Thai Basil Beef with Coconut Rice Recipe (2024)

A recipe for fragrant and spicy Thai basil beef served over rich coconut rice all for under $4 a serving.

The door swings open, the screen door behind it creaking on its hinges, the winter wind whistling as the sounds of my children’s voices cut through the calm of the house. Chaos has come.

The three of them barrel through the small opening all puffy jackets and gloves, one backpack, one lunch box, one bag for snow pants and boots each. Clomp, stomp, clomp. They pound their feet off on the rug, leaving white snowy imprints across the small entry that trail behind them as they cross the living room.

Bags are shrugged off their shoulders. Coats are flung, finding their resting place across chairs and couch arms. Voices are raised, requesting food be produced for hungry stomachs. Homework is done while snacks are consumed. Dinner is started as spelling words are read.

My nightly to-do lists beyond dinner and homework always include sports practices on various nights, but lately they’ve also required stops at Target and Michael’s and bookstores on the way home, trying to smash every bit of holiday cheer into one evening. Most nights I feel like I’m gasping for breath, running a marathon where I can’t seem to keep pace. The dark descends early these days, and the cold always feels a bit more unbearable once the sun is gone.

The feeling of too little time for all that needs to be done is one not unique to me. Too many families deal with the same, the stretching of minutes so thin you wonder how to make moments in the middle of them. Whole Foods invited me to share a quick and easy meal for those too-busy weeknights that also came in on the budget-friendly scale, and I laughed heartily in the midst of the chaos that was consuming me.

The produce section in Whole Foods is one I always find inspirational. Standing in front of a wall of green and rainbow-colored vegetables, I often have to restrain myself from purchasing more than we’d ever eat before they withered and wilted. As I made my way through root vegetables and greens thinking of what to make for $4 a serving, I realized that I didn’t want to do the things that were predictable. Red beans and rice, anything made with flour (you can make a lovely leaning tower of pancakes and eggs for $4 a serving), lentils, grits. Some of my favorite ways to stretch a budget, but expected. Instead, I wanted to make a meal that more accurately reflected the ideal way we eat. My husband had pulled a recipe for Thai Basil Beef from the November issue of Bon Appetit and was insisting we make it for dinner one night, and I was inclined to make that be the meal to share. Vibrant colors, bold flavors, green to chase away winter’s grey.

The first time we made this we followed the recipe exactly aside from using beef strips instead of ground beef (chicken stock to simmer the beef, fewer green onions, brown sugar in the sauce). Using steak, however, there is no need to simmer the beef in chicken stock. It doesn’t add anything, and the beef cooks better without it. Instead, allowing some of the finishing sauce to be added to the pan to help wilt the basil imparts a bit of that briny and acrid taste to penetrate the beef, which makes the final product take on a bit more bold characteristic.

Round steak is not necessary, but it was a decent price for a good cut of meat. You could easily go back to ground beef for this recipe and end up with a lower cost per serving. I’d still pour a bit of the sauce over at the end of cooking when you add the basil to get a bit more of that flavor soaked into the beef. To save even more, you can serve over regular white or brown rice, no coconut needed. However, you won’t want to do that.

The coconut rice is a cheater rice, substituting coconut milk for some of the water in cooking rice. It’s easiest in the rice cooker, where the coconut flavor ends up a bit more pronounced, but it works on the stove as well. The end result is a bit of a luxurious rice, richer than plain white rice and with a slight coconut flavor. You’ll notice the recipe gives you extra rice servings. This is because I like leftovers, but also because my kids eat it like candy, so having extra doesn’t really meal there will be any to save.

Oh basil. Basil can get expensive. One little container is about $2.99, but that gives you nearly enough to make this recipe. You could do it with that without losing much flavor or hindering the experience. (Meals as experience, brought to you by the Olmanson Family.) Much to my delight, Whole Foods has 4″ pots of organic herbs in the produce department. Everything from Thai basil to rosemary to cilantro was available. This was more than enough basil, plus I set the plant in my windowsill to add to my winter herb garden.