Pretty Little Apron

beef stock

Cheeseburger Shells and Cheese

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Cheeseburger Shells and Cheese

Hello again from quarantine! We’ve made this recipe two times already in the past week, so I figured it was good enough to share. Cheeseburger Shells and Cheese is a fancy name for a one pot meal that is kid friendly and fun for Mom and Dad too. It is very reminiscent of my favorite boxed meal as a kid, Hamburger Helper, and so easy to make without the box!


A couple other quarantine updates:

  • Today was such a beautiful Spring day! My husband has been working really hard to dig out our flower beds and get them ready for summer. We have always said we don’t have enough time to make our yard look nice so I guess this year is the test. We spent a lot of time outside today with the kids. Taking walks down the block and letting them play with their toys outside. We have a couple trees that are in bloom right now too and everything looks so beautiful.
  • I am still cooking and baking a lot!
  • At home learning started today. It was good. We have three kids in school. One in 1st grade, one in 2nd grade, and one in 7th grade. I can easily say the elementary kids did a much better job than our middle school child. He had himself convinced that all of the work was optional, I had to tell him about 100 times it was not. I ended up learning a lot about Mark Twain and Amphibians if that is any indication how it went. HA

 

Cheeseburger Shells and Cheese

Cheeseburger Shells and Cheese Recipe Tips

  • This recipe is very similar to my Homemade Hamburger Helper recipe! The difference here is I switched out the milk and water for beef broth to develop a slightly different flavor.
  • The ketchup and mustard sound a little odd, but trust me the flavor you get from these ingredients is not overpowering. I actually didn’t tell my kids that the recipe included these ingredients and they would have never known. Everything blends together really well.
  • If you get to the end of the recipe and your sauce is thin (which has happened to me once or twice), go ahead and mix another Tablespoon of flour with cold water and add to your pot. Make sure you get all lumps out of flour before adding or you will end up with a lumpy sauce. Crank up your heat a little when you stir it in and you should end up with a thicker result.
  • Additional cheese or parmesan cheese is totally acceptable!

Cheeseburger shells and cheese

 

Classic Beef Macaroni Soup

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Snow day food alert! This Classic Beef Macaroni Soup was the perfect pot of delicious last week when we had a snow storm in the middle of March. I was not ready for snow in March, but a big pot of soup can fix any problem, right?


This is such a standard, simple recipe. Sometimes I wonder, do people even want to see recipes THIS EASY. I always find myself saying, yes! Of course they do! Not every recipe has to be elaborate, or out of the box. Simple, classic comfort food is a thing because it is one of the best ways to eat. I’ve been making this soup for my kids for a number of years now, and I thought it was time to share it!

Not only does this Classic Beef Macaroni soup taste delicious, it is so quick to make. From start to finish I want to call it a 30 minute meal, but with the boiling time it may be a few more minutes. With the short cook time, I can make this any day of the week, then have the perfect leftovers for the rest of the week.

Classic Beef Macaroni Soup Recipe Tips

  • The most important thing to remember with this recipe is to stir the pot while your noodles are boiling. The macaroni noodles have a tendency to stick to the bottom of the pot, so I would not suggest just pouring in the macaroni and walking away.
  • After my soup was boiling I realized I had some excess grease pooling on the top of the pot. I just took my large metal spoon and removed it.
  • I topped my soup with a little bit of extra sharp cheddar cheese. This is optional but highly recommended by someone who thinks cheese is basically life.
  • This soup gets better and better in the refrigerator! After all of the flavors come together over night, you may notice you love it even more!
  • The tomato product I use are just plain strained tomatoes. I’ve been using this product for years, and it is one of my most loved pantry staples! You can use it in just about anything. This is a no salt added product so you don’t have to worry about your soup being super salty in the end. The product size is 24 ounces, so you will be using the whole jar.


Beef Macaroni Soup

Beef Macaroni Soup

 

 

Homestyle London Broil

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I used to get all kinds of annoyed when my husband would bring home a piece of meat from the grocery store labeled “London Broil.”

What. Do. I. Do. With. This. Thing. I went to pastry arts school, remember?


So I took a few different approaches as any aspiring chef wife would. I think it went something like marinating, grilling, ovening.  Marinating it to death for 24 hours just praying this thing doesn’t die on me. Praying a second time that my husband stops buying these things because.. why!?!?! Just get a cut of meat I know what to do with already! Are there not a dozen other choices there?

Then, after the first epic fail, the unthinkable happens. My husband comes home with not one, but two London Broils. In my head I’m thinking, didn’t we realize we don’t like these things the first time? This time I thought maybe I would just put it in a crock pot and see what happens. What could really go wrong in a crock pot? Could it die again in there? Could I burn the house down? Will he stop this nonsense already and just bring home a chicken breast next time?

The moment of truth came at a friends house, because I had a photo shoot in the morning and was running so low on time that I threw the two London Broils in a crock pot with roast seasoning and carrots and hoped for the best. We showed up and I warned everyone I had no idea what was going to happen when I took the lid off of this thing. Everyone assured me that it would be fine, they would love me even if this was harder then a brick. My husband sliced a piece and to my surprise it was good!

