Yeah, you could call this a ‘I pulled this out of my ass’ kind of recipe. Because it is. I had bacon. I had ground beef. And I had plantains. So why wouldn’t I put them in dish together and call them a casserole? That’s something that is so great about paleo. Pretty much everything tastes good together. So if you have no idea what to make one night, just pull everything out of your fridge, cook it in a pan together, and call it a casserole. Or stir fry. Either will work. And people will think you know what you’re doing. Fake it ’til ya make it.
I want a quesadilla. Like those ones from Qdoba that are super bad for you. And you can dip them in queso to make them even worse for you. That’s what I want. I’m sorry. I won’t eat it, but I’ll sure as hell dream about it right now as I type.
Ok, I’m over it.
I’m totally not.
So I’ve been a bit on edge lately. I don’t know what it is, but I think it has to do with traveling a bunch and not getting as much sleep. As I age (just a reminder, I’m only 25) I’m starting to feel the effects of not sleeping as much. When I was 22 or 23, no problem whatsoever. I slept around 3-4 hours a night, work 9+ hour days, and worked out 2-3 times within that day, and did it all over the next day. Now, if I have a crappy night of sleep, I’m dead to the world. Well, I usually have a great morning then a great afternoon workout, but once 4pm hits, I’m done. I don’t want to talk people, I don’t want look at a computer, but I do want to eat sweets. I got the sweets-emotional situation going on right now. Damn it to hell sweets. Why do you have to be so sweet and scrumptious? Pretty sure the only thing that will solve this situation is not eating sweets. Or sleeping. But neither of those things are going to happen anytime soon, so I must cope. With more sweets.
So I got caught in the act the other day. Believe me, it’s not what you’re thinking, damnit. I was sitting in my car, minding my own business, and what song low and behold came on? This Drake song. And if you haven’t seen Starbucks Drake Hands, you’re missing out. Anywho, when I was in Pittsburgh, it was an ongoing joke that George, Hayley, Bill and I had. Mostly because that song is on EVERY TIME you get into your car. So we made multiple videos, like any blogger would do. You can see some of the videos here. So once I got back to Colorado and the car instantly began to play in my car outside of my house, I had to make a video for a group text message. Obviously. So I did my best impression of Drake hands, noticed that I wasn’t even pressing record, did it again and then found myself feeling some eyes on the back of my head. It was my roommate, pulling up in her car, staring directly at me with a disgusted look. And it’s all on video. She said I was the creepiest person she’s ever seen, which says a lot based on the men she’s dated in her day. I think this may be one of those ‘you have to be there’ types of stories. My b, my b.
I can’t stop picking my nail polish off. How do women do this?
Beef, Bacon and Plantain Casserole
- Yield: 3-4 1x
Ingredients
- 6 strips of bacon
- 3 yellow plantains (you want them to be slightly brown, but not green)
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 yellow onion, diced
- salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large pan over medium heat, cook bacon until slightly crispy. Set aside.
- Drain excess bacon fat, leaving behind about 1-2 tablespoons.
- Cut off the ends of the plantains and remove the peel. Thinly slice the plantain lengthwise into 3 slices. Repeat with other 2 plantains.
- Add plantain slices to bacon fat pan and cook about both sides for about 2-3 minutes until they are slightly browned. Set aside.
- In the same pan, add minced garlic clove, ground beef, onion and salt and pepper. Cook until meat has broken down and completely cooked through.
- Now for the stacking of the casserole, you can do this any way you’d like.
- Place 3 plantain slices on the bottom, then 2 slices of bacon on top, then a couple spoonfuls of the ground beef mixture. Repeat two more times on top of the ground beef mixture.
- Put in oven and cook for 12-15 minutes. Let sit for about 5 minutes.
- Scoop out and serve.
Honey Mustard Crunchy Chicken Plantain Salad
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Made this last night. I wanted to love it, but it ended up being very dry and tasteless. Not sure what went wrong, followed all directions, but it just didn’t have any flavor. Had to add tomato sauce and some chili powder to give it a kick.
I am planning on trying this soon! I just started following you on Instagram, and need some ideas and motivation to get back on track with healthy eating…I get bored with the same things, but need relatively fast easy meals. I’m also usually cooking for myself, or just a few people. I actually just saw someone at work with this and though it was so interesting….so I will give it a try! Can you freeze this by chance??
haven’t tried freezing it!
so so so good! The sweet from the plantains and the salty from the bacon compliment eachother so well! I thought it would need hot sauce, ranch, something – but no – nothing – i was so impressed and VERY EASY! Thanks a million!
This is basically a Puerto Rican dish known as “pastelón”.
Here’s a different way to prepare it. First you start with sofrito.
1 onion, 1 whole garlic, 1 red pepper, 1 italian pepper, a bunch of cilantro, 1 small tomato, 1 tbsp of olive oil, tspn salt, tspn of pepper, and blend all of this, 2 ingredients at a time. Freeze whatever you don’t use.
In a pot heat up 2 tbsp of olive oil and 2 tbsp of the sofrito. Add ground beef and 1 jar of gluten free tomato sauce. Cover and allow the beef to cook in the tomato sauce for about 20-30 min and then add salt, pepper, and paprika for taste.
Cook bacon, cut 4 sweet plantains ( the blacker the better in half and Fry in coconut oil.
Preheat the oven at 350 degrees. Scramble 4 pastured eggs and bake in a Pyrex for 6-8 min.
Layer plantain halves over the egg, then the bacon, than the ground beef, than another layer of bacon, the other plantain halves, and then pour another 4 scrambles eggs over the top and bake on 350 degrees for about 30 min.
Enjoy.
Made this last night but with veal and no garlic (GASP…I know, but my gut can’t handle garlic no matter how much my mouth wants it!). DELISH…. even to my non-Paleo husband.
Loving your blog! I’ve made several of your recipes and all of them have been a hit! So easy and delicious. This is my go to blog for meal planning. Thank you so much!
YUM! Just made this for supper and loving it, thanks!
The flavor was dynamite but mine turned out extremely dry. Like a previous commenter said….will be a fantastic hash with an over easy egg for breakfast. Mine really needs that yolk. Thanks for the recipe!!
Loved that I could use up an over-ripe plantain and not have it go to waste. And the rest of the recipe calls for simple, staple items I always have around. The recipe gets a win for simplicity of ingredients. However, it’s a bit heavy and a bit dry. It needs something else added to it. I think I might like trying to add thinly shredded sauteed cabbage or greens to the layers. Maybe a “green” sauce such as chimchurri might taste good on this? Eggs would work, but if I go full AIP, they’d be out. Next time, I would crumble up the bacon because it was a bit hard to cut through the “casserole” with the bacon strips. It does take quite a bit of time cooking up all the parts, too, and that was with me, cooking some parts simultaneously. I’m not exactly sure if it really makes a difference to place this in the oven at all. Does it make a difference? Otherwise, it seems like a good recipe to play around with.