Easy Greek Beef Lettuce Wraps (& My Honest Review of Butcher Box)

I almost didn’t even post this recipe.  I mean, it’s hardly a recipe.  It won’t win any awards for “dinner of the century” or “best meal of your life.”  But you know what?  It’s a fairly inexpensive meal, it whips up in a flash, it’s comprised of real food, and it’s pretty tasty at that.  Oh, and it hardly dirties any dishes!  And then I thought, boy, when you put it like that, maybe this is a recipe worth posting!  Maybe it is “dinner of the century!”  (Probably due solely to the “hardly any dishes” part.)  And also, that’s the whole point of my blog!  Nutrient-dense cooking does not have to be elaborate, or fancy, or expensive, or time consuming.  So, here’s a real life example from my kitchen!

This month I’ve been trying Butcher Box.  This is a monthly box subscription of grass-fed beef, organic/pastured chicken, and heritage breed pork delivered to your door (and yes, it comes with enough dry ice that everything is cold and awesome while it sits there waiting for you to get home and put it away).

We are a family of meat eaters!  (I sometimes cannot even believe that I used to be almost vegetarian!)  Even my eighteen month old eats meat and fish everyday.  So, naturally, I’m concerned about the quality of our meat and want it to be free of the nasty stuff found in a lot of conventionally raised meat and full of all the vitamins and minerals that occur in meat naturally when animals are fed what they’re actually supposed to eat.

Even with all that being said, I’ve already decided we won’t be continuing with Butcher Box.  I love the concept of a monthly subscription for high quality meat, and the taste really is great, but it’s just not in the budget for us right now.  Mainly because the portions of meat are fairly small for us (TWO bone-in chicken thighs?  Let’s try two pounds of boneless chicken thighs, and you’d have my normal portion of meat for a recipe!).  We have zero leftovers, and I see my husband looking for seconds when there aren’t any (not to mention there are no leftovers to use for lunches the next day)!  So, I think we’d need to double the amounts we would order, which would, obviously, double the cost (a normal box is $129).  Plus, I kinda’ just like being able to control exactly which cuts of meat I get.  I’m happy to accept the challenge of figuring out what the heck to do with a pork blade steak this month, but I might not always have the mental energy to come up with something every month.

So, enough of that little tangent.  All that to say, I had a pound of ground beef, and this is what I decided to do with it!

Here are a few little notes on the recipe:

• Ground lamb would be just the best in this recipe!  I love lamb!  I had ground beef on hand, which is certainly a bit more cost effective, but not as tasty, in my opinion.
• If you don’t eat dairy, you could sub out the greek yogurt for goat’s milk yogurt or goat’s milk kefir, or even full-fat coconut milk.
• If you do eat dairy, try adding some feta cheese to this recipe for extra deliciousness.  (I use goat’s milk feta, and it is just awesome.)
• If you don’t have a mediterranean spice blend on hand, you could just use some plain ol’ oregano, onion powder, and garlic powder.  No harm there.  One teaspoon of each would work (or just eyeball it).
• You can sub out the fresh dill in the sauce for one teaspoon of dried dill.
• If you’re not all about the lettuce wraps just yet…  Maybe that just feels a little too out there for you, you could use some pita bread.  I just really try to avoid gluten and conventional breads most of the time to keep my thyroid happy.  Plus, I find I don’t even miss the bread most of the time.  I like the crunch of the lettuce!
• You could also serve these beef patties over rice (my husband’s preferred method).  Again, I try to avoid grains by and large, but if your people will object, make them a pot of rice!

And now for the recipe!