Cooking dinner sometimes means you have to be a little creative. Though I often cook much of the Puerto Rican food I grew up eating, it’s not all I cook! I love cooking (and eating) pasta, as well – in all forms. One dish my family has come to love is an Asian-inspired noodle recipe, which you can cook with beef (our favorite), chicken, or pork. You could also make this a vegetarian dish and leave out the meat altogether!

This teriyaki beef & vegetable noodle recipe is easy to make, uses little ingredients, and best of all, cooks rather fast. You can easily cook this when you get home from work (or after a long day with the kids), and if you have pre-cut vegetables, it’ll take even less time! I’m sure you’ll be adding teriyaki beef & vegetable noodles to your dinner menu plan from now on!

Teriyaki Beef & Vegetable Noodles {Recipe}

Ingredients

• Salt
• Olive oil
• Thin-cut steak, cut into strips and seasoned to your liking (you can substitute with chicken, pork, or leave meat out for a vegetarian version)
• Linguine noodles, 1 16 oz. package
• Teriyaki sauce
• Soy sauce
• Broccoli, washed and cut into florets
• Carrots, washed and cut into strips (I like to buy baby carrots that are already peeled and cut them in quarters length-wise.)

Directions

1. Add water to a large pot, salt to your liking and bring to a boil.
2. Heat a medium pan to medium heat. You can use a pan such as these non-stick Rachael Ray skillets I reviewed.
3. Add olive oil, and swirl pan to coat the bottom.
4. Add pre-seasoned steak and let it brown, stirring occasionally.
5. When water in pot comes to a boil, add package of linguine noodles and cook per package directions.
6. As steak browns and is nearly cooked all the way, lower heat to low-medium.
7. Add teriyaki sauce and soy sauce to steak. You want to add enough to create a sauce that will blend with the noodles.
8. When noodles have about 3 minutes of cooking time left, add broccoli and carrots to pot with noodles.
9. Let broccoli and carrots cook with noodles until noodles are ready to drain.
10. Drain noodles, broccoli, and carrots and return to pot.
11. Add steak and sauce mixture to pot with noodles and vegetables.
12. Mix well and serve.

Enjoy your teriyaki beef & vegetable noodles and have fun with the recipe! You can switch out the meats, as I mentioned, and also trade out the vegetables for your family’s favorites. Let me know what you think if you make it!

Late last year, General Mills launched its first Spanish-language application for the iPad, providing more than 900 Latin-inspired recipes completely in Spanish. The app, Qué Rica Vida Recetario, is free and includes a variety of recipes, from appetizers to desserts. The Qué Rica Vida brand is General Mills’ Hispanic marketing platform, providing a Spanish-language web site and free magazine for consumers. You may remember I mentioned Qué Rica Vida last year after our introduction to the brand and highlighted them as a brand that gets it when it comes to marketing to Latinas and engaging Latina bloggers. Since their launch event in Miami, they have continued to support our digital Latina community and have been both personal sponsors to many bloggers, including myself, as well as conference and event sponsors; they sponsored both the Blogalicious 2010 conference and the ­¡Parranda! party I co-hosted during the conference.

The recipes provided in the app are all in Spanish, but you can find many of the same recipes in English on the Qué Rica Vida web site. What I like about the app is that you can search not just by category, but also by ingredient. The app also provides a conversion tool in case you need to figure out how to go from pounds to ounces or cups, etc. A fun aspect is that you can share each recipe via Facebook directly from the app, which is good for sharing with your friends and especially good for food bloggers to share with their communities. I’ve been playing around with the app for a few months now and wanted to share with you a few recipes that are quick and easy to make. This is important to me, because though I enjoy cooking, I don’t necessarily want to be in the kitchen for hours cooking just one meal. I grew up eating rice nearly every day, but I equally love pasta dishes. It helps that I find pasta dishes are just as easy and fast to cook as rice.

The following are a few pasta recipes from the Qué Rica Vida Recetario app that will give you a break from the traditional spaghetti meal. For the English versions, just click on each recipe’s name and choose to view it in English.

Espagueti con Pollo en Salsa de Chile Poblano (Spaghetti and Chicken in Poblano Sauce)

Ingredientes:

Modo de preparación:

Pasta Ramen con Carne y Verduras (Ramen Stir Fry)

Ingredientes:

Modo de preparación:

Fideos con Chipotle (Vermicelli with Chipotle Sauce)

Ingredientes:

Modo de preparación:

Do you have staple dishes that you often cook because they are quick to make?

Disclosure: Qué Rica Vida sponsored me to attend the Blogalicious 2010 conference.

All recipes courtesy of General Mills/Qué Rica Vida. © 2011 ®/™ General Mills