Frozen dinners ain't got nothin' on my Salisbury Steaks!

Call me old fashioned, call me boring, but I love Salisbury steak! Give me a plate of Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans and call it a meal! Growing up it was one of my favorite meals and not much has changed.  My family eats it at least once a week, it’s cheap, it’s easy, but unfortunately it’s usually in the form of a frozen, processed, brick.  I’ve been buying it this way for years; I know how to make it from scratch (it’s usually the way my mom made it), but the frozen dinners are so much faster and easier.  Lately though I’ve noticed that the On-Cor and Banquet Salisbury steak has gotten less and less flavorful. 

Maybe it has always been that way but I’ve just started noticing it more and I’m not digging it.  In an effort to eat food that’s less processed and cheaper I decided that for our weekly Salisbury steak dinner I would make it from scratch. 

Remember all of that ground beef I scored last week?

A picture just in case you forgot!

Well, I set aside a pound specifically to make this very meal.  After I finished I realized I probably should’ve set back more, maybe 1.5 lbs or 1.75 lbs.  One pound was just barely enough for me, my husband, and my stepdaughter.  I bought some Kroger Brown Gravy mixes to top these with, I prefer Heinz Beef gravy but it was out of my budget this week.   

We will get to the gravy in a minute, first I want to start with the beef.

First, I put the thawed hamburger in a bowl and added finely shredded carrot, my grated onion (ya know the one from the freezer!), pepper, seasoned salt, and garlic powder.  I don’t have exact measurements and I apologize for that, I will get better at measuring things for y’all.  I just eyeball things and do what looks right.  I mix all of this by hand in the bowl and then I divide it into balls that I then form into patties.  Before I placed these in the frying pan I wanted to get my gravy and my green beans going.  I put my canned green beans in the pot with a little salt, pepper, some of my grated onion, and bacon, heat over low heat and let them go.

For the gravy, since I was using a mix, I wanted to get it up to temp so it could thicken and marry with the seasonings I added while the Salisbury steaks were cooking.  You could absolutely make your own gravy from the grease from the cooked hamburger if you so choose, I was just feeling particularly lazy this evening and decided to take the easy route. Shh, you can do the same, I won’t tell! With the gravy I followed the package directions and added a few seasonings of my own because packaged gravy is about the most boring, bland thing you can buy. I added just a little salt, pepper, and some onion powder till it tasted how I wanted it to.  
 

Follow the directions and most of all pay attention, go low and slow! Gravy can get away from you very quickly and turn lumpy, no one likes lumpy gravy.  


In between stirring my gravy I put my patties in the frying pan and get them started.  I cooked them until the juices ran clear.  When the patties were done I removed them from the pan and placed them on a paper towel to soak up any extra grease and then I drained the pan. 

Now, as I mentioned before you can make your own gravy from the grease and hamburger bits left in the pan, if you choose to do this don't drain the grease! But I'm lazy remember! 

Don't drain this off if you are making your own gravy!!!

I drained the grease but I didn't wipe it out, I wanted to save the little bits to add more flavor to the gravy.  If you're feeling health conscious, wipe the rest of the grease and the bits out of the pan. It looked like this.

I added a few spoonfuls of the gravy to the pan over low heat and gently scraped the bottom of the pan until the gravy came to a low simmer.  

After it reached a simmer I returned the patties to the pan and then poured the rest of the gravy over the patties and heated over low to medium heat until it came to a simmer.

After it reached a simmer I shut if off and dinner was ready! 

Looks pretty yummy, ehh? Enjoy!!!

On top of spaghetti, all covered with...vegetables?

Spaghetti with vegetables? Yep! Seriously, there is a lot of vegetables in my spaghetti! I was recently perusing Pinterest looking for cheap meal ideas and I came across a lady who blogs about her cheap freezer meals that feed her family of four.  If you have time please go check her out, she has a lot of ideas and not just about food either! While I was reading her post I discovered how she sneaks so many vegetables into her family's meals without them knowing it!


*Gasp* What? She feeds her family veggies and they don't know it? 


Oh please, tell me more! Don't worry! I will!


The lady over at A Turtles Life adds grated carrot to a lot of recipes, she claims it bulks up her meal, it doesn't really change the taste, and it's cheap and healthy. She does this with ground beef and uses that beef for sloppy joes, spaghetti, whatever you would use ground beef in. So, I decided to put her idea to good use as we have recently been looking for ways to reduce our food costs while not reducing our portions, (we really don't have that much to begin with) or quality, while still trying to keep it nutritious.

My beef! And my ice.

On my last trip to Kroger (my favorite store EVER) I scored 6lbs of ground beef for $11.18 on manger's special! I love manager's specials, and seek them out like it's my job. Well, I guess it sort of is in the job description of the family grocery shopper. Every time I find a manager's special I get all giddy and a huge smile on my face like I just won the lottery, people look at me like I'm crazy but I love finding a good deal. Who doesn't? The beef was in those logs, which I usually don't buy because for some reason they seem to have less flavor than the beef that has been wrapped in the Styrofoam.  But for the price I couldn't pass it up and if I'm just putting it in something such as spaghetti or tacos the flavor, or lack there of, really doesn't matter that much.  As soon as I got home, I immediately separated the beef into 1lb portions, wrapped what I wasn't going to use right away, and froze it. 

