I shared our Fajita Soup recipe last week and now I’m sharing another easy go-to meal for us. It’s basically a Healthy Homemade Hamburger Helper.
I actually don’t buy the real Hamburger Helper boxed stuff, it’s not that I’m above it, I just never ate it growing up. My dad does make his own version of homemade hamburger helper which was basically just ground beef, canned tomatoes, pasta shells and Parmesan cheese. Even though there is nothing fancy in it, it’s a yummy, fast meal that’s perfect for weeknights!
When I started making this for Peter he was vegetarian, so we uses soy meat crumbles instead of beef. Soy meat doesn’t have a lot of flavor so we modified the recipe by cooking our “meat” in tomato sauce. From there we kept experimenting to see what else worked for us!
Peter’s no longer vegetarian so we use lean meat now but we still keep it healthier with additional veggie ingredients. Essentially its still my dad’s recipe with a little boost in the vegetable servings!
Healthier Homemade Hamburger Helper
Ingredients
- 1lb Extra lean ground beef (or turkey)
- 1-2 Cups tomato sauce
- 3 cups diced tomatoes (I will use canned tomatoes too)
- Veggie pasta, I like Barilla Veggie Rotini or Farfalle and Ronzoni Garden Delight Rotini
- 4 cups fresh spinach
- 1 cup Parmesan Cheese and/or another shredded white cheese
- salt & pepper
Directions
- Cook Pasta according to directions, drain and set aside.
- Brown ground beef in skillet then stir in tomato sauce.
- Then add tomatoes and spinach and cook until the spinach has wilted.
- Toss skillet ingredients with pasta and Parmesan.
- Salt and Pepper to taste!
Does your family make a similar recipe? I’d love to hear about it!
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Looks really good! I love the idea of the fresh spinach! Will have to try this!
This looks good! I like the idea of having spinach in it.
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