SPICY WRAPS CAN TAILOR TO TASTE
Options for substitution abound in dish ideal for meal prep or a speedy dinner
I love a lettuce wrap — the idea of putting out a big platter of flavorful filling and a big platter of fresh green leaves and letting everyone dig in is a fun change of pace. And this Spicy Beef Lettuce Wraps With Oyster Sauce from America’s Test Kitchen’s “The Ultimate Meal Prep Cookbook” has earned a spot on my repeat list.
It is one of those dishes that was so quick to make, it shocked me. I had it on the table in less than 20 minutes.
The dish features simple ingredients: browned ground beef and chopped poblano peppers. But it gets big flavor boosts from two lightning-fast combos of ingredients: a bit of chile-garlic sauce and minced garlic that you mash together and saute for just 30 seconds, and a sauce of water, oyster sauce and Shaoxing wine that you whisk together and add right at the end.
In fact, the only problem I had with the dish was that we enjoyed it a little too much. It ruined my meal planning! My idea was to make it and have it over two nights, but we ate and ate until, well, there wasn’t enough for two more meals. I’m betting that might happen to you, too, so I changed the servings from the recommended four in the cookbook, to just two to three servings.
That’s a good sign though, don’t you think?
The cookbook, which is all about shopping only once a week so you can prepare meals for your family, has quirky concepts for making meal planning a bit more fun. For example, this recipe comes from a chapter that recommends: “Tell your family this is an eat-with-your-hands kind of week.”
It offers lots of ingredient substitution ideas as well, such as using ground chicken or turkey instead of beef. The original recipe recommended red bell peppers, but I preferred it so much more with poblanos, which was one of the authors’ substitution ideas.
If you’re going to try it, I highly recommend using the recommended salty, sweet oyster sauce, because it is ideal for this dish. But if you don’t have it, you can use soy sauce, hoisin or fish sauce in its place.