One Pot, Hearty Ground Beef And Potato Skillet Recipe

Beef and potatoes are an age old combination. They’re hearty, versatile, nourishing, and budget friendly. This recipe is perfect for those craving the simple loveliness of a beef and potato skillet recipe. They only take about fifteen minutes of hands on work, with thirty minutes of cook time. You’ll have a homemade dinner on your table in less than an hour. Plus, this only uses one pot, reducing your clean up time as well. Win, win 🙂

What you’ll need to make this beef and potato skillet recipe

You’ll need a deep sauté pan, braising pan or large pot. We will be cooking up a lot of food in one space, so a tiny eight inch frying pan simply won’t cut it.

• 1 lb ground beef – grass fed is always the most nutritious beef, but it can be expensive. To save money on beef, buy in bulk. I’m talking a quarter beef at a time. If that’s not something you can do right now, don’t worry, use whatever beef you can get your hands on.
• 2 lbs potatoes – use a smaller variety with thin skin. We love gold potatoes, but red ones would be just as good here. Of course whatever you have growing in your backyard is first pick 😀
• 1 medium onion – we often buy large onions and use one half at a time.
• 3 – 5 cloves of minced garlic – I hear northerners have these massive garlics with giant cloves, but us southerners have teeny garlics with teeny cloves. So, use as much garlic as you’d like 😀
• 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil, lard, tallow, schmaltz, basically any cooking oil you like that isn’t hydrogenated.
• 2 tablespoons of Montreal Steak Seasoning. At this point, I haven’t figured out how to make this type of seasoning on my own. Perhaps I just need to do more research into where I can source the herbs and spices needed. If you have a DIY steak seasoning recipe you love, please share it with me down in the comments 😀 Here, I found one, let me know how it compares 🙂
• Cheddar Cheese – we will add this at the end and allow it to melt over our potatoes before serving. If you don’t like cheese, or are allergic to it, feel free to leave it out
• Toppings – sour cream, green onions, chives, or parsley make a great topping for this beef and potato skillet recipe.

How to make beef and potato skillet

First, we need to chop up our potatoes and onions. I like to cut the potatoes like scallops. You can make this go really fast if you have one of those nifty mandoline slicers. However, if all you have is a knife that’ll do just as well. I’ve stuck to only a knife here because they are so easy to clean. I guess for me personally I’d rather save time in the cleaning department than the food prep department.

Once all the veggies are chopped, it’s time to sauté the onions and garlic. Heat up the oil in your pan at medium high heat. Again, this needs to be a deep pan. A braising dish or large pot can also be used. Sauté the onions until translucent, about 3-5 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté an additional 30 seconds.

Add the beef and half of the steak seasoning. Break up the meat and cook until almost fully browned. Reduce the temperature to medium and add the potatoes and stir gently. You don’t want hot potatoes and fat flying all over your stove top so stir carefully if your pan if nearly full at this point. The potatoes will shrink as they cook, so don’t worry if they come up close to the edge of the pan. Add the remaining seasonings to the top of the potatoes. Cover with a lid and cook for 15 minutes.

After fifteen minutes, stir the potatoes and beef again. Put the lid back on and set it for another 15 minutes. If at this point you notice that some of the potatoes are a little darker then you’d like, reduce the heat a bit more.

After the next fifteen minutes have passed, the potatoes should be fork tender. If they aren’t, stir, cover and cook for another five minutes. When the potatoes are fully cooked, turn off the stove, sprinkle cheese, green onions, or parsley over the top, cover with a lid and allow the cheese to melt. This only takes a few minutes and is a great time to set the table.

Changing it up

The most amazing thing about this concept of meat and veggies cooked in a skillet is it’s versatility. You can literally take any meat and any kind of vegetables and cook them the same way. Change up the seasonings to suit your fancy.

This type of cooking allows you to really work with the seasons and what’s available to you at any given time. It’s also a fairly hands off approach to cooking up a meal. While waiting for the veggies to cook in between stirring, you can clean up the kitchen, prep a dessert, start a load of laundry, whatever little task needs to be done can at least be started while the food is cooking.

That’s honestly one of my favorite things about cooking things that take little prep work, but require longer cooking time. I can get dinner cleaned up before it’s even been eaten, making my evenings smoother and more enjoyable. Which is why one of our favorite meals is our garlic parmesan roast chicken :D.

I’d love for you guys to give this recipe a try and tell me what you think in the comments below.

Happy cooking 😀