Ingredients

  • You will need:
  • 2 pounds or so of 93/7 ground beef
  • 1 or 2 small hot chilis, seeded and chopped fine
  • 1 tablespoon or so olive oil or vegetable oil
  • 1.5 or so tablespoons fish sauce (I am very wary of fish sauce and used less than recommended. Boy loves fish sauce and squirted it over his dinner before he ate it)
  • 2 limes, zested and juiced
  • 8 or so scallions, white part only, minced fine
  • 8 or more tablespoons chopped cilantro
  • 4 or so tablespoons chopped fresh basil
  • 1 head of romaine lettuce

Method

  • Fry the chopped chilis in the oil for a few minutes - don't leave them, because you don't want them to burn. Turn the ground beef into the pan and fry until all pink is gone. Add the fish sauce and continue to cook until all liquid has evaporated (this took me around 10 minutes at medium-low heat; I let the beef cook while I zested and juiced and chopped and minced everything else).
  • Off the heat, stir on the zest, juice, scallions, cilantro, and basil. Tip it all into a big bowl. Taste and, if necessary, add salt as needed.
  • Take the whole leaves off of the head of romaine, rinse them if you need to (dry them off a bit if you rinse them), and put them on a platter. To eat this, use the romaine leaves as little boat-shaped wraps for the beef. I also peeled and sliced up a cucumber to eat with this, because I like cucumber, but you don't really need it. The romaine provides a nice cooling note.
  • Now that I read it, the only variation is that we serve this with rice rather than romaine leaves. Yum. We need to make this again soon.