Slow Cooker Salisbury Steak - Remember TV Dinners?

Are you old enough to remember TV dinners?  Oh, those divided trays covered with foil, and inside, old-fashioned comfort food - fried chicken, turkey, meatloaf, and Salisbury steak - YUM!  It was a treat when Mom fixed frozen TV dinners.  My gosh, you actually got to CHOOSE what you were going to eat - just like in a RESTAURANT!  Before the advent of fast food, kids weren't really welcome in most restaurants, so the novelty of being given a choice was heady stuff.

They still make frozen dinners (notice they don't call them "TV dinners" any more), but no more aluminum trays and covers - everything has to be microwavable.

One of the most popular TV dinner at our house was Salisbury steak, which used to come with mashed potatoes, green beans, and a little sort-of-apple-cobbler dessert.  The new frozen dinner has cooked apples instead of the little "cobbler" thing, and corn instead of green beans.  I don't know what the old Salisbury steak was made of, but the new one I saw said it was "made with chicken, pork, and beef," which means mostly chicken, then pork, and lastly, beef.

I receive several different foodie emails, and lately there has been a rash of Salibury steak recipes.  I guess everyone is craving comfort food.  Upon reading the recipes, they all seemed to use some form of ground meat patty.  What I remember from my childhood was cubed steak, not hamburger, in Mom's homemade version.  Disappointment.

But a couple of weeks ago an email came that showcased "Poor Man's Steak."  Cubed steak!  An almost dump-and-go recipe!  BINGO!  

The original recipe calls for the Universal Binding Ingredient (UBI, as characterized by Thomas Pynchon in his book, Vineland), condensed cream of mushroom soup.  I'm not averse to cooking with condensed "cream of..." soups, as some people are (too much salt!  too much fat!  too processed!), but I'm not a fan of cream of mushroom soup, which makes absolutely NO sense whatever, because I'm a HUGE fan of mushrooms!

Go figure.

Anyway, I use cream of celery and cream of onion soups instead of the cream of mushroom.  The cream of onion can be difficult to find, but there's ONE nearby store that carries it (Meijer), so I've lucked out!

The original recipe also calls for an envelope of onion soup mix, which will probably also set off  cries of "too much salt!  too processed!" but you know what?  I'm talking about fast, easy, convenient, comfort food.  If those ingredients bother you, make some white sauce and add your own mushrooms and onions.  For me, this is one of those "I'm feeling lazy today, but I want a home-cooked meal" recipes.

So here it is, with my substitutions:


Slow Cooker Salisbury Steak

The classisc combination!

2-3 lb cubed steak
1-oz envelope onion soup mix (either beefy or regular)
1  10.75-oz can condensed cream of celery soup
1  10.75-oz can condensed cream of onion soup (if it's not available, just use another cream of celery)
2/3 c (or about 1/2 soup can) water
2 T Worchestershire sauce
1/2 t pepper

Place meat in a slow cooker.  Mix remaining ingredients together and pour over the meat.  Cover and cook on low for 6 - 8 hours.  Mix the gravy well before serving.

Soup! Soup! SOUP! Yes, ANOTHER Soup Recipe!

If you've been following this blog for a while, you've surely noticed that a LOT of the recipes I post are for SOUP.  I don't know why, but I'm just not much of a sandwich-for-lunch-type person.  I'd rather have good ol' SOUP - especially in the winter!

Well, DUH.

Here's what I made the other day.  I went through all my SOUP recipes and nothing called my name, so off to the fridge to see what was in there.  I found lots of leftover roast chicken, a gallon of homemade chicken broth, the remains of a bunch of celery, some matchstick-cut carrots, and a container of leftover corn.  There were a few potatoes and a couple of onions left in the bags I bought a few weeks ago.

So here's what I came up with!


Chicken and Corn Chowder

1/2 c butter
1/2 c matchstick carrots
2 stalks celery, diced
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 c flour
4 c chicken broth, divided (heat 2 c to almost a boil)
2 1/2 c half-and-half
4 russet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 lb frozen whole kernel sweet corn
1 1/2 pounds cooked chicken (boned and skinned), cubed
1/4 t nutmeg
1 t salt
1/2 t white pepper

In a 4-qt pan, melt the butter and saute the carrots, celery, onion, and garlic until fragrant.  Add flour and cook 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly, then add the hot broth slowly, still stirring constantly, until the flour is incorporated and there are no lumps.  

Stir in the reserved broth and half-and-half.  Heat to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer until the mixture thickens.  Add the remaining ingredients, bring back to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until the potatoes are cooked through.  Adjust the salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Shortages - What We're Doing

Finding things at the grocery is still hit or miss.

