Thai Lettuce Wraps

Thai Lettuce Wraps

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So recently the hubs and I signed up for Winder Farms.  This deliciousness was sitting on my doorstep Monday morning as I was headed out for my run. 

I won't show you all our goodies, but we ordered a produce box as part of our order.

                               

It is more expensive than Bountiful Baskets, but the quality is amazing.  I didn't use most of the produce until almost the end of the week and it was so fresh still!! I'm used to only buying berries the day I use them or they go bad by the time I go to bed!

They also provide a recipe to use your ingredients, which I think is a GREAT idea because so many times I get a new item and have no clue what to do with it.  This time they gave me a recipe for Thai Lettuce Wraps, but their recipe was full of ingredients I didn't have on hand and my grocery budget for the week was gone, so I decided to come up with my own.

I found a recipe on allrecipes.com but it called for skewers and grilling and as a busy mom with a husband currently on nights, that wasn't going to happen.  Plus I was missing some of the ingredients and had others I wanted to use.  So I adjusted until I came up with something I was happy with.

Find the PDF for the recipe HERE

The hubs is on nights right now so getting all 5 kids fed, bathed, and ready for bed on time is quite the challenge alone but having dinner on time makes a world of difference.  So, I wanted to have this recipe on the table by 5pm.  Since I was planning on that I started with all my prep work while helping the kids with their homework.

I started by mixing up the sauce.

SAUCE:

1/3 c. lite soy sauce

1/3 c. water

3 Tbsp. Lemon juice

2 cloves minced garlic

½ tsp. Ground ginger

1 Tbsp. Sugar

I just mixed that all together and set aside.

(If you don't like the raw garlic taste {this sauce isn't cooked}, I suggest either just adding more to the meat mixture and omitting it in the sauce, or you can cook it up real fast before adding it.)

Then I got my veggies ready.  I washed and separated the lettuce, and shredded and thinly sliced my carrots, peppers, and cucumber.

(You can add whatever other veggies you want or have on hand.  Some suggestions are radishes, green onions, rice sticks, etc.)

I took 1 lb of ground beef and browned it most of the way.  Then I added 1 Tbsp. soy sauce, 2 cloves minced garlic (you can go 1 if you aren't garlic fans) and 1/2 tsp. ground ginger.

I let that finish cooking and then I added 1 c. of cooked rice I had from the other nights dinner.

I let that cool for a minute.  Then I started assembling.  Once the prep work was done this was a super fast dinner.  You could always do almost all the prep before hand and this would be a quick meal.

Take a lettuce leaf and top with the meat mixture and then veggies, if you are rolling, do not overfill them or the lettuce will tear easy.  My husband and I ate them this way, dipping in our own bowls of dipping sauce.

  Beware - These are MESSY! But you'll be licking your fingers with deliciousness.

Little kids and bowls of dipping sauce don't always work well, so we went an alternate way for them.

I simply used their lettuce as a bowl, filled it up and then drizzled with the sauce.  At first I was afraid they wouldn't eat the lettuce this way, but they were using the lettuce to soak up the sauce and finish them off.

**This recipe is gluten free. Verify all your ingredients are gluten free (especially soy sauce!!).**

ENJOY!!!