Greek Beef Pilaf

The weather feels like it is starting to change here in San Jose, CA.   I was wondering if we might have to turn the heat on last night.   It got down well into the 50s last night and the house was chilly this morning when I woke up.    Tomorrow morning will be the coldest Monday in quite awhile when it will be about 57 degrees when we leave the house.   And, after the rain on Saturday, we were in the mood for a fallish kind of dinner.

Photo: Randy Mayor; Styling: Leigh Ann Ross

I made Greek Beef Pilaf which is based on a Cooking Light recipe for Greek Lamb Pilaf.   The main difference in my version is that I used ground beef instead of ground lamb per request from my wife and I use just a little less cinnamon and about half the salt than the Cooking Light recipe calls for.    I have made this dish a few times before, but I thought the version I made tonight for dinner was the best instance of this dish I have made to date.  

There were a couple of other minor deviations from the Cooking Light recipe, which I don't think account for much difference.   I was out of long grain rice so I used jasmine rice instead.   And, I didn't have any yellow onion, so I used a red onion.    I also serve this dish with about 1 tablespoon of plain, lowfat yogurt per serving.   I like to mix the yogurt in with the dish.  

The nutritional info in the Cooking Light recipe said this dish is 446 calories per serving, but when I added up the calories for all the ingredients, I came up with 364 calories (380 including the yogurt) per serving.   I used 90% lean ground beef.  I am pretty sure the difference in calories is due to the use of lean ground beef instead of lamb.   Using ground lamb would add 360 calories to the dish or about 90 calories per serving.