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Southern Plate

Recipes to feed your body and warm your heart.

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Garden Skillet Supper

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GARDEN TIME! Veggies are in full swing, making this a Southerner’s favorite part of summer. Yes folks, all of the heat and humidity are finally worth it when we get to bring in buckets of big juicy tomatoes, squash, and bell peppers. My stomach growls just thinking about it! 

I only have a small garden but it still seems to yield more than I could ever use, so I love throwing together recipes like this that help me get as many of those delicious fresh flavors in one bite as possible! This is a simple go to dish, one like our grandmothers would just throw together and not even consider a recipe, but today I’m going to show you how to make a fresh, flavorful, and filling garden skillet with just enough seasonings to enhance all of the flavors without covering any of them up.

I’m also working on a garden fresh newsletter to be sent out in the next day or so, so be sure you subscribe by email if you want to get that! Click here to subscribe. 

I know I normally go into a long winded story or chat a little bit more, but look at that skillet up there? I’m HUNGRY so lets eat! 🙂

You’ll need: tomatoes, squash, bell pepper, onion, lean ground beef, dried parsley (or fresh) and some kosher salt. 

You’ll also need a wee bit of pepper  and a scant amount of sugar if you want to make it exactly like I do.

They refused to pose in this picture but hey, we all have our stubborn days, right? 

This is an easy recipe to alter based on what you have. Zucchini would be an excellent substitute for squash and if you only have one bell pepper or tomato that will work, too. You can also use ground turkey in place of beef but I have an aversion to ground turkey so don’t look to see me doing that here. But hey, whatever cranks your tractor! 

And yes, Kosher salt is awesome. If you have never used it much before, grab some next time you are in the grocery store. This is one of those ingredients that really does make a pow difference and won’t cost you much at all. IF you don’t have kosher salt, table salt will work as well. I don’t ever want you to have to make a special trip to the store when you can make do with what you have on hand!

Let’s get started!

To begin with, place your tomatoes on a baking sheet and put in the oven on “Broil” while you get your beef going, about five minutes or so. 

 Chop up your onion and place that in the skillet with your ground beef.

Chop the beef up really well and stir over medium heat until nicely browned.

I’m using a mix and chop thingimawhosit from Pampered Chef. I don’t sell pampered chef, I don’t have friends or family who sell it, but I will hunt one of these suckers down to the corners of the earth if I ever need to! This is an awesome tool and I think I’ve bought about eight now. I keep introducing folks to it and giving them away. I love that it can handle the heat so you can continually cook with it without having to keep taking it out and setting it aside. It chops up things really well, too and is dishwasher safe. Am I a salesman or what?But hey, when I find something that is really and truly useful I want you to know about it!

You can buy them from a Pampered Chef person or on Ebay 🙂 Amazon even has them, too (click here) !

 Now take your tomatoes out of the oven and the skin should be split.

Set them aside for a minute to cool and then carefully pull a piece of skin until it comes off. 

 Repeat until they are entirely peeled. 

Cut them into wedges and add to your skillet. 

NOTE: I’m using lean ground beef so I didn’t have to drain mine before adding the tomatoes.

If you aren’t using lean beef and have grease in your skillet at this step, drain the beef before adding tomatoes.

Chop them up with your thingiemawhosit or a wooden spoon or whatever you grab first from the drawer and continue cooking over medium heat.

Keep in mind these tomatoes are hot and have juice so there may be hot juice involved.

Add your parsley, salt, and pepper (and just a teaspoon of sugar if you really wanna bring out the sweetness of these tomatoes!)

 Continue cooking and dicing up the tomatoes for about five minutes, until they are good and juicy and make a sauce of sorts. 

While you’re doing this, chop up all of your bell peppers (throwing away the seeds) and squash. 

 Add in the rest of your veggies. 

Cook and stir until squash is lightly translucent and veggies are just tender, but not overcooked or soft. 

I know “overcooked” is kind of the Southern way to some folks but that is a holdover from the old days when we really did have to cook the mess out of something in order to make sure it was safe to eat. So when your meemaw cooks you vegetables until they cry uncle, she is just repeating what her meemaw did as a way to make sure the food was safe.

 This skillet is BURSTING with flavor!

Serve over hot cooked macaroni noodles or rice. 

Enjoy! 

And if you have time, drop me a “Hidy” in the comments below because I LOVE hearing from you!

