Spiced Beef & Onion Rice Cakes

As my six day staycation draws to a close, I wanted to try another recipe out of Feed Zone Portables.  I've had my eye on this one since I first started to pore through the book, though I recognize that many won't find it all that appealing - Spiced Beef & Onion Rice Cakes!  Their rice cake recipes are interesting in that you basically layer a sweet or savory dish between layers of sticky rice.

The recipe calls for 8 oz of ground beef, 3 cups of sushi rice, some minced onions, molasses, soy sauce and some spices.

 

While the rice is cooking, I browned the beef along with the onions in a saute pan.

Once browned, I added the molasses, soy sauce and the spices (cinnamon, dried ginger & celery salt.)

 

Ding!  Rice is finally done.  It took awhile for the 3 cups of dried rice to cook - next time I'll start the rice well before I prepare the other ingredients.

Once cooled, half the rice is spread out over a pan.  The book says to use a rice paddle but I found the rice had a tendency to stick to the paddle.  A regular spoon seemed to work much better.

The beef mixture is then spread on top of the rice. 

The rest of the rice is then spread over the meat.  A little tricky to spread the rice without pulling up the beef but I got the hang of it by the end.

I let it set for 10 minutes and then tried a square.  It fell apart pretty easily but the flavors were good.  Very sweet beef flavor.

I waited another 20 minutes and then packaged the rest.  They seemed a little more sturdy by then.

Verdict: Tasty but messy.  I'm not sure how well these would hold up on a long run but I think they'll be a good mid-day or pre-run snack.

176 calories / 1g fat / 37g carb / 4g protein / 60mg sodium

Next up: Amanda requested some cherry chocolate sticky bites - a gel substitute.  Stay tuned!