Sunday, September 23, 2012

Recipes for this Week's Meal Plan

As I am preparing my 4 Under $40 meal plan for this week I wanted to send out a head’s up. Here are a couple of recipes that you are going to need before I post the grocery list. The Taco Soup recipe came from my sweet cousin, Marcy. It’s one you can probably find most anywhere and I love to give it some variety with what I have in my pantry (and what’s on sale this week). The other is hands down the BEST Cubed Steak recipe ever. Now, this one won’t be done in 30min, but the slow cook time makes it absolutely worth the trouble. If you feed a family of meat-lovers then this recipe should be a go-to in your repertoire.

TACO SOUP
1.5 lb ground beef
1 med onion – chopped
15 oz can tomato sauce
28 oz can diced tomatoes
(2) 15 oz cans kidney beans – drained and rinsed
(2) 15 oz cans yellow corn – keep juice
1 pkg taco seasoning
1 pkg ranch dressing seasoning
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp chili powder

Brown ground beef and onions. Drain. Return to pot and add all other ingredients. Bring to a boil then simmer for 1h. (Mine usually doesn’t make it an hour once it’s warm through!)

CUBE STEAK/Country Fried Steak
Let me give props to former Carrollton Mayor, Gerald Pilgrim, for a country fried steak recipe so good it gets “Slap Yo’ Mama” status.  If you are local and don’t have one of the Recipe Bouquet cookbooks created by the Tallapoosa Garden Club in the 90’s (I think), then you must find a copy. It is a fabulous cookbook and one of the most often used at the Hatchett house. This particular recipe from Mr. Pilgrim can be found on pp. 87-88.
1.5 lbs cube steak
1 can mushroom soup
3 evaporated milk cans water
2 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp Carnation milk (evaporated milk)
3 Tbsp Crisco
Salt & pepper

*Note: I substitute most of the water for the rest of the small can of evaporated milk that I use as it is unlikely I’ll need a small can minus 1T of evaporated milk for anything else. And I also find that 3 cans of water make too much gravy to fit into the cooking dish I use.
Preheat oven to 300°F. Salt and pepper steak generously and then batter in flour. Heat Crisco to high in skillet and brown steak quickly. Place steak in an oven safe, covered dish. Put 2 Tbsp flour in grease and brown. Add soup to mixture and evaporated milk and more water (as desires). Pour gravy mixture over steak and bake at 300° for 1 hour. Decrease heat to warm (175 - 200°) and continue baking for 2 hours. This will be the most tender cube steak you will EVER eat and it also works great on cube vineson - you won't even know it's not beef!

~Megan

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