Slow-Cooker Beef Lettuce Wraps

Two nights in a row of new recipes!  I love anything Asian-inspired.  I get a few cooking magazines in the mail (Everyday with Rachael Ray, Cooking Light, Southern Living).  Honestly, I don’t end up cooking the recipes as much as I’d like – most of my meal ideas come from Pinterest.  But I like getting something in snail-mail besides bills and junk. 

My June copy of Cooking Light had this recipe for beef lettuce wraps with pickled vegetables.  It only had cucumbers and carrots, but I added some red bell peppers, green onions, and mushrooms to make it extra veggie-filled. 

My favorite lettuce wraps are the ones at the Cheesecake Factory.  I rarely eat there anymore since I prefer trying out non-chain restaurants, but every time I go, that’s my dish.  Somehow it’s considered an appetizer but it’s big enough for two people to split it as a meal (that restaurant definitely doesn’t understand portion sizes…)

The beef wraps that we made were so filling that I actually could only eat two. Even though the beef cooks in juices, next time I may throw together a separate dipping sauce since I love the ones from the Cheesecake Factory version (maybe a peanut sauce could be nice?)

Lance actually used the leftovers from this dish to make a really tasty quiche a few days later. 

Slow-Cooker Asian Beef Lettuce Wraps: (adapted from Cooking Light)

Ingredients:

• Cooking spray (we always use coconut oil spray)
• 1 large onion, cut into ½” slices
• 8 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1-1/2 t olive oil
• 1 2-lb boneless chuck roast, trimmed
• ½ cup unsalted beef stock
• ¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 11 T rice vinegar, divided
• 2 T dark sesame oil, divided
• 2 T brown sugar
• 2 T unsalted tomato paste
• 1 T white miso/soybean paste (I omitted this since it wasn’t an ingredient I’d normally use…)
• ¾ t crushed red pepper
• 1 cucumber, sliced
• ¾ cup julienne-cut carrots
• 1/2 red bell pepper, sliced
• ½ cup mushrooms, sliced
• ¼ cup green onions, sliced
• 1 cup water
• 1 T granulated sugar
• ¾ t sale
• 1 head cabbage
• 2 t toasted sesame seeds

Directions:

1. Coat the bottom and sides of your slow cooker with spray.  Line with onions and garlic. 

2. Heat the olive oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the roast to the pan, cooking about 3 minutes and turning to brown all sides.  Place the beef on top of the onions and garlic and pour the drippings from the pan on top.

3. Combine the stock, soy sauce, 3 T of the vinegar, 1 T sesame oil, brown sugar, tomato paste, and red pepper in a medium bowl and whisk together.  Pour over the beef, cover the crock pot and cook on low for 8 hours.

4. Place the cucumber, carrots, and red pepper in a shallow bowl 15 minutes before the meat is done.  Combine the remaining ½ cup rice vinegar, 1 cup water, and granulated sugar in a saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil.  Remove from the heat and pour over the vegetables.  Let stand until ready to serve, then drain well. 

5. Move the beef from the slow cooker to a large platter and shred with 2 forks.   

6. Heat the remaining 1 T sesame oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the shredded beef and onions, pressing into an even layer.  Cook 2-3 minutes without stirring. Turn off and sprinkle with salt and ½ c liquid from the crock pot (discard the rest of the liquid). 

7. Serve the beef with the pickled vegetables, green onions, and mushrooms.  Top with sesame seeds. 

The Cheesecake Factory – Tampa, FL

Yesterday I was craving the Thai Lettuce Wraps from The Cheesecake Factory.  Their menu literally has hundreds of options, but I can’t get myself to order anything else. They are so amazing that they’ve ruined all other lettuce wraps for me – I’ve tried making them myself or ordering them at other restaurants and I always end up disappointed.  

So last night after shopping for Halloween costumes (more on that later) we headed over to International Plaza.  Since we both work weekends and tend to eat out on weekdays, I sometimes forget how insanely packed places get on Saturday nights.  The line was completely out the door and hungry people were crowding the entrance anxiously holding buzzers.  Luckily the wait for two was only a half hour, so we put our names on the list and took a lap around the shops at Bay Street to pass some time. 

By the time we sat down I was pretty hungry, so I was happy for the bread basket.  I don’t normally get too excited about free bread, but their whole wheat brown bread with oats is actually worth the calories (their sourdough is nothing special). 

Their drinks are a bit pricey, but I splurged and tried the Pineapple Moscow Mule – Stoli vodka, pineapple, ginger beer, and lime.  It was such a refreshing drink that we bought some pineapple juice and ginger ale to make our own.  We’re enjoying our copycat version now while watching the Steelers game…although Lance has renamed it the “Steel City Mule”. 

I of course knew what I wanted to order, but Lance was between several options.  He ended up with the Cobb Salad. 

My lettuce wraps are classified as an “appetizer”, but they could really be shared between two people as a meal (my mom and I have done just that before).  The wraps are unassembled and very messy to eat, so maybe not a first-date meal.  If you’re concerned about looking like a slob, you can always just chop up the ingredients and eat them as a salad instead.

The Bibb lettuce comes with satay chicken strips, carrots, bean sprouts, and coconut curry noodles. The three sauces are really what give the wraps their flavor – peanut, sweet red chili, and tamarind-cashew.  It tastes best with a combination of all three. 

Lance’s Cobb Salad was nothing memorable – it had a nice amount of avocado, but the rest was a bit underwhelming.  We purposely only finished half our entrees to save room for something sweet.

It’s smart of them to name their restaurant after a dessert – you can’t have dinner without a slice of their cheesecake.  We ordered Adam’s Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple – not sure who Adam is, but his cake is the best we’ve ever had there!  The cheesecake has swirls of caramel and peanut butter with Butterfingers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.   

It was so decadent that I’m not sure how we finished the whole thing.  Actually the last bite fell off the plate – and after witnessing a server haphazardly wipe down the table next to us, we were hesitant to eat the last anything that touched the tabletop. 

If you have trouble deciding on a cheesecake, the people at Thrillist.com ordered all 34 on the menu and ranked them.  The plain low-carb cheesecake sweetened with Splenda and topped with strawberries came in last, but other than that, I’d probably ignore their ratings.  The one we had tonight was somehow ranked 31^st and their only reasoning was that it was mostly candy.

We enjoyed our meal – but I think next time we’ll try to eat there on a week night and avoid the crowds.  It's nice that we didn't have to worry about dinner plans for tonight though - plenty of leftovers!

The Cheesecake Factory is located at 2223 N Westshore Blvd B201, Tampa, FL 33607 and is open 11am – 11pm Monday through Thursday, 11am – 12:30am Friday and Saturday, and 10am – 11pm Sunday.