Healthy Hamburger Helper
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Ditch the box and make our healthy Hamburger Helper recipe for dinner instead! It’s a one-pot lean ground beef pasta dinner that’s a family favorite comfort food!
If you love easy one pan dinner recipes and crave the comfort foods you grew up with, this healthy Hamburger Helper is for you!
Many of us grew up eating the delicious cheesy pasta dish, but I’m here to tell you it’s so much better when you make it from scratch!
Ready to eat in less than 30 minutes, this cheesy hamburger helper is the perfect quick dinner that everyone will love!
One pan, 30 minutes, simple ingredients.. there’s a lot to love about this easy hamburger helper recipe. But maybe you’re wondering, what’s the difference between store bought and this homemade hamburger helper recipe?
What Makes This a Healthy Hamburger Helper?
- A lot less sodium. When you make it from a boxed mix, 1 cup of cooked hamburger helper has over 1200 mg of sodium! Our healthy hamburger helper recipe has less than 400 mg of sodium for a 1.5 cup serving.
- No preservatives. The store-bought version is loaded with preservatives, added colors, and anti-caking agents. While these aren’t bad in small quantities, they’re totally unnecessary.
- Better for you – Our recipe calls for lean ground beef, pasta, some spices and real cheese, unlike the packaged mix that includes powdered cheese and preservatives.
Ingredients
Substitutions
Pasta: For pasta you can use rotini, penne or medium shells (cook time is all similar). We don’t recommend gluten free pasta for this recipe.
Ground Beef: To ensure that this recipe is truly a healthy hamburger helper, we recommend using 85% lean ground beef or ground turkey.
Worcestershire sauce: To substitute 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire, use 1/2 tablespoon of soy sauce or ketchup, and 1/2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar.
Salt: You can cut the amount of salt in half if you’d like, then add more to taste.
Beef Broth: We recommend using homemade bone broth in this recipe but any broth will work. Chicken or vegetable broth/stock can be used interchangeably. We recommend using a low or no salt broth.
Cheddar Cheese: You can omit the cheese from this recipe to make it dairy free if you’d like. We haven’t tried this recipe with other types of cheeses. We recommend using a block of cheddar cheese and grating it yourself as pre-shredded cheeses don’t melt as well.
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How to Make Homemade Hamburger Helper
- Heat skillet over medium-high heat. Spray the pan with cooking spray. Brown ground beef and onion in the pan until cooked through-about 10 minutes.
- Add in the seasonings, pasta, broth and water. Stir and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer, stirring occasionally for 12-14 minutes.
- Move the pan off the heat and stir in the shredded cheese.
- Once combined, serve and enjoy!
What to add to Hamburger Helper
This healthy hamburger helper is delicious on its own, but you can add other things the ground beef pasta to make it taste even better. Here are some suggestions:
- Pickles: Similar to adding pickles to a burger, they are delicious in this dinner, too!
- Veggies: You can add sautéed veggies to this recipe. Zucchini, mushrooms, onions, and bell peppers are all great additions to this recipe
- Cheese: You can never go wrong with extra shredded cheese!
- Hot Sauce or Red Pepper Flakes: If you like spicy pasta, stir in a splash of hot sauce, or add a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes.
Hamburger Helper Recipe FAQs
We don’t recommend using gluten free pasta for this recipe. With one pot ground beef pasta dishes like this, gluten free noodles tend to become very mushy. Use at your own risk!
Serving Suggestions
This healthy hamburger helper is a great meal on its own, but we like to serve it with bread on the side and freshly shredded parmesan cheese on top!
If you’re looking for some veggies to serve with it, here are a few healthy options:
Storage and Reheating
Keep any leftovers in a covered container in your fridge, and use them up within 3 days.
Freezing: We haven’t tried freezing this meal, and we don’t recommend it. When you freeze and thaw cooked pasta, it often ends up in a mushy mess!
Reheating: You can reheat hamburger helper at 80% power in the microwave for a couple of minutes, or in a sauce pan over medium heat on the stove top. We recommend adding a couple of tablespoons of broth or water to prevent the ground beef and pasta from drying out.
Other healthy one-pan recipes
Here are some of our other favorite dinner recipes that only require one pan. Click here to grab our free healthy 30 minute dinners cookbook.
Healthy Hamburger Helper
Ingredients
- 1 pound lean ground beef
- ½ cup finely chopped onion
- 3 cups dry rotini pasta sub penne or medium shells (10 oz)
- 2 cups beef broth
- 2 cups water
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- ½ tablespoon tomato paste
- 1 ½ teaspoons garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
Instructions
- Heat a large saucepan or pot over medium-high heat. Spray the pan with olive oil cooking spray.
- Brown the ground beef and onion in the pan for about 10 minutes, until the beef is completely cooked and onions are translucent.
- Add in the pasta, beef broth, water, Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, garlic powder, chili powder, onion powder, paprika, black pepper and salt. Stir together, cover the pan and bring to a boil.
- Once boiling, remove the cover and reduce to a simmer, stirring occasionally for 12-14 minutes or until pasta is done and liquid is mostly reduced.
- Move the pan off the heat and add in the shredded cheese. Stir until combined.
My husband and I enjoyed this recipe. We added a whole diced onion and next time will be sauteing mushrooms and adding a dollop of sour cream when serving. We will be making this recipe again and again. Thank you so much for your amazing recipes!
Can you use protein pasta in this recipe?
I haven’t tried that but I think it would work. Just watch the pasta and make sure not to over cook it!
This is requested weekly by my 16 year old!!
This is the only recipe I have made of yours that we didn’t like.
What didn’t you like about it? Sorry you felt that way!
My family loved this homemade hamburger helper recipe. It was easy to make with ingredients I already had at home. I will definitely be making this pasta dish again! So delicious! 😋
Absolutely Delicious!! I actually used ground turkey other than that I followed your recipe. It’s our favorite. Thank you.
Just made this last night. Huuge hit. Added non dairy cream cheese at the end. Substituted tamari for the Worcestershire and ketchup for the tomato paste as what I had. This will be a regular at our house. TYSM
Thank you for a close-to, but even better than, Hamburger Helper recipe. My husband now has to watch his sodium counts, so boxed mixes are out forever. He highly recommends this recipe, and that without the cheese! Thank you for a great recipe that makes both the physical and psychological transitions to a lower sodium life much easier!