Cooking Cheap

Oddly enough, I haven’t posted my recipe for meat balls or the base for a meat loaf. The secret is the bread and milk, the pork or sausage, and a wet mix. I also believe that beating the egg helps a lot. DO NOT USE store bought dried bread crumbs or dried herbs or garlic powder. It’s not really my recipe, it’s the way it was done before Betty Crocker said to use bread crumbs. I was taught to make a lot bad meatballs using bread crumbs.

For meat loaf you’d add some other veggies and maybe another egg, some catsup perhaps, maybe another glove of garlic.

Meatballs & Meatloaf Base

1 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork or breakfast sausage
1 egg, beaten.
2 slices of bread soaked in milk, stale is preferred.
1 small onion, finely chopped, minced is better.
1 glove garlic, minced.
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper
Milk if needed.
Other herbs as you see fit – finely chopped parsely for example.

In a large bowl, beat the egg. Add everything else and mix VERY thoroughly, add milk if needed to maintain a very tacky mixture. Roll the mixture into balls. It sticks to your hands. I usually get 20 to 24 of them. Brown the meatballs in batches but don’t try to cook them all the way through. They’ll finish cooking in the sauce.

At this point, I put half the meat balls in the freezer or fridge for another use.

Mushroom Soup Gravy:

Using the skillet you browned the meat balls in, if you have any fresh mushrooms you need to use up, sliced them and brown them in the fat for a few minutes.

Pour off any fat you don’t want but leave a tablespoon. Set the skillet on medium low. Add 1 can of cream of mushroom soup and break it up, it’ll sizzle and change color. Add a can’s worth of whole milk, mix it well and return 10 to 12 meat balls to the skillet. Reduce heat to a very low simmer, DO NOT let it boil over! Add any seasonings you like – black pepper for certain, any remaining chopped parsley is good. Simmer for 30 minutes or for as many hours as you like, adding milk as needed.

Yes, it is high in butter fat; that’s why it tastes good. 2% milk doesn’t work nearly as well, water adds nothing. Any left over half and half or whipping cream that will expire soon is good too. One could also use a slow cooker or crock pot if you wanted serve the whole pound and half of meatballs (Double up on the soup and milk of course) and of course if you have the patience for real small meatballs, you have a party appetizer in the crock pot.

For the other half of the meatballs, I simmer them (partially defrosted) in one can of Hunt’s Four Cheese Marinara ($1 a can is the right price). Yeah you could pay more, but try the Hunt’s first before gilding the lily. Campbell’s Cream Of Mushroom soup is better than the store brands, but I can’t tell the difference when it’s been cooked for an hour or two in a lot of whole milk.

I’m going to try and make another sourdough starter, just to see what happens and if can get a different culture going – faster acting or more sour or even different from what I grew a while back (That one is called “Number Three” and I’m happy with it).

Number 4, (assuming it lives) neads to be different. Instead of starting with Rye flour (everyone does that and so did #3), I’m using wheat berries. I bought a 1/2 cup or so from the Fred Meyer’s (a mega mart) bulk bin. Hard red winter wheat. My cost $0.19. I ground them down in the mini food processor to a course flour because nothing goes in my coffee grinder but coffee. I should have enough “flour” for three or four feedings. The big thing now days is pineapple juice for the the first few feedings. I’m not buying pineapple juice just for this. I have some apple cider in the fridge. It’ll have to do.

There is an explanation for the juice which which makes sense. The juice creates an acidic environment which favors the growth of the bacteria over the yeast in the early stages and then in later feedings stages, the juice is replaced with water and the yeast in the flour can develop better and eventually they all live together happily ever after. It could be true. I know rye and water work so this is different. A dud is always possible.

Day 1 – 1/13/07 8:00PM.
1 Tablespoon of each. It’s more a slurry than a batter or paste because I didn’t grind the berries all that well. Shouldn’t matter all that much. Left to stand, covered on the counter which is roughly 72F or a bit lower.

Day 2 – 1/14/07 9:00PM
Added 1 Tablespoon each of the germ (flour) and apple cider

Day 3 – 1/15/07 9:00PM
Added 1 Tablespoon each of the germ (flour) and apple cider. In theory, I’m supposed to remove half the goo first. Smells like there might something good in there but that could be wishful thinking.

Day 4 – 1/16/07 P:30PM
Most definitely there is life in the little jar. It’s doubled in size since the last feeding. Nowhere near the growth you would expect from a mature starter but that’s to be expected because there’s a large amount of wheat berry nuggets and not so much “flour”. I removed half the goo and added 1 Tbl of the berry flour and 1 Tbl of the apple cider. It smells “brighter” than what rye does after three days. I’ll continue feeding it the rest of the germ flour and cider before I switch over to unbleached bread flour and water.

Way too soon to say if this will be any different than my first starter. I have no expectations. It’s only an experiment and I’m in no hurry.

Day 5 – 1/17/07
I changed my mind. Someyhing is living in the jar but I’t not breaking down the wheat berry bit. On second look, it’s eating a lot. I switched to flour and water after throwing away half if the wheat berry goo.

Day 6 – 1/18/07

Early AM. What ever is in there is having a feast on the flour and water. Doubled in size in a few hours.

It took me a few days, but I made these meat pies. They were quite good. Of course I didn’t follow the rules very well and I’m a newbie with pie dough. I made a half recipe (6 pies or pasties or turnovers or empanadas or various other names). I chose to use pork breakfast sausage instead of ground pork. That works well for things like meatballs, meat loaf and this filling. I don’t have a bowl of Emeril’s Essence so I left that out. It might be better if I had some, but I’ve no complaint on the flavor of my mix. I cooked it up a few days ago and put in the fridge. A few minute on microwave defrost took the chill off.

Then there is the dough, Instead of milk I used buttermilk and I added too much milk/egg mixture to the dry ingredients. Not a stiff dough at all. I added several more table spoons of flour and mixed and it was still softer than I wanted but I was getting bored by then. I had a few problem rolling out the discs. I’m not very good with a rolling pin (but getting better). The dough didn’t stick but it was easy to poke a hole in it . Too easy and you can’t patch it up after filling.

Tasting Impressions:

These are pretty good. The edges of the pies cooked darker than the filled section. No surprise there. I may not have fried them long enough or the filling was too wet (most likely both). I didn’t want that blackened crust taste so I might have pulled out early. The dark brown edges were delicious as was the rest of the crust. The inside filling was tasty but the combo needed something. Using store bought honey-dijon mustard as a dipping sauce was better than plain yellow mustard. What we in Idaho call “fry sauce” would have been perfect. I don’t have the recipe. It’s a spiced, slightly sweet mayonnaise. I’ll have to work on that. Then again, fry sauce is a secret.

[update]
I froze 3 of the pies and then a few days later, defrosted & reheated them in a 225 oven for an hour or so on a wire rack over a baking sheet to catch any oil drips. They were every bit as good. Not greasy at all. And very tasty. I will make these again and try a shallow pan fry or baking instead of the deep fry.