Homemade salisbury steak

Got a craving to cook Sunday night and decided to give my hand at some salisbury steak — aka the poor man’s steak and one of my favorite cafeteria meals while growing up.

Yup. I’m the odd one that actually enjoyed salisbury steak from the school cafeteria. It was one of the top cafeteria meals, alongside the rectangular slices of pizza and the giant fried burritos.


(not an actual photo from 1988…)

But I digress, let’s get to that recipe.

To start off with, I combined 1/3 cup of bread crumbs with an egg and mixed the two together.

My reference recipe called for 1 medium onion, thinly chopped. We were out of onion at the time, so I opted for 1/3 cup of dried chopped onions instead.

I also added 1/3 cup of beef broth to the mixture and gave it all a good mixing.

The end result looked a lot like oatmeal.

And of course, if you know anything about my cooking, you’ll know I can’t cook much of anything without adding some of my “secret ingredient,” Tony Chachere’s.

You can always add a dash or two or three to any dish to spice it up a bit.

Next, I froze my hands off mixing the meat in that was (mostly) thawed out in the microwave.

I used a package of ground turkey, roughly 1 1/2 pounds.

Once the meat was mixed with the other ingredients (bread crumbs, onions, and beef broth) I formed several oval shaped patties with the meat. Depending on the size, we can usually make 4-6 patties from 1 1/2 pounds of meat.

Of course, what’s salisbury steak without great gravy.

I went with a cream of mushroom option, mixing a can of cream of mushroom with 1/4 cup of beef broth. Simply mix the two together and give them a good mixing.

Finally cover the meat patties with the gravy and cover it all with aluminum foil and pop ’em in the oven.

Cook at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, remove the foil and then cook for another 15 minutes.

An hour later — you’ve got the poor man’s steak.

I pulled out some leftover green bean casserole that Laurie made for Thanksgiving and ended up with one those great comforting meals on Sunday night — and leftovers for lunch. Excellent!

So what about you? What was one of your favorite cafeteria meals growing up?

Recipe:

1 1/2 pound of ground beef/turkey
1/3 cup dried, chopped onion
1/3 cup of bread crumbs
1 egg
1/4 beef broth

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine onion, bread crumbs, egg and 1/4 cup of beef broth. Mix it all together.
Add the meat and mix it in with the other ingredients.
Make the meat into oval patties. Depending on the size, the meat makes 4-6 patties.
Place the patties in a baking dish and cover with your gravy of choice.
Cover with aluminum foil and cook at 350 for 45 minutes.
Remove the foil and cook for another 15 minutes.
Remove and enjoy.