 

Garden Skillet
 
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Ingredients
Quantities are on a sliding scale in this recipe, feel free to use whatever you have
  • 1-2 pounds lean ground beef
  • 2 large garden tomatoes
  • 1-2 yellow squash, sliced
  • 1-2 bell peppers, chopped
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes
  • 1 teaspoon Kosher Salt
  • ¼ teaspoon pepper
Instructions
  1. Place tomatoes on foil lined baking sheet and put in over under broiler for five to eight minutes, while you get the ground beef going below...
  2. In large skillet over medium high heat, place ground beef and onion. Chop and stir with wooden spoon until beef is fully browned and onion is tender and translucent, about ten minutes. If not using lean ground beef, drain grease.
  3. Remove tomatoes from oven while ground beef is cooking and set aside to cool slightly. Once cooled, carefully peel skin off and slice into large wedges.
  4. Add tomatoes to ground beef and onions in skillet and continue cooking over medium high heat while you stir and chop them up, being careful not to squirt hot juice on yourself.
  5. Add salt, parsley, black pepper, and sugar (if using sugar). Stir well and cook for about ten minutes.
  6. Add in squash and bell pepper and stir well. Cook until squash is lightly translucent and bell pepper is just tender, about ten more minutes.
Serve over hot cooked macaroni noodles or rice.

    To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are!

    ~Unknown

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    Comments

    Comment Policy: Comments welcome, manners required.

    1. Hi Christy, I made this a couple nights ago and it was a hit! My husband was afraid it would taste like stew since it had tomatoes but he ended up having 2 bowls and said he would like to have it again. yeah! I added zucchini and mushrooms to the recipe.

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    4. The recipe is wonderful. I do find the ads between each step with those hideous caterpiller/wormy bugs extremely unappetizing !!! Can’t there be shoe or furniture ads instead,? Or spices…??

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    5. Googled a recipe for hamburger, squash, and peppers and found this. As I was making it I thought it may turn out bland but I was wrong. It is very flavorful. I used frozen Anaheim peppers from my fall garden and added a bit of shredded parmesan cheese to the top and served with garlic bread. My husband thought it would be good with spaghetti sauce added but he likes sauce on everything! I prefer it just as it is. Also loved the trick of skinning the tomatoes versus dunking in boiling water-worked great!

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    7. Tried this recipe today because I’ve been looking for recipes with lots of Protein for my mom since she had cancer surgery and has lost a lot of weight. She loved it and so did my dad. They both had 2 servings of it and she said she would eat more tonight. 🙂 Thanks for the recipe.

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    8. Googled recipes with ingredients I picked from my garden today… so Iam going to try it… looks wonderful… Iam going to play at around with your recipe…i love experimenting…. I’ll send a pic. Of the finished dished…i looked. At alot of versions of this, but your picture looked the yummiest!!!

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      • OH how wonderful! I’d love to know what you end up adding or doing different. This is the PERFECT recipe to play around with and I can’t imagine a combination that wouldn’t be wonderful! Thanks for taking the time to comment, Babette, look forward to hearing back!

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        • It was wonderful…i added a little ground sausage for more flavor and diced potatoes which I browned with the meat and onion.
          We served it over rice and my husband melted mozerella and cheddar cheese on the top of his… really delish!! He said i have to make it again, and add bacon also…lol
          Thank you again !! Something different to do with all these veggies Iam putting up in cans and freezer…lol

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    9. Hey, Christy, do you think this would freeze well? My husband works away from home during the week and I prepare meals and freeze them for him to take while he is away from home. He would love this dish.

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    10. I just made this and it is so simple, healthy, delicious…as well as affordable. I used a small jar of whole stewed tomatoes from garden and fresh frozen bell pepper with the fresh squash. Next time I might add mushrooms.

      Thank you Christy! I love this website.

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    12. Christy – I made a custom Ali-version of this, but I LOVE THIS! Such an easy meal to prep for work lunches and sooooooo good!! It’s so easy to make and add my favorite veggies (I used zucchini, red peppers, cherry tomatoes and jalapenos), plus substituted ground turkey in an attempt to be healthy. I served with quinoa and brown rice. Seriously, SO GOOD!

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    14. OMG!!! I made this a few weeks ago because my garden is going crazy with yellow squash, tomatoes, and peppers. I jotted it down on an index card and then couldn’t quite remember – so I googled and found it again. This is the first recipe ever that I have gotten off the internet and I’m talking a lot that have turned out and I absolutely loved! I took some for lunch the next day and found myself very sad when it was gone. Wished I would have taken a bigger dish!! Thank you so much!

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    15. So I happy I found this! I’ve started experimenting with pre-cooked beef steak that I get at Walmart. It comes in lil bags near the meat section. I did I guess what you would call a stir fry. I added chopped red peppers, onions, and yellow squash to a frying pan with some olive oil. Let it sizzle for a lil bit and then added the beef steak tips. I also added some McCormick Montreal steak seasoning. It turned out great! But of course I wanted to see if other people made something similar to this but when I googled my ingredients, Asian stir fry recipes with soy sauce and other stuff started popping and that was not the direction I wanted to head in. (I hate soy sauce) But! Then I found your recipe! And with me growing up in Mississippi it looked great! Now I’m not too crazy about tomatoes but I don’t mind a tomato stew so I think I’m going to try this one day even with the tomatoes ☺️

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