Macaroni and Beef strips experiment.

Last weekend in Ottawa, Kevin’s dad made us a yummy hamburger macaroni dish for lunch. It looked so simple, but it was good. So I suggested to Kevin that we make Beef Macaroni last night for dinner. It just seemed like a quick and simple dish, especially after a long day at work and then a workout at the gym. Kevin suggested we use beef strips instead of ground beef. I didn’t really care.

I’ve never tenderized my meat, because I don’t really know how besides super salting it. My dear friend, Judyfoodie, told me about using baking soda to tenderize my meat. I’ve never used baking soda for anything else besides deodorizing my fridge and garbage can. Lol So it seemed odd to use it on something I’m going to eat.

I normally follow recipes when I cook. I’m not a great cook. I can tweak a recipe to my taste, but I always need a base recipe…to lead me in the right direction. For this I had none. I debated on how to make this…soy sauce or beef broth…onion soup mix? I finally pretty much used whatever was on hand. (I did take a picture, but as I was taking the picture, Kevin said I was weird and that the food didn’t even look nice. So that kind of annoyed me, so I didn’t even upload the pic onto the computer.)

I didn’t use measurements…I just did, a bit of this and a bit of that…tasting it to see what I needed.

• 2-3 cups of Macaroni pasta (cook as directed)
• Beef strips
• Soy sauce
• Hoisin sauce
• Black pepper
• One onion
• Long green beans
• Minced garlic

While I minced the garlic and cut the onion and long green, I mixed baking soda into the meat and let it sit for about 10 minutes,. After that’s done, I rinsed the beef under cold water a few times. In the pan it goes with the garlic. I added the onions after a minute or two. Then added the green beans. Shake, shake, shake some soy sauce. When beef was cooked, I added the macaroni,. Mix it up. I tasted it and it was bland, but was afraid that using too much soy sauce would make it too salty. So I looked in the fridge and grabbed the hoisin sauce, since it has a sweet note to it…Squeeeeeze…mix it up some more. A bit of black pepper and it was done.

The verdict wasn’t that great. Lol I actually debated on writing a blog about it or not. But I decided that cooking is a learning experience. One of my first mistakes was that my long green beans were not cooked enough. Sure they had a crunch to it, but I’m pretty sure that the crunch meant it was raw. I’ve never cooked green beans before. So, lesson learned. Other than that, I thought that the macaroni came out okay. It didn’t taste like Kevin’s dad’s, but it was edible. Kevin, on the other hand, told me he didn’t like it. Anyway…besides the long beans being too uncooked, I kind of liked it. The beef strips were tender and not tough. Thanks Judyfoodie. J