A Stew Meat Concoction

We usually spend a couple hundred dollars buying meat when we go to the butcher shop but sooner or later the freezer starts looking bare again. At the moment all I have left is 2 frozen cut-up chickens, 1 pound of ground chuck, 1 pound of “stew meat” (cubed chuck roast) and a package of bacon.

I don’t feel like thawing out a chicken (too late in the day anyway) and I”m tired of ground beef (we just had spaghetti the other night) and I don’t feel like making beef stew either. We also have several Totino’s Party Pizzas that we keep on hand for an emergency. An example of an emergency is when nobody feels like cooking but everyone feels like eating. I asked my husband if he wanted “something from ground beef, a little pizza or a concoction made from stew meat”. He had a funny look on his face, but always the adventurer he said “a stew meat concoction”.

So this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to make a round steak recipe but use stew meat instead. Here is the recipe straight from the 1972 Betty Crocker’s Cookbook. They don’t make cookbooks like this anymore and that’s a fact. I bought the Betty Crocker Cookbook: Everything You Need to Know to Cook Today, New Tenth Edition for my daughter-in-law a few Christmas’s ago. It is a good cookbook, but nothing can take the place of my old fashioned one.

This is the recipe I’ll be using:

Round Steak with Rich Gravy

3 pound beef round steak
1/3 cup all purpose flour
3 tablespoons shortening
1 envelope (about 1.5 ounces) dry onion soup mix
1/2 cup water
1 can (10.5 ounces) condensed cream of mushroom soup

Sprinkle one side of the meat with half the flour; pound in. Turn meat and pound in remaining flour. Cut meat into 6-8 serving pieces.

Melt shortening in large skillet; brown meat in shortening over medium heat, about 15 minutes. Sprinkle onion soup mix over meat. Mix water and soup; pour over meat. Cover tightly; simmer 1.5 to 2 hours or until tender.

Place meat on warm platter. Heat remaining gravy mixture to boiling, stirring constantly; pour over meat.

6 to 8 servings.

For my concoction I’ll dredge the stew meat in flour and brown it a bit in the shortening for a few minutes. Then I’ll mix all the other ingredients together, pour it over the meat and cook it until it is tender.

I’ll also make some rice, biscuits and either a salad or other vegetable and then call it supper. I bet this is some darn fine eating in the trailer park this evening!