Hamburger Stew

Bookemdanno · 11-11-2019, 08:49 PM

I made my Gram's Hamburger Stew tonight....both my girls had 2 bowls!

This recipe came from my grandmother (who's deceased), so there's no exact measurements!

Start out by sweating some (fresh) minced onions & garlic in a pot with some butter
Add 1 box of chicken broth and water to the pot.
Add 1 1//2 lbs of ground beef and bring to a boil.
Add diced carrots & celery...cook for 5 mins. & add sliced potatoes & parsley.
After about another 10 mins add 1 can of whole tomatoes. Remove cores and mince with hands.
Cook at a boil for 15-20 mins.
Then add dumplings while at a rolling boil.
Dumplins are 1.5-2 cups of flour, salt, and baking powder. Add water until proper consistency (you'll know when you see it). Spoon small amounts into stew for each dough ball.

Sorry guys...this is how I learned to cook it from my Gram!

Edit: Sorry guys/gals...I forgot to put to add 1 egg to the dumpling mixture. Happy cooking!

havnfun · 11-11-2019, 09:04 PM

Thanks Dan. Thanks Gram. Sounds tasty. I'll have to try it out in our Feb. trip.

Happy RVing,
Jeff

**JFlightRisk** · 11-11-2019, 09:15 PM

Great sounding recipe. My grandmother did write down her recipes, just NOT in English! And once translated, it was evident she didn't follow them as written, anyway. Nothing we tried tasted the same.

I can figure out a "dash", or a "pinch", but terms she used like a "smidge", "tad", "hint", or "scosh", and have NO clue. Olden day cooking is getting to be a lost art (or language).

Bookemdanno · 11-11-2019, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JFlightRisk

Great sounding recipe. My grandmother did write down her recipes, just NOT in English! And once translated, it was evident she didn't follow them as written, anyway. Nothing we tried tasted the same.

I can figure out a "dash", or a "pinch", but terms she used like a "smidge", "tad", "hint", or "scosh", and have NO clue. Olden day cooking is getting to be a lost art (or language).

That’s ALL my grandmother’s recipes! She was fresh off the boat from Italy and married an Irish man (which apparently was unheard of back then!).

**JFlightRisk** · 11-11-2019, 09:26 PM

I sure miss her cooking, especially when she cooked for the holidays...YUM!

Magnolia Tom · 11-11-2019, 09:42 PM

My grandma wasn’t a good cook. But my mother is. She gives us recipes that we follow to a T but it’s never the same. She always seems to “forget” a step or something. We usually have to have her make it with us together so we can see what her “secret” is and call her out on her omissions [emoji1787][emoji23][emoji1787]

Bookemdanno · 11-11-2019, 09:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magnolia Tom

My grandma wasn’t a good cook. But my mother is. She gives us recipes that we follow to a T but it’s never the same. She always seems to “forget” a step or something. We usually have to have her make it with us together so we can see what her “secret” is and call her out on her omissions [emoji1787][emoji23][emoji1787]

I'm with you Tom. My grandmother always said that no-one would know how to make her recipes unless they came over and "learned" how to make them with her...and that writing them down would never be the same!

Magnolia Tom · 11-11-2019, 09:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bookemdanno

I'm with you Tom. My grandmother always said that no-one would know how to make her recipes unless they came over and "learned" how to make them with her...and that writing them down would never be the same!

So true. Gotta have the first hand tutelage. How else would you know (in my case) all meat should be rinsed then dried? I thought she was crazy but I’ve since adopted the idea and now her recipes taste a lot closer to hers. (Btw, She doesn’t buy ground meat usually, she washes, dries then grinds it herself)

**norty1** · 11-12-2019, 06:26 AM

Do you Brown the meat or put it in raw? I usually Brown it.

Bookemdanno · 11-12-2019, 06:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by norty1

Do you Brown the meat or put it in raw? I usually Brown it.

Just put it in raw.

RedHorse1 · 12-17-2019, 04:57 PM

The Bride makes a similar dish, we call it “Taco Soup”. She got it from a friend but the original source is unknown.
In a Dutch oven or soup pot:
Sweat 1/2 med onion and 1-2 cloves of garlic in olive oil.
Add 1# x-lean ground beef and brown (make sure the meat is cooked thru). Like Bookem, we put it in raw.
Add 1 can each of: corn, pinto beans, ranch style beans, crushed tomatoes, rotel tomatoes (all not drained).
Pkg of hidden valley ranch dressing mix and a pkg of taco seasoning mix (the dry stuff in a package).
Stir it all together and let it come to an easy boil, serve and eat (cornbread is great with it).