Several weeks ago, when the pandemic had just started, I had used the last of the chicken in the freezer and headed to Kroger.  No chicken.  AT ALL!  There was SOME pork and beef, but no chicken!  When chicken finally appeared in the meat department, there was a sign on its refrigerated case that said customers were limited to two packages of chicken.

That situation continued until a couple of weeks ago when all the meat cases were consistently full again.  Woo hoo!  Unlimited meat products!

Then some of the meat and poultry processing plants started shutting down because they had sick employees.  And now, the signs are back up.  I went to the store yesterday, and there was some chicken, but no skinless, boneless breasts.

And there is still no flour, sugar, yeast, dried beans, or rice.  There are canned beans, but not much variety.  You can make chili - there are plenty of kidney beans!  Hardly any toilet paper or paper towels - still!  I grab what I can find, and there are those signs - only ONE package of paper goods allowed.  There is bleach on the shelves, but just a few jugs.  At the beginning of all this, it couldn't be found at all.

Frozen vegetables have been hard to find, too, and not just recently.  Almost as soon as the pandemic was acknowledged, frozen vegetables in the stores disappeared.  You can sure tell what people DON'T like - that's what's left - lima beans, for one (yuck!), riced cauliflower, edamame (soy beans), broccoli cuts (which are mostly stems).  No peas, green beans of any kind, broccoli florets, cauliflower, mixed vegetables, corn, mirepoix mix (diced onions, carrots, and celery), or chopped onions.

I've been searching for chopped onions for a couple of weeks because I'm getting low (one package left).  Yesterday, I finally decided it would be a good idea to just buy some onions, chop them up, and freeze them myself.  There weren't many onions in the produce department, either!  But I did get some.  Better than none!

This afternoon, I took out the food processor and got started.  I filled five quart-size freezer bags with onions.  I had to process them in three batches, but I got it DONE.

Nine onions in these bags.

         

One large-ish cucumber.

I figured I already had the machine out, so what else needed processing?

One entire bunch of celery.

Well, cucumbers - why not?  That Man likes them on his salads.  I was on a roll.  And how about celery?  That can go on the salads, too, and some can be frozen for cooking.

So I sliced and chopped my way through a pile of produce.  FUN!!  Except all those onions killed my eyes - ouch.  Better than doing it by hand, though.  I got to play with my sorta new toy, plus I feel like I've accomplished something I needed to do.  Always a good thing.

Anyway, food shopping has become a competitive sport and I'm doing the best I can with what I can find.  I hope you're having luck finding what's on your list!

Kitchen Window Hydroponics

The celery after 4 days.

The scallions after 4 days.

Remember setting a stalk of celery in a glass with some water and a little food coloring and watching the daily progress of the color rising up the stalk?  How about putting the very top of a carrot in a little pan (usually from a frozen pot pie!) of shallow water and growing feathery carrot tops?  Or growing the seeds from lemons, oranges, and grapefruit in little paper cups of dirt?  Or suspending an avocado seed in a glass of water and seeing it sprout?  Those were some of the fun things Mom used to allow us to do in "her" kitchen!

Well, while I was waiting for the weather to dry out and warm up so I could dig up the garden and start planting my little seeds, I indulged in what I like to call "kitchen window hydroponics."

I've seen some pictures people have posted online of celery and scallions (green onions) growing on their kitchen counters and I decided to give it a try.  I had celery and scallions, so when I cut up the celery (I'd made Buffalo wings and needed celery and bleu cheese dressing, natch!), I saved the bottom, stuck in some toothpicks, and suspended it in some water in a tiny bowl.  When I needed some scallions for a recipe, I cut off all the green and some of the white, left them bundled in their rubber band, and put them in a coffee cup with a little water.  I change the container and water at least every other day to keep things from getting slimy and gross.

The celery, 3 days later!

The scallions, 3 days later!

It's amazing how quickly growth starts.  I mean, I could see things starting the very next day!  It's kind of exciting, watching these vegetables regenerate.  When the scallions get a few inches taller, I'll cut them off again and use those new tops.  I'm reserving plans for the celery, but it actually has stalks already.  We'll see how big it gets and what I'll be able to use it for.  FUN!!!

Senate Bean Soup (A Non-Trendy Comfort Food Recipe)

In the past few months, I've made a lot of soup.  This is my quick and easy version of good old fashioned ham and bean soup, the soup served every day in the U.S. Senate restaurant since 1903.


Senate Bean Soup

1 T butter
1-lb package frozen mirepoix mix (chopped onions, celery, carrots)
1/2 lb ham pieces
3 or 4 15-oz cans navy pea beans, rinsed and drained
1 bay leaf
salt to taste

Saute the mirepoix in butter in the bottom of a stock pot about 3 minutes.  Add the rest of the ingredients and just barely cover with water.  Bring to a boil and simmer about 30 minutes.  Remove bay leaf before serving.


We always eat cornbread with this, with lots of butter!