Beef....it's what's for dinner!

Uh, ground beef, that is.

Remember those commercials way back with Robert Mitchum's voice extolling the virtues of beef? It just came back to me as I was preparing to write this post.

Now back to our regularly scheduled recipe. Cheeseburger Rice. It's an excellent way to use up leftover rice and couldn't be simpler to prepare. Not to mention, it's pretty cheap to make. Fast, cheap, easy. My kind of food!

I hosted a Pampered Chef party last year and one of the recipes we prepared for it was Deluxe Cheeseburger Salad. I really liked how the flavors reminded me of a cheeseburger, but it's tough to call ground beef mixed with ketchup, mustard and pickles a salad. Even though Pampered Chef does it and they're perfectly within their rights to do so. I wanted to make it more hearty, so I added some leftover rice and tweaked it a bit. That's what I am, a recipe tweaker. I can't help it. I rarely follow a recipe exactly. Oh, well. If you want the Pampered Chef recipe, it's the "Season's Best" fall/winter recipe collection booklet from 2008.

Cheeseburger Rice

1 lb ground beef
1/2 cup chopped onion (you can substitute 1 TBSP of dried minced onion if you like)
2 cups cooked rice
3 TBSP ketchup
1 TBSP mustard
1/2 TBSP dill pickle relish
salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (I prefer sharp cheddar)

Optional ingredients : chopped tomatoes, bacon, lettuce, whatever else you'd put on a cheeseburger.

Brown the ground beef and onion. Drain.


Stir in the rice. Use a big skillet, bigger than the one I'm using. I'll show you why in a minute.


Stir in the ketchup, mustard and relish until well combined. Sprinkle on the salt and pepper too. Really get in there and mix it up. You want every grain of rice to be coated.


Now you can see why you need a bigger skillet. I kept flipping rice and beef out of the pan onto the stove. See all those specks of rice? Maybe someone will get me a bigger one for Christmas.



Hmmm...anyway, sprinkle the cheese over the top and turn the burner on low. Cover until the cheese melts. Stir until the gooey cheese is mixed throughout. Add any of your optional ingredients. Sometimes I add bacon, sometimes I don't. You can serve the rice over a bed of lettuce. Top it with tomatoes. Mushrooms. Whatever your little cheeseburger heart desires.


That's the beauty of this recipe. You can play around with the ingredients until you find the combination your family likes. If you don't care for ketchup, use steak sauce or barbecue sauce instead. Leave out the onions or relish.



This recipe is linked to Tempt My Tummy Tuesday.
You can also check out some more easy recipes at Life as Mom.