Are you in the mood for a hearty and flavorful meal but don’t want to spend hours in the kitchen?
This will be my review and tweaks of the HelloFresh Fajitas-Style Beef Bowl recipe for today!
This dish is packed with taste and fun with colourful peppers and onions, all tossed in a mild chilli spices blend.
Served on top of a bed of rice and accompanied by homemade zesty lime crema, this dish is a delight for the senses.
Get ready to impress your taste buds with this mouth-watering Fajitas-Style Beef Bowl!
This is the original recipe freely available on HelloFresh’s website.
But my elevated version is a bit better, as usual 😉
Expected time to cook: 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Table of Contents
Ingredients In The Package
Nutritional values
- 250g (1/2 pound) of Ground beef
- 2 tbsp of Mexican seasoning
- 2 Green onions
- 1 Tomato
- 1 tsp of Garlic salt
- 1 Lime
- 1 Yellow onion
- 3/4 cup of Basmati rice
- 1 Sweet bell pepper
- 1/2 cup of grated Monterey Jack cheese
- 3 tbsp of Sour cream
Nutritional values
The Setup
Rice
Add your rice to a pot, add 1 1/4 cups of water (2 times the amount of rice) bring to a boil.
Cover by leaving a small opening, lower to medium-low and let the water reduce until you can barely see water bubbling.
Remove from the stove, cover and don’t touch it for a good 10 minutes!
Quick tips: Add vegetable stock at the beginning, about one tbsp, and stir.
Secret tips: Add olive oil on top of the water before it starts to boil, it will prevent the rice from spilling over while it is cooking.
Veggies
For this one, I cut and prepared everything from the get-go.
Cut your pepper into roughly 1-inch pieces, and the onion to about the same size.
Cut the tomato into small dice, about 1/4 inch.
Tips: if you do the recipe by buying the ingredients yourself, use Roma tomatoes, they are firmer and will not become liquids or crushed if you let them sit.
Zest the lime and juice half of it.
In that case, the lime wasn’t good so I had to use concentrated lime juice.
Although it would make the Foodies cringe, it served the purpose of this review.
Lime Crema
HelloFresh suggestion
Add your sour cream in a bowl then add your lime zest (1/4 of it), 1 tsp of lime juice, season with salt and pepper and blend all together.
Better suggestion
Nothing is wrong per se but here is a nice little tweak to make it fluffy and less acidic.
In a bowl, add the sour cream, make sure it is 14% (full fat!) if you buy the ingredients yourself.
If you are a “sauce maniac” like me, you’ll want to double the amount of sour cream, in this case, 6 tbsp instead of 3.
- Have a fork handy
- Put a nice pinch of your lime zest
- Put 1 tsp of fresh lime juice or 1/2 tsp if you use concentrate
- Start whipping with your fork until it gets silky
- Add a bit of salt and pepper to taste
Here’s the real tweak,
Add one tsp of white sugar! (half if you follow HelloFresh recipe)
Yup, do that and start whipping again until it gets homogeneous.
It will remove the tart and acid taste and add a suttle sweet taste which will bond perfectly with the rest.
Let rest in the fridge while you do the next steps
Cooking Process
Ground Beef
If you read me before, you know now that I love to use coconut oil.
In a large non-stick pan, add a small spoon of coconut oil, and heat up slowly to medium-high.
Add the ground beef and cook thoroughly until there is no pink and the fat seems rendered.
Drain the fat by using a spaghetti strainer and put the “fat-free” beef into the pan.
Add the Mexican seasoning with half of the garlic salt with a “shooter” of water (30ml or 1oz).
Blend thoroughly until the beef is all coated and let the water reduce completely.
Reserve the meat and keep the pan “greasy”
Peppers and Onions
With your pan that is already greasy from the beef fat and all the aroma from the spices, add a small amount of olive oil or coconut oil.
Mix everything so it becomes a homogeneous liquid then add the sweet peppers, the onions and the rest of the garlic salt.
There is not much left of garlic salt at this point, I recommend adding another half spoon on the side (if you have the ingredient handy in the cupboard)
Cook until tenderness of the veggies.
Finish up the Rice
Now that your rice has rested a while on the side, add the cuts of green onions in it and blend with a fork.
Tips: Add a nice tbsp of butter or margarine to the rice and blend. This will unstick the rice and add a nice salty and tasty flavour to it.
Fajitas-Style Beef Bowl Cooking Result and Plating
Divide all your mixtures in a bowl.
I like to separate all my stuff so it looks like you can pick and choose what you want to mix with and after all, this is a “taco”; you decide your own filling!
Place a tbsp or two in the middle and don’t forget the cheese and the lime that you squeeze on top of everything
Serve
Bon apétit!
Honest Review
Actual time to make: 35 minutes
I have done that dish over and over and my 4-years old son loves it.
This is one of my favourite dishes to make when I really don’t know what to cook at night.
It’s easy, tasty, filling and you will impress your guests with this one.
Serve with a nice Double IPA beer and you have yourself a dinner.
I love the fact that HelloFresh “tells” you to drain the fat of the meat before blending the other ingredients.
Ironically, they are the only ones; Chefs Plate and GoodFood don’t bother to tell you and you end up cooking your beautiful ingredients in dirty beef or pork fat.
I hope you will enjoy those Fajitas-Style Beef Bowl as much as I did.
PROS from the original recipe:
-Easy to do
-Very tasty
-You will feel like you ate something at the end
-Lime Crema is so fresh and good, you just want to soak everything in it
-Your visit will love it
CONS:
-Nothing I can think of
How to get a free box
Did you like my review with tips and tricks to make it better? If you are interested in trying Chefs Plate Meal Kit Box, please use my link below and get a FREE FIRST BOX!
No bull! And guess what, no obligations, no contract, you cancel whenever you want.
Full disclosure: I may receive a small incentive or a free box myself if you use my link.
Star Rating
Have you ever cooked it?
What are your thoughts? Any other tips and tricks to make it even better?
Let me know in the comments below!
Historical Bonus
Where does the taco come from?
The exact origins of the taco are uncertain, with various theories proposing different sources.
One theory suggests it dates back to ancient Mexico, where soft corn tortillas were filled with various ingredients.
Another theory connects it to 18th-century Mexican silver mines, where “taco” referred to charges used for excavation.
Anthropological evidence also points to indigenous people in the Valley of Mexico eating tacos with small fish before the Spanish arrived.
Despite its unclear beginnings, the taco has become a significant part of Mexican cuisine and has evolved over time, now enjoyed in diverse forms worldwide and yet, here we are reviewing the Fajitas-Style Beef Bowl
source: Wikipedia, Backyardtaco.com
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