A few nights ago I pulled one of those frozen pound puppies, thawed it out, and let the experiment begin. I grated a large carrot (I will grate it a little finer in the future, it was a tad large for my liking), finely diced half of a large green bell pepper, and grated approximately 1/3 cup of onion. These measurements are rough estimates and you could certainly add more or less depending on your personal tastes and preferences.

***Chunky Girl Tip*** Cut an onion in half and freeze in a tightly sealed zipper bag.  Pull the onion out immediately before using it, grate as much as you need, and toss it back in the freezer. It will look very similar to shaved ice. The frozen onion will melt into whatever it is that your cooking so you have the onion flavor without chunks of onion.  This is very beneficial when making sauces such as barbeque, gravy, etc.

This Italian herb seasoning is my favorite, it has such a wonderful aroma! I added the seasonings to the meat and the vegetables in a large skillet and cooked it over medium to high heat to until the beef was browned evenly. 

 I wish you could have smelled the yumminess that was exuding from this while it browned up!

While my meat is browning I have my water for my spaghetti heating up, my oven preheating for my garlic bread, and my spaghetti sauce warming as well so all I have to do is add my drained beef and it's pretty much done!  For the spaghetti sauce I use a Kroger spaghetti sauce. I could make my own, but honestly in this case, it is cheaper, easier, and faster to use store bought. My favorite is their Homestyle 6 Cheese.

When my beef is done I drain it on a paper towel in a colander over a bowl lined with aluminum foil, then I quickly add it to my hot spaghetti sauce.

***Chunky Girl Tip*** Put a paper towel in your colander to soak up excess grease from your meat.  Line the bowl you are draining your meat into with aluminum foil and allow to sit over night to harden.  In the morning simply slide the aluminum foil out of the bowl into the trash.  You don't have to wash the bowl and you aren't putting any grease down your drain! 


Your spaghetti water should be at a boil now, this is when I add about a tablespoon of kosher salt to the water before I add my spaghetti noodles.  This flavors the water and the spaghetti.  

My arsenal! 

From left to right: spaghetti, angel hair pasta, penne pasta, kosher salt, fresh finely ground black pepper.

Place your garlic bread in the oven, and cook the spaghetti until al dente.  While I'm waiting on the noodles and the bread I typically make a salad for everyone.  I used the other half of the green pepper for everyone's salad, waste not, want not! When the spaghetti noodles are done I drain them and then return them to the hot saucepan and add a little olive oil or a little butter, this keeps the noodles from sticking to each other or the pan.

When you're all done it should look a little something like this!

 

Do you see any vegetables in there? I don't! Did I taste any? None that I could distinguish! Did my family eat it up like it was the best spaghetti they ever had? Absolutely!!! 


My verdict on the grated carrot? It did absolutely everything she said it would, we have a winner here!

Kraft Fresh Taste

So if you are anything like me chicken is a huge part of your family's diet, and if you're anything like me you get sick of it.  Let's face it, chicken is cheap, abundant, and versatile but it gets old after awhile.  I'm constantly looking for new chicken recipes and it appears so are other people.  Chicken recipes held the number one spot in Google searches for 2011 and it is the most searched topic on Food Networks website.  Wow...we eat a lot of chicken! Whether you get your chicken from a farm or from the store (I won't judge and I will save that for another blog post entirely) you're always looking for new ideas! Well, here is where I come in, or should I say Kraft Fresh Take comes in! Kraft Fresh Take is a simple breadcrumb and cheese mixture that comes in 6 different flavors, Southwest Three Cheese, Italian Parmesan, Roasted Garlic & Rosemary, Cheddar Jack & Bacon, Chili Lime & Panko, and Savory Four Cheese and it has many uses.

So far my family has tried the Southwest Three Cheese and Cheddar Jack and Bacon.  Kraft has made these packets so simple, honestly a kid could do it! Simply follow the package directions, bake at 375 degrees for approximately 30 minutes, you can use chicken, fish, or pork, make a few side dishes and you're done! There is enough mixture in these packages for approximately 4 good sized chicken breasts. I even put mine on aluminum foil on a sheet pan so cleanup is virtually nonexistent! The chicken comes out with a nice crisp exterior, moist interior, and great flavor.

The Southwest Three Cheese has a slight spice to it so I might not recommend this to people who don't like spice or people with children who don't like spicy food.  Personally, I would've added a touch more cayenne pepper for my husband and I, but I'm glad I didn't serve it to my stepdaughter! The Cheddar Jack and Bacon is simply amazing and my stepdaughter said that it was the best chicken I've served to date, not sure if that makes me happy or sad, hmmm. The other great thing about these mixtures is that you can use them for different dishes other than meat, use them on potatoes, vegetables, the sky's the limit! I hope you take a chance on these great flavors, you won't be disappointed!