Preparing a good beef meal should not take too much time. In fact, the longest time you should spend on preparing beef of any sort that is not a stew is ten minutes max.
You should be eating a lot of good quality beef if you want to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. Beef contains lots of protein, the basic building block of muscle, and a good amount of fat, which contains minerals and calories that will not go straight to your belly after digestion. If organic, grass-fed beef is available near you, get it – it tastes much, much better and is way more nutritious than corn-fed feedlot beef.
To make your beef taste good, you need a few basic ingredients ready in your kitchen.
First is salt. Do not listen to the sodium naysayers – if you are eating properly, you are avoiding junk food and fast food, the two main sources of sodium in the average person’s diet. Here is an article on why eating out is so bad. You can put salt in your beef liberally. Just make sure you use sea salt.
You should also have pepper on hand. Pepper is very versatile – you can use it to make almost anything taste good. Beef is particularly good with pepper crusting.
Rosemary is another good partner for beef, giving it a good flavor that goes well with mixed vegetables.
Now that the basics are on the table, here are three beef meals that are very easy to prepare.
1. Pan-fried steak – this is the king of all beef meals. It takes less than ten minutes to prepare, tastes really good, and fills you up as long as you get a big enough piece. All you need to do is buy a few pounds of sirloin, have the butcher cut it up into half-inch slabs, and then rinse it a little before throwing it onto the pan (thawed, of course). You can cook it to any level of done-ness, but medium provides a sweet balance between raw and cooked through. A little salt and pepper goes a long way to making this a scrumptuous meal.
Beef steak is the easiest beef meal you can prepare.
2. Beef Tapa – a Filipino recipe similar to beef jerky, this produces sweet, dried-out meat that is perfect for eating with eggs on the side. You just need to cut the beef into thin strips, then marinade it in a mixture of salt, lots of pepper, garlic cloves, and gluten free soy sauce. After 12 hours, dump everything into a pan and stir it around until the marinade dries out. You can adjust the recipe to make a large batch ready for freezing and re-heating for quick meals.
3. Beef Stew – this is a perfect “complete meal” if you can put in enough vegetables. Just toss in the beef and boil it with water, salt, and pepper until it softens enough. Then add in diced potatoes, carrots, peas, celery, and any other vegetable you might want to add, as well as tomato paste to round the flavor out. Add more salt and pepper to make it taste even better. This takes a little longer, but you can cook a huge batch for a whole week of stew.
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