The other night I fixed a complete meal just like Mama used to make when I was a kid right down to the cornbread baked in an iron, corn ear shaped, pan. The salisbury steak was so good and the onion gravy was pretty tasty too. It’s a comfort meal that I always enjoy cooking.
I think Mama was the only one that made salisbury steak. I don’t remember my Grandmothers making it or maybe what they called hamburger steak and gravy was their form of it. Mama’s had a meatloaf like texture as mine does and it soaks up all that gravy that it simmers in. We ate an awful lot of meals that used ground beef since it was the cheapest thing to buy and have meat on the table, besides a can of SPAM. Nannie Polly loved making SOS and serving it over toast with a side of fried potatoes. Now, that was a meal that served many inexpensively especially since the taters came out of the cellar. Nannie also made hamburger has a lot too, especially Winter months. I’d crumble up my cornbread on top of the hash and just drown it in ketchup. I’m laughing at myself at this moment of typing that as I can see me pounding on that bottle of ketchup trying to get it to come out and Papa having to help me. Do y’all remember the glass bottled ketchup? There was no such thing as ketchup in a plastic bottle, you had to first fight to untwist the lid then pound the daylights out of it to get it out of the bottle. As you could guess, I wore a lot of ketchup back in those days.
Salisbury Steak
Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs. ground beef
1 large egg
1 pkt. dry onion soup mix
2 T. ketchup
1 T. worcestershire sauce
1 T. yellow mustard
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 C. plain breadcrumbs
8 saltine crackers, crushed
2 T. butter
1 medium onion, quartered and sliced
4 T. all purpose flour
2 C. beef broth
Directions:
In a bowl add the first 10 ingredients and mix together really well. Form into 6 patties. Heat 1 T. butter in a large skillet over high heat and add the patties, cooking them till browned on both sides, about 2-3 minutes per side. Remove from the skillet and reduce the heat to medium high. Add the remaining butter and the onions, cook them for about 6 minutes then stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute. Add the broth and stir to combine as it begins to thicken reduce the heat to medium and add the patties back to the skillet. Cook for 12 minutes, turning the patties halfway through.