This will probably get filed under seriously freaky recipes, but I imagine weird recipes are somewhat expected of me anyway! Man, I love having this outlet for my strange culinary train of thoughts. And getting away with it!

You know how I like to mix and match vegetables, right? How I love our infamous Dutch hodgepodges? And ground beef? The really down-to-earth type of food that you can feed nearly anyone and that somehow never bores. The most forgiving recipes are those made with the ingredients listed here. You just can’t go wrong. 

Out of sheer boredom, I combined one of my mix and match mashes with some sort of sloppy Joe-style beef sauce—it’s not nearly as weird as it sounds—and ended up with a dish that would best describe itself as ‘stove-top casserole’. 

Hard to explain what I mean, so why don’t I just show you… 

Ingredients: 

13 oz ground beef
2 pounds potatoes
1 pound green beans
3 medium carrots
1 large onion
2 oz bacon
1/2 bell pepper
3 tbsp ketchup
1 cup water
1/2 cup warm milk
1/3 beef bouillon cube
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tbsp coarse mustard
worcestershiresauce
nutmeg or mace
dried parsley
pepper
salt 

Optional: vegetable bouillon cubes 

Directions: 

Peel, wash and dice the potatoes. Salt the water and cook them until completely tender.
 

These veggies create magic together. Peel and dice the carrots and trim both ends of the green beans. Break the larger beans in half. Put the green beans in a pan and top with the carrots.
 

Finely mince a large onion. Add half the onion to the vegetable mix and keep the other half aside, we’ll use it for the meat sauce. Salt the water or do as I do and drop 2 vegetable bouillon cubes in there.
 

Finely mince half a bell pepper. 
 

And give the bacon a chop. This is enough to add flavor to the dish but not nearly enough to clog your arteries.
 

The ground beef, this was roughly 13 oz (350gr) and that was plenty. Season it with salt and pepper to taste. 
 

I like to add a little flavor to my ground beef in the form of mace, 1 tbsp coarse mustard, a splash of worcestershiresauce and some Tabasco. Just use your favorite seasonings. Mix it all up.
 

Cook the bacon until it gets slightly brown, add the ground beef, bell peppers and onion. You can throw in some garlic if you like, I choose not to. Break up the meat.
 

As soon as the meat has browned, and the onions are translucent add the flour. Cook for a minute before adding the ketchup, water, 1/3 beef bouillon cube and parsley. This also works with sage, Italian herbs or even dried thyme. Whatever you have on hand will do. Simmer the sauce for 10 to 15 minutes.
 

Drain the potatoes and the vegetables. Give the potatoes a really light mash, add a little butter (mine was the liquid kind) and pour in the hot milk.
 

Add the vegetables to the potatoes and mash them in. Add more milk if it seems too dry. Taste to check the seasoning.
 

This is the kind of dinner you serve in a big bowl rather than a fancy plate, so just fill a bowl with the vegetable mash, top with a big spoonful of meat sauce, grab a spoon and dig in. Ultimate comfort food.

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