Beef Recipe For Gym

Ground beef and broccoli sounds a little boring, but this sticky sweet BBQ beef with broccoli is far from it. We’re talking charred broccoli cooked in rendered bacon fat, crispy browned ground beef, and a sweet yet umami black pepper BBQ sauce.

Every serving has 18 grams of protein with only 160 calories. It’s perfect for serving with rice or cauliflower rice and packing up for meal prep. And you’ll only need 6 ingredients and about 20 minutes to make it. So let’s get after it!

Even with a short ingredient list, there are lots of possible modifications. I’ll run you through every ingredient with ideas for alternatives so you can take this recipe and run with it. You’re one sauce or veggie swap away from an entirely different recipe (that’s still super simple).

Beef & Potatoes

If you’re revisiting this recipe since it was first published in 2018, you may notice it calls for center cut bacon as opposed to pre-cooked chicken bacon.

In the original recipe I recommended using real bacon for more flavor and using the rendered fat to cook the ground beef and broccoli like in my bacon cheddar ground beef and potatoes skillet. So that’s exactly what I did for the updated version.

Another change with this updated recipe is the switch from frozen broccoli to fresh. Using fresh allows you to add some char to the broccoli while also keeping some crunch and texture.

Healthy Beef Recipes

If you still wanted to use frozen broccoli, simply microwave a steamable bag according to its directions and stir in at the end up of the cook with the sauced ground beef.

If you wanted to swap broccoli for something else, you could try brussels sprouts, green beans, bell peppers, or just about anything. Though you may want to consider a different sauce pairing for certain vegetables. Here’s a handful of ideas:

The recipe calls for 96% lean ground beef, which is my go-to for all my macro friendly ground beef recipes. With a minimal recipe like this, it’s even more important to maximize on flavor everywhere you can. So make sure you get some actual browning on your beef.

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For optimal browning, you need a hot and dry environment. Turning up the heat under the skillet and patting the ground beef dry with a paper towel should help. Check out my high protein taco soup post for more in-depth tips on browning ground beef.

Feel free to use ground turkey or chicken like in my sweet and spicy ground chicken and broccoli or chipotle ground turkey and sweet potato skillet.

, Stubb’s Sticky Sweet barbecue sauce was my sauce of choice for this recipe. Stubb’s makes great barbecue sauces that are relatively low calorie. This is the same sauce I used in my pressure cooker BBQ pulled pork and Sriracha BBQ Ground Beef and Green Beans recipes.

High Protein Dinner Recipes For Weight Loss & Muscle Building

For an even lower carb option, check out G Hughes sugar free BBQ sauce like I used for my air fryer chipotle BBQ chicken tacos. The Trader Joe’s sriracha garlic BBQ sauce I used for my BBQ chicken meatballs and smoked pork tenderloin is also a great option.

And for a slightly different flavor profile, you could use a blend of chili garlic sauce and honey like in my air fried chicken and broccoli recipe.

Rice or a blend of rice and cauliflower rice are the no-brainer pairings for this recipe. I like to make rice bowls for meal prep with about 2/3 cup basmati rice and 2/3 cup cauliflower rice per serving. You can easily adjust the amount of rice to fit your calorie needs.

Post Gym Ribeye!

Non-rice pairings might include anything else that goes with BBQ flavors. Similar to my ground beef and cabbage recipe, potatoes come to mind, whether that’s a stuffed air fried baked potato or on a bed of low fat mashed potatoes. (If you’re short on carbs, check out my low carb potato substitutes guide.)

I’m curious to see what you can come up with. Let me know how you serve your sticky sweet ground beef with broccoli in the comments or in a recipe review. And if you have any questions about the recipe or ingredient swaps, leave them in the comments as well.

Ok that was seriously yummy. Only thing I did differently was to add hot water while the broccoli cooked to soften it (then let it evaporate) and make sure to drain the beef before adding the rest of the ingredients back in. We really like the Organicville BBQ sauce!

High Protein Dinner Recipes With Ground Beef

I always keep an extra jar of Stubb’s sauce on hand for this. I didn’t have any bacon so I went without and it still tasted great. I also enjoy having something crispy or crunchy with my dinners so I used 1/4 of Joseph’s Lavash Flatbread and a pizza cutter to cut very thin strips. I then air fried it and used them as a topping.

My husband LOVED this recipe. He's a huge fan of ground beef but never knows how to prepare it and he used this to make dinner. It worked well!