Times are tough all over. It’s a fact. Food and gas prices are rising like crazy – it cost me $100 to fill up my Suburban this week. That means that we home chefs need to get a little creative with ingredients. Now, I am not a regular ramen fan. I just cannot get pass the flavor envelopes full of sodium and other weird flavors. This recipe, however only uses the noodles (toss the packet in the garbage). With as little or as much meat as you want (use chicken, pork, or beef), fresh or frozen vegetables of your choosing and a couple of packets of cheap noodles, you can make a pretty frugal meal. The nice thing? It was absolutely delicious and passed all of the kids’ taste test.
This recipe came from the cookbook Best Skillet Recipes by Cook’s Illustrated. It originally called for cabbage, but that wasn’t what I had. I grabbed a package of frozen broccoli and use that instead. It also called for using a 14 inch nonstick skillet. My biggest is only 12 inches, so I cooked the meat mixture in a separate pan than the noodles, then combined them all at the end. This served my family once for dinner, with a few servings left over….maybe 10-12 servings.
1. Info for Ramen Skillet
- Cook Time: unavailable
- Total Time: unavailable
- Servings: 10
- Calories: unavailable
2. Ingredients for Ramen Skillet
- 1 pound boneless meat (pork, chicken or beef)(or maybe tofu for the non meat eaters?)
- 8 tsp soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 Tbsp sesame oil
- 2-3 green onions, chopped (or use regular onion, diced, if that’s what you have)
- 6 medium garlic cloves, minced fine
- 1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger
- ⅛ tsp red pepper flakes
- 2 14 ounce cans chicken broth (or beef or vegetable)
- 4 3 ounce packages ramen noodles (discard seasoning)
- 2 Tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 16 ounce package chopped broccoli (or the equivalent amount of a preferred vegetable….maybe not beets)
3. Directions:
- Cube the meat into bite sized pieces, pat them dry and then toss them with 2 tsp of the soy sauce.
- Heat the vegetable oil and sesame oil in a skillet over high heat until just smoking.
- Add the meat, break up any clumps, and cook without stirring until it begins to brown.
- Flip over the cubes and let it cook on the other side, too.
- Stir, make sure it’s cooked all the way through and then transfer it to a bowl, cover it to keep it warm and set aside.
- Cook the onion in skillet until soft, add garlic, ginger and red pepper flakes and heat through, turn off the heat to keep from burning.
- Meanwhile,in a separate pan, heat the broth and add the ramen, broken into small chunks.
- Simmer until ramen is just tender, about 2 minutes.
- Add the remaining 2 Tbsp soy sauce and the oyster sauce, stirring to mix well.
- Add the vegetables (if you are using something that takes a long time to cook, like carrots, you would want to cook them with the onion/ginger mixture to soften them up) and cook until done and sauce thickens a bit.
- Add in the meat and the onion mixture, heat through and serve.