Curried Ground Beef Served on Grits! Another $6 dinner

By Kathryn Washburn Breighner

My intent was to grill hamburgers outside but pouring rain forced a menu change. Since I was creating butternut squash patties with curry, I stayed with the curry theme. And the result will be repeated again--it was a winner!

This was a quick and simple dish that used only a few ingredients. I served it on grits, yes, grits! We love grits and I made them with milk so that they were thick and creamy--a perfect fit with the curried beef. If you haven't discovered Anson Mills organic heirloom grains, you're in for a treat. www.ansonmills.com

For this dish, I used:

1 lb ground beef
1 T olive oil
1 med onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 T curry powder--more if you are a curry fan
2 tomatoes, chopped into pieces about 1" in diameter--1 red,1 orange because I still have heirlooms from my garden
1/2 c water
salt and pepper to taste
chopped parsley for garnish

And here's how to put it together:

Saute the beef until slightly pink--not completely cooked. Remove to another bowl, drain the beef fat, add the olive oil and saute the onion and garlic for 3-4 minutes. Add the beef and remaining ingredients and simmer for 10-15 minutes until most of the liquid has evaporated. My heirloom tomatoes are watery so this took about 15 minutes. In the winter when I don't have fresh tomatoes and don't want to pay $2 each for the cardboard tasting ones in the stores, I will use canned tomatoes.

This is not a dish that is based on the tomatoes; they are an addition and using only a small amount really works well. 

For this dinner, the meat was $2 (on sale) and the other ingredients were about $1, a bit more if I didn't have my own tomatoes so add another $1 for canned tomatoes. This could be served with rice or pasta but it was particularly great with the creamy grits. Another $1.50 for the grits and milk and adding in $.50 for the butternut squash pancakes, this was another under $6 dinner for the two of us and I had leftovers!