Pita with Curry Ground Beef, Bell Pepper & Bean Sprouts
Fifteen minutes and seven ingredients. Red curry-spiced ground beef with sautéed bell pepper and onion, stuffed into a toasted whole wheat pita with raw bean sprouts stirred through the hot filling right before assembly. The sprouts warm through without going limp, still snapping against the seared meat and soft bread.
32g of protein and 13g of fiber at 493 calories.
Fifteen minutes and seven ingredients. Red curry-spiced ground beef with sautéed bell pepper and onion, stuffed into a toasted whole wheat pita with raw bean sprouts stirred through the hot filling right before assembly. The sprouts warm through without going limp, still snapping against the seared meat and soft bread.
32g of protein and 13g of fiber at 493 calories.
Ingredients
- onion 0.5 piece
- bell pepper 1 piece
- bean sprouts 4 ounces
- olive oil 1 tablespoon
- 96% lean ground beef 3 ounces
- red curry paste 0.5 tablespoon
- whole wheat pita 1 piece
Method
-
Finely chop the onion. Dice the bell pepper. Rinse the bean sprouts in a colander with cold water and let them drain well.
-
Heat the oil in a pan and sauté the onion and bell pepper for 2 minutes. Add the ground beef along with the red curry paste and cook until the ground beef is browned. Turn off the heat and stir in the bean sprouts last. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.
-
In the meantime, toast the pita in a toaster or on a grill pan.
-
Cut open the pita bread and fill it with half of the curry ground beef mixture. Serve the rest separately next to the bread.
Tuck a few leaves of butter lettuce into the pita before adding the filling. The cold, crisp lettuce against the hot curry beef adds another texture layer on top of the bean sprout crunch.
Why This Works
Behind this recipe
Can I use regular ground beef instead of 96% lean?
Yes. Going from 96% lean to 90% lean adds roughly 5–6g of extra fat and about 50 extra calories per serving. The curry paste and bell pepper flavors stay the same, so it comes down to whether your daily macros have room for the extra fat.
Why does the recipe add bean sprouts after turning off the heat?
Bean sprouts lose their crunch within 30–60 seconds of direct heat. Stirring them into the hot mixture with the stove off warms them through without turning them soft. That snap against the warm curry beef is the textural contrast this recipe is built around.
Does cooking bell pepper in oil actually change anything nutritionally?
Research found that dietary fat significantly enhances carotenoid absorption from vegetables. Bell pepper is one of the richest sources of beta-carotene, and sautéing it in olive oil gives your body a better shot at absorbing those carotenoids compared to eating the pepper raw without fat.
Can I meal prep this?
Store the curry filling and the pita separately. Reheat the filling in a pan or microwave, then toast a fresh pita right before eating. Add the bean sprouts fresh each time — they don’t hold up well after a day in the fridge and lose the crunch that makes this recipe work.
