Tasty Tuesday: Beef and Broccoli

Now that school has started back up for most families, here is an easy week-night meal that you can throw in the crockpot before afternoon pickup and it'll be ready to eat when you are! It's a great toddler dish. My 9 month old loves it, too!

Ingredients:

2 lbs stir fry beef (your butcher can cut it for you if you can't find it pre-cut)

1 cup beef broth

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/4 brown sugar

3 garlic cloves, chopped

2 tablespoons corn starch

2 tablespoons cold water

2 bags frozen broccoli

starch of choice - we love using pad thai rice noodles... you could also use regular rice or pasta

Directions:

1. Put broth, soy, sugar and garlic into crock pot and whisk together

2. Add beef and stir to coat

3. Cook on low for 4 hours. (Really, with crock pots, you can use the high or low setting depending on your timing needs - as long as the meat is fully cooked, you're good to go!)

4. Once the meat is done and about 20-30 minutes before you're ready to eat, you have to do two easy things:

- in a small bowl, mix the corn starch and water then pour into crock pot (this makes the sauce thicker and not so watery)

- dump in the bags of broccoli and stir it all together

5. Don't forget to make your rice or pasta! If you want to try using rice noodles, just soak them in hot water for 10 minutes then toss in a hot skillet with some soy sauce. If you skip the skillet you can mix them right into the crock pot but know that those noodles soak up a lot of liquid so you won't have much sauce leftover.

Tastes just as good as takeout, seriously!

You could also add mushrooms, carrots and bok choy!