Once upon a time, my daughter’s friend offered to cook dinner for us. It was “dinner” in the broadest of terms: basically, she browned some ground beef, with salt and pepper, then drained it and added a can of cream of mushroom soup. She simmered this mixture while she boiled egg noodles to serve it over. It wasn’t wonderful, but not nausea-inducing. Certainly edible. I thought of it as “people chow”. But my hubby and I have kicked it up a level. Here’s how we do it:
Brown 1lb of lean ground beef (85/15) with salt and pepper; break up beef as it browns.
Remove ground beef from pan. Deglaze the pan with a little dry red wine. In the drippings and liquid, sautee a small, diced onion and a diced sweet red pepper. When the pepper and onions are softened, add beef back in. Add cream of mushroom soup and about 1/3 can of Half and Half (to make it “saucier”). We serve it over whole-wheat rotini.
Problem is, even though this is a very basic recipe, and I’m sure we didn’t invent anything new, we don’t know what it’s called. I’ve been calling it “hamburger slop”, but it seems like we could come up with something more appetizing!
So, have you had/cooked a dish like this? If so, what’s it called? If not, and you were to cook it, what would you call it?
I make something similar once in a great while, only I add French-cut green beans, tarragon, and some sour cream. I call it stroganoff even though I know it isn’t.
Yeah, it’s basically just “people chow.” Something to throw together when you’re hungry and want something that’ll stick to your ribs, but don’t want to work too hard.
It’s definitely a type of modern (post-1950s) beef stroganoff; I’d especially expect to find it in Midwest rural or suburban cookery, like most of my extended family makes. Those folks would think the addition of wine very odd and probably morally suspect, of course. My parents regularly made something like it when I was growing up. Another variety of hamburger slop we ate often was “goulash” (ground beef simmered in in tomato sauce with green peppers). If you put green beans in the stroganoff type – possibly substituting cream of celery for cream of mushroom soup – and bake it in your good casserole dish with tater tots or ready-made french-fried onions on top, you are ready to go to a potluck.
Traditionally, beef stroganoff involved non-ground strips or cubes of beef in a sour cream sauce, often with mushrooms, but there are thousands of variations.
I knew a fellow in college who lived on a dish not all that different: he sauteed chopped-up chicken, added a little hot water and instant cream-of-chicken soup mix, then dumped in whatever frozen veggies he’d got on sale that week, and served it all over noodles. It was healthier than the ramen most of our friends ate, I guess.
Definitely a midwest staple. Meat + noodles + cream of something soup. You can even skip the noodles and serve the meat-soup mixture on a bun and call it a sloppy joe.
One of our favorites is hamburger boiled in water, with onions, thickened with cornstarch and served over potatoes or toast. If you add some Kitchen Bouquet to change the color from gray to brown, it doesn’t look so much like puke.
AKA ‘yumasetta’, thought to be Midwest or Amish. Hamburg, onion, tomato soup, cream of chicken soup, maybe velveeta cheese, served over egg noodles. Filling enough after a hard day digging up taters, but I think Hamburger Helper is easier.
Yep. I like ground beef or sausage + egg noodles + cream of mushroom and tomato soup + cheese + whatever random vegetables we feel like. We don’t even have a name for it, it’s just “casserole.”