Most recently, I got really brave and actually purchased one BY MYSELF at the grocery store. Literally I went to Giant and went directly to the meat section without passing go and picked myself up a brand new and shiny London Broil that I was going to go home and turn into a delicious dinner.

Seriously, who am I anymore!?!?!

When I Figured Out This Whole London Broil Thing

What I realized was that a London Broil was very similar to the cuts of meat they label as roasts or rump roasts. I noticed them to be a bit leaner, with a lot less marbling throughout and less fat on the outside as well. What I also noticed was that they are priced HALF THE PRICE of the roast cuts. Maybe my husband was on to something here?!?! They are almost always on sale. The London Broil I purchased was $7.00 and it was almost 3 lbs of meat. So winning when you have 4 kids!

I used my dutch oven that regularly collects dust inside my cabinet to make my Homestyle London Broil because I have a wonderful double burner on my gigantic stove so I figured, why not? It turned out to be the perfect way to cook my Homestyle London Broil because I was able to start it on the stove, browning both sides as well as my onions. Then slow cook it in the oven for a few hours, and to finish pop it right back on my double burner to make a delicious gravy out of the broth. I need to use this method more often because it was super easy!

Recipe Tips

I always say this when preparing meats but if you don’t have any course kosher salt in your life you need to get you some! It can take a just fine meal and make it so much better! I generously seasoned my London Broil with a mix of course kosher salt, cracked black pepper, onion salt, and granulated garlic. It is THAT EASY. Generously is the key word, do not be afraid to semi-coat your meat in the spices, just make sure you don’t over-do the onion salt due to the fact that you are using course kosher salt and beef stock as well.

All of those little bits and pieces and lovely brown color you get when cooking your onions is what I call flavor building. You can’t flavor build like this in a crock pot, that is why I didn’t just throw my ingredients in one. I would say you could totally use this recipe in a crock pot but the best way to do it would be exactly how the recipe says.

I just used a fork to pull apart my meat and it fell apart so easily. When making the gravy, I did not remove the meat. The stirring around helped pull apart the meat as well.

I did season to taste after everything was finished with just a pinch more salt and pepper. As with any recipe, if you feel it may be a tad bland, season to your own taste!

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Beef and Veggie Macaroni

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beefaroni5 (1 of 1)

The school year is officially in full swing! I have to say, getting my son ready on the first day was a tad stressful…thanks to a meltdown in the morning by my usually happy 2 year old. Boy, did he ever decide to throw a wrench in all picture plans by flipping out, throwing himself down into some rocks, and refusing to let me strap him into his car seat! Sound familiar to anyone? Good, I’m not alone!! I thought for sure my neighbors were going to call the cops on me for child abuse because he was screaming at the top of his lungs. They surely think I’m insane by now because it seems that someone is always screaming. I promise, we are “normal,” whatever that means. 🙂


Beef and Veggie Macaroni || www.3boysunprocessed.com

Now that I’ve vented about the terrible twos, let’s talk about this delicious and lunchbox-friendly meal! This one is perfect for sending a hot lunch to school that your kids will actually eat, or just getting dinner on the table relatively quickly after school. There is not much for your kids not to love about this one…. and if they are on the fence about the carrots/peppers I would suggest dicing them super small and pretending they aren’t even there. I’m not a fan of “hiding” veggies in food, however I do have a slightly picky 3rd grader who changes his mind on a weekly basis about what is acceptable to put in his lunchbox. I feel you, I do!

Just because I have a blog about food does not mean all of my boys will eat everything I make without complaining.  Every week last school year my son would complain about certain foods that I sent in his lunchbox that he previously loved to take. Eventually I just ran out of ideas and started making meals like this one so I could send the leftovers in his LunchBots thermos and be done with it! Most of his hot lunches would come home eaten, so I had to settle for putting veggies in creations like this one instead of sending them raw. You win some, you loose some!

Beef and Veggie Macaroni || www.3boysunprocessed.com

Recipe Tips
  • I used a colander to drain the grease from the meat/veggies. I tried draining the way I normally do and realized it was going to be an epic disaster if I proceeded, so I placed a colander in the sink (or over a bowl if you do it that way) and it was so much easier!
  • You can absolutely switch up the veggies here, and get creative! I can see peas and green beans working really well!
  • I didn’t know whether to call this a soup or a stew because it is kind of in between. At first it was thinner but the pasta will continue to soak up the broth and it becomes thicker. I really enjoyed the consistency because it was right in the middle.
  • Yes, this recipe contains cheese because cheese is my friend, and has really never failed me. You can certainly omit the cheese if you would like, however I really loved it with just a slight hint of cheddar. It isn’t overpowering at all, just bumps up the taste a bit.
  • I always use no salt added Bionaturae strained tomatoes when cooking a dish like this. If you substitute a product that contains salt, you will have to adjust how much additional salt you add. I prefer this product over canned because I feel it is safer and has a better taste.