Ground Beef and Broccoli

Ground beef and broccoli is a quick and easy dish, perfect for meal prep lunches, or simple weeknight dinners. It might look plain, but trust me, this meal is everything but boring!

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Top tips
• Serving suggestions
• Variations
• Leftovers
• Frequently asked questions
• You might also like these recipes
• Recipe

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Do you ever wish you could just throw a few things into a skillet and call it a dinner? If the answer is yes, then this recipe is for you. Packed with nutrients and flavor, this filling and hearty meal is ridiculously easy to make.

I love a good stir fry recipe (in fact, I have a whole collection of stir fry recipes!), and I’m really excited to share with you this one, which has quickly become a bit of a staple in our household.

Although the recipe is well suited for easy 30 minute dinners, I usually make ground beef and broccoli as meal prep lunches for the week. The dish stores incredibly well, and is easy to reheat, which makes it really well suited for meal prep.

Ingredients

Broccoli: I use fresh broccoli, but you can also use frozen florets. I suggest cutting the florets quite small to shorten the cooking time.

Ground beef: Use lean ground beef for a leaner dish.

Ginger & garlic: You can use grated fresh ginger and garlic, or these super convenient garlic paste or ginger pastes. I prefer to use purees as it saves me some time in the kitchen, and they taste just as good.

Rice: I like to use brown rice, as it’s more filling and hearty, but you can also use long grain white rice, such as Jasmine or Basmati.

Soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, sriracha: Added for flavor. These ingredients function as your stir fry sauce.

Scallions and sesame seeds: Flavorful toppings that complete the dish.

💡 TIP! If you don’t have or don’t want to buy soy sauce, rice vinegar, sriracha and sesame oil, you can substitute these with a stir fry sauce or premade marinade. Choose your favorite!

Instructions

Boil rice in a pot with water following the package instructions.

Combine garlic and ginger paste, sriracha, rice vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil in a small bowl. Set this to the side for now.

Heat up some olive oil or vegetable oil in a large skillet or wok. Add the ground beef, and stir fry until it’s browned throughout. If you want to learn more, I have made a whole post on how to brown mince.

Add the boiled rice, the stir fry sauce you made earlier, and small broccoli florets to the skillet with the beef. Stir to combine the ingredients, and stir fry for 3-5 minutes, or until the broccoli is cooked.

Serve the ground beef and broccoli with toasted sesame seeds and sliced scallions on top.

Top tips

Here’s my top advice to help you make the best ground beef and broccoli:

• Don’t overcook your dish! Make sure that the rice is cooked right, and that the broccoli still has a little bite to it.
• If browning your ground beef creates a lot of excess liquid, you can drain this off before adding the remaining ingredients. This will remove some fat from the dish.
• If you use grated garlic and ginger, these should be sauteed with the ground beef before adding the rice and broccoli. This makes them a little milder and more pleasant to eat.

Serving suggestions

Ground beef and broccoli is a meal in itself, and you don’t have to add any side dishes to it. I love to serve it as a main for quick and easy lunches or dinners. However, you can absolutely add some easy sides if you like. Here are some of my favorite serving suggestions:

• Instead of adding rice to the meal, you can serve the broccoli and ground beef over rice. This allows people to choose how much rice they want to eat. You can serve it over plain brown or white rice, or a flavorful rice dish such as dill rice.
• Yogurt dill sauce – One of my favorite easy sauces, and it works perfectly with this dish.
• Other sauces or condiments, such as sweet chili sauce or sriracha.

Variations

Other/more veggies: Feel free to add more vegetables to the dish! Onions, mushrooms, peppers or green beans should work really well, but you can add anything that you like.

Vegetarian: Make the dish vegetarian by using a vegan ground beef alternative. These can be found refrigerated or frozen in most large supermarkets. They are also usually leaner than ground beef, and less calorie dense.

Ground turkey: For a leaner version, replace the ground beef with ground turkey.

Spicy: If you like your meal spicy, you can serve it with sriracha on top, or add extra sriracha to the stir fry. I suggest you add it to taste so that you can get your preferred amount of spice, as the base recipe is very mild.

Low carb / keto without rice: Omit the rice from the recipe to make it low carb friendly. You can then serve the ground beef and broccoli over a rice alternative, such as cauliflower rice, or any other sides that you like.

Leftovers

You can store leftover ground beef and broccoli in a sealed container in a refrigerator for up to 3 days. Reheat it in a microwave or skillet, and serve it warm.

You can also freeze the dish for up to 6 months. Defrost it in your refrigerator overnight before reheating it. It’s so easy to make a big batch of this meal, and it’s a really great option for a freezer meal.

Frequently asked questions

You might also like these recipes

• Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry
• Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry
• Chicken and Cabbage Stir Fry
• Ground Beef and Cabbage Skillet
• Ground Pork and Eggplant Skillet
• Cashew chicken stir fry

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