Asian Ground Beef Rice Bowl

I feel like recently, people have asked me a lot "what do you like to do for fun?" When put on the spot like that, I'm sometimes unsure as how to answer in a way that makes me sound interesting. Getting ready to begin the BYU ACME Core this Fall, I've been busy with catching up on prerequisite classes while trying to squeezing in hours working and an occasional weekend excursion or other social activities.

However, I have been getting more into cooking. I guess you could say that's one of my hobbies now. I actually really enjoy it since it is way cheaper than eating out, but also much healthier. (And convenient when I do it in bulk to meal-prep—it's a cool flex enjoy a home-cooked lunch between class and studying.)

I think it was tonight that I had the idea to try marinating ground beef with this Japanese cooking sauce that I recently got at the store. As I was cooking it up, I remembered I also had some Gochujang paste in the fridge leftover from a Trader Joe's recipe I made a couple weeks ago. I mixed with water and the Japanese sauce and added that to the ground beef, which gave it some nice heat (and extra moisture).

Overall, I thought it was a good. Pretty tasty, though I could've put in more sauce to make it a bit more moist.

Ingredients

• 1-1.5 lbs. Ground beef (I did one of the packs from Costco)
• Kinder's Japanese Cooking Sauce
• Green Onions, sliced
• Half of a Red Onion, sliced
• 1 clove/tsp. Garlic, minced
• Rice

Sauce

• 1/4 cup Gochujang Paste
• 1/4 cup Water
• Kinder's Japanese Cooking Sauce (to taste)

Steps

1. Put the ground beef into a bag/container and add some of the Japanese cooking sauce to it and let it marinade for at least a couple hours in the fridge.

2. Make rice the way you normally would. For a weeknight meal, I usually do 1 cup rice to 1.5 cups water in my rice cooker.

3. Preheat a large skillet over medium heat and add a tablespoon of cooking oil.

4. Add about 1/4 cup of gochujang paste (really, it's to taste on how spicy) to a measuring cup and add water to make it 1/2 cup. Add a couple tablespoons of the Japanese cooking sauce as well.

5. Slice the red onion and bottoms of the green onions, then add them to the pan, letting them sautée for a few minutes.

6. Add the ground beef to the pan, letting it brown on each side for 2-3 minutes undisturbed. Then, break it up with a spatula and cook it until it's about fully cooked through.

7. Lower the heat slightly and add in a tablespoon of minced garlic, mixing it around so its flavors can render without it burning.

8. Add the sauce mixture into the pan, stirring it to coat the meat evenly.

9. Serve it over the rice and enjoy while it's warm!