (watch skillet, now dry, so flour does not scorch).

4. Add beef broth or consomm?, Worcestershire sauce and water or wine.

5. Prepare noodles according to directions. Drain and hold warm.

6. When sauce thickens (if it gets very thick, add a little more water?it should be a gravy consistency), lower heat and gently stir in sour cream (high heat will make it curdle).

Serve over noodles, garnish with parsley if you like. Serves 4 – 6.

Misickquatash (Native American succotash) 

® lb. lean ground beef
1 cup frozen lima beans (cooked and drained)
1 15 ® oz. can corn (drained)
1 15 ® oz. can tomatoes, chopped coarsely (do not drain)
ª – ® tsp. salt
ª tsp. pepper
ª tsp. nutmeg

While the original recipe was most likely cooked in an iron or clay pot over an open fire, this recipe adjusts well to the roster of stove-top ground beef recipes for busy days.

1. Brown crumbled ground beef in skillet.

2. Add remaining ingredients except nutmeg. Cover and simmer 5 minutes until thoroughly heated. Sprinkle with nutmeg before serving.

The recipe acknowledges Native American contributions to American cuisine while creating a quick and inexpensive family main dish. Corn muffins make a good and valid addition to the meal. Misickquatash is a Naragansett Indian word meaning ‘ear of corn.’

One suspects that the original meat may have been venison, but the general effect is still the same. This is a good recipe to serve when your children are studying the First Thanksgiving; you can point out that for much of the year, the beans and the corn would have been dried and buried in pits in the ground.

Finding such a storage pit saved Pilgrim lives during the first winter. They probably also found dried squash and the ‘three sisters’ (beans, corn and squash) which kept them from starving. No, the tomatoes probably weren’t authentic?but they taste good.