Ground Beef and Potato Skillet

A one-pan ground beef and potato skillet that’s ready in under half an hour? That’s right, this cheesy dish is the perfect weeknight comfort food.

Video: Making A Ground Beef Potato Skillet Meal

Ingredients

I use lean ground beef for this skillet meal. You can use ground chicken or ground turkey in place of the beef if you’d like. Don’t use ground turkey breast though since it will be too dry.

You’ll need two medium potatoes cut into 1/2 inch cubes. Make these as uniform as possible so they cook evenly.

For the the peppers, I like to use half of a green bell pepper and half of a yellow, red, or orange one for color. But, you can use one whole bell pepper of a single color to make things easier. You’ll also need an onion and a couple cloves of garlic. The remaining seasonings are just smoked paprika, salt, and black pepper.

Then, the beef and potato skillet gets finished with Cheddar cheese and green onions. Seriously good.

Cooking Beef And Potatoes In One Pan Together

For this recipe, I really wanted the beef and potatoes to be cooking together in one skillet, and at the same time. The idea was to (1) only have to use one skillet, and (2) not have to take the time needed to cook things in stages. It took a bit of trial and error, but I found a solution that gets you nicely browned potatoes AND perfectly cooked beef. Here’s how!

The key to cooking all of this in one skillet is to get the potatoes browning first. Then move them over to one side of the pan where they continue to soften while the ground beef cooks on the other side.

You’ll see that the potatoes get some good browning on them from that initial step and then retain it throughout the cooking, even when the pan gets more crowded.

Similarly, note that when you add the ground beef, you press it down lightly to get it into good contact with the skillet. Then you let it cook undisturbed for awhile. This is the technique that I tested for cooking ground beef perfectly on its own as well. Pressing it down a bit and then leaving it alone lets it get nice and brown, which gives you that nice beef crust and some caramelization flavor. And in this case, it browns so well that later when the vegetables are added and everything is mixed together and the beef isn’t getting as much contact with the skillet, that initial browning remains, retaining that good color and flavor.

How To Make This Ground Beef And Potatoes Skillet

Pull out your large skillet so that you have plenty of room for this one-pan recipe and start by warming up the oil. Get your potato cubes in a single layer and let them cook undisturbed for two minutes, then stir and let them cook for another two minutes. Move the potatoes over to one side of the skillet.

Add in your ground beef to the other side of the skillet and sprinkle in salt and pepper over both the beef and the potatoes. Break up the ground beef with your wooden spoon or spatula, then spread it out onto its half of the pan and let it cook for several minutes undisturbed. I’ve called for lean ground beef here so you shouldn’t get too much grease from the beef. But, if desired you can scoop some of the fat and liquid away just before adding the onions and peppers.

Then it’s time to add in the onion and peppers, along with garlic and paprika. You can dump them all in on top of the ground beef and potatoes because at this point it all gets stirred together. This is where you’ll see that the time taken to brown the potatoes and the beef really pays off. After you add everything else in, things are a bit steamier, but the potatoes and beef stay nicely browned.

Continue to cook and stir occasionally until the beef is fully cooked, the veggies have softened, and the potatoes are tender. You can test the potatoes by spearing a cube with a fork, the potato should slide onto the fork easily if it’s cooked and tender. Any resistance means it’s not quite cooked through.

Turn off the heat, sprinkle the shredded cheese all over and allow it to melt. Finally, garnish with some sliced green onion. And while it’s not in the below recipe, I will say again that topping each serving with a sunny-side-up egg is one of my favorite Breakfast-For-Dinner meals!

Note: If you don’t want to cook the ground beef and potatoes in the same skillet, you can use two of them, and then combine everything at the end, or near the end when you add the veggies. Alternatively, you can cook the potatoes in a skillet and cook the ground beef in the air fryer like this.

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