I worked at Taco Bell, and we cooked the taco meat onsite back in the day. 🤣 The taco meat was made with ground beef, spices, water, and a good amount of OATMEAL. This could probably be applied to any ground type meat. The oatmeal absorbs the liquid that's cooked off the meat, and takes on the flavor of the ground beef.
You can use oatmeal to stretch your ground meat out in recipes, and provide extra servings. In addition, oatmeal has a decent nutritional value.
The prices aren't going down anytime soon, so I hope this helps.
by firstblush73
21 Comments
So that’s the secret interesting
Do you think maybe a cup to a pound? Half a cup?
Canned tuna and rolled oats.
thanks for this!!!
That tracks. We have a breakfast sausage that’s popular in Ohio. It’s called goetta and it’s just beef/pork stretched with steel cut oats.
Super delicious.
I like to add shredded carrots to my ground beef. Like a lot, about equal parts. It keeps the meat moist and really doesn’t taste like a bunch of carrot, it just tastes like ground beef.
I have been adding black beans to my taco meat! It’s really tasty and filling. Might be a better protein option if anyone is concerned about that 🙂
I will definitely keep this in mind though!
Do you leave the oats whole or do you pulse them in a food processor?
I won’t tell anyone that I serve that I’m trying this next time… we use ground Turkey thighs and bacon fat as a base 😊 I bet it’s sooo good and filling.
That explains part of the poop explosions people report experiencing– extra fiber makes a person poop. This is a bigger effect when folks are used to eating as much fiber as they get unexpectedly.
My family has always used oatmeal in meatloaf instead of breadcrumbs, so makes sense.
My mom worked at a cafeteria chain in the 1970’s, and they added oats to their meatloaf. That’s the way she always made it for the family too.
I like to stretch beef with oatmeal or lentils!
That’s wild. Thanks for sharing! Might try it in sloppy joes this week 😊
Well yea, don’t people still put oatmeal in their meatloaf like grandma used to do?
My mother always added oats to her meatloaf recipe. Absorbs all the juices so it was always nice and moist, makes a really nice texture, and stretches the budget.
We used to use oats to form burger patties, along with an egg. You really don’t taste the oatmeal.
Sounds a bit like scrapple!
That’s a great tip. It is both healthy and money saving.
My mum used mashed potatoes (just peeked, boiled and mashed, no butter etc) and added it in near the middle of the beef cooking in order to stretch out the meat, it absorbs the fat and seasonings.
Not taco related but I use Oates in my ground beef whenever I make meatloaf or meatballs. It works much better than breadcrumbs because it doesn’t make them really dense after cooking.