Easy bison teriyaki

If you find yourself with a horde of ravenous teen age boys to feed, this scales nicely.  Double (or triple) everything, and you'll have them eating out of your hands.  Err, and the cookpot.

In your largest pot, brown 1 lb of ground bison.  It's very lean meat, and so you'll want some oil.

Add 2 3/4 cups beef broth, 1 cup of orange juice, and 3/4 cups of soy sauce.  This will give sweet (juice) and salty (soy sauce).  Oriental cooking has a "Fabulous Four" of sweet, salty, sour, and spicy.  This gives us half of the four.  Bring to a simmer.

Add one Tbsp honey (two if you like your oriental food sweeter; I don't but it's a big world out there).  Add 3 cloves of crushed garlic.  Add dried chili flakes (or better, crushed Thai chili peppers in a tube that you can get in the super market).  This brings us to three of the fabulous four oriental flavors.

Add 2 cups of medium grain rice.  Long grain or basmati will work, but the medium grain will be a little stickier which in my opinion gives a more interesting outcome.  Short grain rice will be too sticky.  Add 1 bag of thawed frozen vegitables (mixed veg are nice, but green beans are maybe more authentically oriental).  Turn heat to low and cook 20-25 minutes until rice is chewy (but not gummy).

Now you need to bring the final of the fabulous four flavors.  2 Tbsp of rice wine vinegar (or better, Chinese black vinegar).  Me, I give it an extra shot because I like a little more sour.  Again, it's a big world out there, and you may like something different.

Immediately remove from the heat - prolonged cooking will really take the edge off of the vinegar, and that would be A Bad Thing indeed.  And now for the final ingredient that will make this unmistakeably oriental: 1 Tbsp sesame seed oil.  Serve.

There are some things that are really interesting about this recipe.  First, it's inexpensive and feeds a crowd.  Second, you can easily adjust flavors to taste - goose the heat with more chili or tone it down; add citrus zest more more sour or dial the vinegar back.  Vegetation is a blank canvas for you to pain with - you could replace the frozen mixed veg with some kale that you rip into bite-sized chunks and add during the last ten minutes.

But the kids love this, and any time that I can feed the family well for $10 is maybe not a home run, but it's for sure a stand up double.