Low Carb and Cheap Recipe

I'll be talking about food in the next few entries. I love food. I am a bit of a foodie. I watch Food Network everyday and get tons of ideas from there and love to experiment with recipes. This is one I made up myself when trying to add a low carb meal to our cycle of dinners. It is one of my husband's favorites.

You can increase quantities of this recipe without adding a ton more meat, I'll go into how at the end of the recipe.

Bacon BBQ Cheeseburger Lettuce Wraps

You will need:
hamburger meat
bacon
onion
lettuce leaves whole (green leaf lettuce is the best for this but can be pricey so I usually end up with iceberg if it's cheaper)
cheese
BBQ sauce

You may also add:
diced tomato
ketchup
can of diced tomatoes
bell pepper
black olives
hot sauce

I make this recipe for 2 usually. I like to start with leftover bacon that has already been cooked. If you do not have leftover bacon then obviously you need to start by cooking that. For 2 people I find 4-5 strips works fine. For more people or a great love of bacon, add more.

I cook bacon in the oven. 325* for about 20 minutes. May need to flip and go few more minutes. You'll want it to be a little less than crispy done.

Take your bacon slices and cut them into small pieces. Put in a skillet and turn over low to medium heat to render out some more bacon fat.

Dice an onion, or half an onion whatever. Add it to the pan once the bacon starts to sizzle.

Remember the bacon is already cooked so don't cook it too long before adding onions.

Let the onions cook for a few minutes to get all good and baconey. You can salt and pepper here if you aren't serving young kids, go easy on the salt because there is a lot in bacon and the store bought sauce has some too. Then push everything to one side of the pan and turn heat to medium.

Add your ground beef to the other side in chunks and try to flatten it out as much as possible so there are lots of places touching the heat.

Now don't touch it for a good five minutes or so, let it really cook up on that side. Then flip it around and break it up with a wooden spoon or something. Mix up your bacon side as well so it doesn't burn.

Once the meat has cooked a bit more go ahead and stir the two sides together to finish cooking. You may salt and pepper again here if desired - mostly pepper! Drain off as much grease as you can when the meat is cooked.

Ready your lettuce leaves and shred your cheese. (I get cheese from WIC so it comes in blocks and must be shredded by hand).

BBQ sauce is cheap if you get Kraft. I spend less than a dollar on a bottle and use about half of the bottle for this recipe. My husband likes a sweet kind like brown sugar or honey flavored and they both work really well, but a mesquite or other smoky flavor would work well too.

Turn heat to low before adding the sauce.

When the meat is completely cooked and broken into small pieces, add the BBQ sauce. I add slowly stirring it in as I go so I can tell how much more I'll need. This is up to you. My husband likes it saucy so we use about half a bottle.

Let it simmer on low a couple of minutes to get the sauce flavor in the meat, chopping the meat smaller if you wish while it simmers.

Remove from heat for a couple of minutes or transfer to serving dish if you're fancy. We just serve ourselves in the kitchen and take our plates to the table, but we live in a small apartment. You'll want to let the heat come off of it a bit or it'll wilt your lettuce.

To serve, take a lettuce leaf, spoon some meat mixture in (go easy or it'll be hard to eat), top with cheese then add diced tomatoes, ketchup, black olives, hot sauce, whatever you want! It's modeled after a cheeseburger so put your favorite burger toppings on! Roll and eat.

I serve it with frozen green beans cooked in the microwave (I like frozen veggies better than canned) and carrot and celery sticks.

Now to add more bulk without adding more hamburger meat:
Add more bacon, not the best way!
Add a can of diced tomatoes (drained) before adding the BBQ sauce.
Add bell pepper when adding the onions.
Use more bell pepper and onions.

I am big on adding veggies to make meat go farther. This recipe unfortunately does not do that too well since it is mostly meat. If you are feeding 6 or more, you will probably need a pound and a half or 2 pounds. But hamburger meat is pretty cheap, which is why I use it all the dang time!