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Is it garden season where you're at? For us, its the time of year when garden harvesting begins (if the drought didn't get yours!) and fresh zucchini becomes quite popular among friends and family. The question of the day is.... What on Earth do you do with all of that zucchini?! Zucchini bread (chocolate, lemon, chocolate chip, and regular!), shredded zucchini to the freezer, and of course....zucchini in your pasta sauces and casseroles! All of those uses are fantastic, but a favorite use for zucchini in our house is this super simple skillet meal.
I whipped a batch up in just a few minutes this morning before work. A large part of the quick preparation came from having a stash of portioned out cooked ground beef in the freezer. I typically will brown 5 to 10 pounds of seasoned ground beef then package it in quart freezer bags in a quantity that I know will feed our family in a jif when needed!
This meal has only 4 main ingredients plus your seasonings. It doesn't get much better than that! It could be five if you have a fresh tomato on hand or even onion on hand. I wasn't feeling oniony this morning and had no tomatoes which meant mine just included the four core ingredients: cooked ground beef, butter, cubed zucchini and shredded cheese.
There are just a few simple steps needed to have this skillet meal ready to eat! First you are going to want to melt the butter in your skillet (you can use less butter if you'd like!), then add in your zucchini and stir frequently until zucchini starts to soften. Next you'll add in your cooked ground beef and stir until well combined, I also like to add my salt and Jack's seasoning at this point. Then you can either serve it as is or add your cheese, stirring to melt the cheese into the dish. We do this sometimes and other times we add the cheese after removing the zucchini and beef from the skillet. This is delicious with fresh chopped tomatoes (added when you add the beef), too!