This is super easy to make on the road and will freeze well and we feel it’s better the second day. If it thickens too much after a day or 2, add a little water.

Side story: several years back I took a cake to the office that the Bride made. Was a recipe called “Better than Sex with Robert Redford Cake”. By the time the story circulated and got back to me it was “Better than Sex with Tom Cake” (yeah, that’d be me).

Bookemdanno · 12-17-2019, 06:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedHorse1

Was a recipe called “Better than Sex with Robert Redford Cake”. By the time the story circulated and got back to me it was “Better than Sex with Tom Cake” (yeah, that’d be me).

That's funny right there!!

I'm gonna have to try the recipe! Showed it to the DW and she seems interested as well...Thanks for sharing!

Tunce the traveler · 12-17-2019, 06:52 PM

Boy do I miss grandma !!!

Nathan S. · 12-17-2019, 10:51 PM

My grandmas signature was her cheesecake. The recipe goes back to somewhere, not even sure how old it was, old enough to where it explained how to make the proper graham cracker crumbs, they didn’t come in a box. She passed shortly after I got married. I grabbed the recipe and my wife and I tried to make it from her instructions. The wife gave up. So I started to try. After a couple years, realizing cream cheese didn’t come in 9 oz packages anymore they were 8 oz. You can’t buy the “lite” sour cream, graham crackers in the box aren’t the same as a rolling pine over originals, and lemon rind doesn’t come out of a bottle. We got close, then being the lazy one not wanting to spend the whole day of Xmas cooking, I made it a couple days ahead of time. BINGO !! It took roughly 20 years of trial and error to get it right. Now it’s my recipe and I torture the family as to who is going to get it in my will.

I know this is a bit off topic, but the thread brought up memories. Merry Christmas to you all and enjoy your family. And as I do every year, torture them with the potential of having your cooking secrets.

**JFlightRisk** · 12-17-2019, 11:18 PM

I think there's a lot of folks here, with that kind of story.

RedHorse1 · 12-19-2019, 05:00 PM

My grandmother (granny) was injured and passed before I could appreciate what it took to fix great food. This made me remember her fried chicken, fried perch (that I caught) and fried fruit pies. Hmmm, I see a pattern. Yup, I’m from Texas.

Camper_bob · 12-20-2019, 10:48 AM

My grandma was an old farm girl, so she made EVERYTHING from scratch. She even had at least one HUGE garden where she grew and canned her own vegetables. My grandfather and uncle were fearsome hunters as well, so she always had fresh game meat to work with, or a chicken from the yard. When my mom was a little girl, they moved to "the city", but the game meat kept coming, and she established quite the back-yard garden. No one on my side of the family inherited her green thumb (that woman could get palm trees to grow in Antarctica, I swear). My mom could cook, but nothing like Grandma. I have a whole book of recipes that a family member collected after many years of "interviews" and observations with Grandma. I've tried MANY of them, but nothing compares. Something about Grandma's kitchen and her hands was magic. Every now and again we'll go to that book and make something, and while it's not the same, it's close enough to bring back fond memories of Grandma's kitchen.

These days my wife does much of the cooking, and she has a real knack for it. Her parents didn't have it at all; they have no imagination or creativity. DW has a great way of "adjusting" recipes to get them just right. So every now and again, she'll dig up one of those recipes and "play" with it trying to get it right. She can get pretty darn close, but it'll never be the same. But I'm glad we get to share these things with my son. Because just like RVing, we're creating priceless memories... And SO much of our memory is stored in smells and tastes...

Thank you all for posting. I love the memories these kind of discussions conjure. This time of year especially.

bankr63 · 12-20-2019, 12:42 PM

Interestingly, even Grandma can't always cook like Grandma.

My mom is 92 now, but growing up we had pie for desert at least once a week. My mom made the best crust ever; flaky and buttery light. But then we all grew up and moved away, and she would bake a pie only once or twice a year when we all got together. That's when she realized that it's a practiced skill that makes it so good; even she couldn't match her own skill from when she made them regularly.

I do miss those buttery flaky pie crusts, but my waistline is very happy that desert is (mostly) a thing of the past for me.

Enjoy your Christmas memories everyone!

You may also like: