So many times we only think of poultry and fish when we want to make low cost and healthy meals, but if we are honest, we still want the flavour that beef provides.

Many of us seem to get stumped on how to prepare the beef, we rarely stray from the boring and well-known methods, meat loaf, hamburgers, roast beef, tacos and chilli.

But wait, have you ever thought about making a salad featuring beef? There are a surprising number of tremendous recipes out there that you can make with beef.

Here are two that are quite new that your whole family are sure to savor.

Beef Spring Salad

You need:

1 pound of ground beef

1 head of leaf green lettuce

1 head of red leaf lettuce

1/4 pound of fresh spinach

1-3 green onions

1-2 carrots

1-2 stalks of celery

1 tablespoon of fish oil

1/2 teaspoon of ginger

1/2 teaspoon soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

1/4 cup water

1 teaspoon parsely

1 teaspoon tarragon

1 teaspoon of reserved green onion

To do: In a pan, brown your ground beef, while you are browning the beef add in, fish oil, ginger, soy sauce, garlic powder, salt and pepper.

In a large bowl, rip up your lettuce leaves and spinach. Chop up carrots and celery to your size liking. Then chop up the green onions into small pieces reserving 1 teaspoon for your dressing.

In a small bowl, mix together rice wine vinegar, water, tarragon, parsely and reserved green onion, set in the fridge to chill for approximately 15 minutes.

When the ground beef is done, drain off any fat that may have come out of the beef, now put into the bowl with your salad greens. Mix together. Take the dressing you created and pour all over the top of your salad, toss some more.

Your salad is ready to serve. This is a great spring or summer salad.

Beef vegetable soup with barley

This is a nice hearty soup that is great to eat any time. You could even set this up to cook in your crockpot for the day.

You need:

1 pound of ground beef

1 cup chopped carrots

1 cup chopped celery

1 cup chopped yellow onion

1 cup peas

1 cup corn

1 cup lima beans

1 cup chopped potatoes

1 1/2 cup barley

2 cups beef stock

4-6 cups water

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon basil

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

To do:

In a large pan, begin by browning your ground beef, sprinkle a small amount of salt and pepper while meat is cooking. When the meat is browning, add in the onion, let cook for a minute or two, this will allow some of the oils to sweat from the onion and provide additional flavor to the beef and the soup. Now toss in remaining vegetables, allow to good mixing constantly for about 10 minutes, this will help the softening process on the vegetables and also release additional flavors for your soup. Add in the stock, water and spices, cover with a lid let cook on medium heat for about an hour, checking occasionally to make sure it doesn't boil over. Then lower to simmer for about 30-40 minutes. Your soup is ready to serve.

If you prefer not to use ground beef for these recipes you can used chopped up beef of your liking. Just remember to to brown the meat before any of the other steps.

Don't forget, there are a wide variety of different cuts of beef - not to mention premium types of beef, such as Aberdeen Angus - so if you are confused over which cuts of beef to use, ask your butcher, they are usually all to happy to help with your choice. You can find loads of tasty beef recipes by using the the internet - there are plenty of free recipe collections on the net, most of which will have a section for beef recipes. If they don't have a specialist beef recipe section, you will likely find them in the meat recipes category.

Enjoy!