Salisbury Steak

I talked about it and then I did it. I found a recipe for salisbury steak and I made it for dinner last night. I've only had frozen entree ones before. There's some variation in taste and especially texture amongst them. But there was always the main idea of a meatloaf ee meat covered with a brown gravy. That's how I usually picture them. Our recipe last night took a little turn after reading the comments about the dish.

I employed Steve last night for the parts I didn't want to deal with. Hehehe. For the steak, you mix together ground beef, egg, bread crumbs (we used japanese bread crumbs (panko)), 1/3 of the condensed french onion soup and s & p. I had Steve mix up the batch and shape them into loaves. Too cook, I changed around the directions a little. Instead of pan-frying them all the way though, I seared the meat on one side, flipped it over and poured the sauce on top. Then I threw it in the oven. Speaking of which. For the sauce, I combined the remaining condensed french onion soup, condensed cream of mushroom soup (added this as per people's suggestion - the recipe did not call for it), water, flour, ketchup (yes, ketchup), Worcestershire sauce, mustard powder and s & p. As I said, I poured this mix over the steaks and let them finish cooking in the oven.

I served herbed potato wedges with them. I had Steve wash two large russet potatoes and cut them into 8 wedges each. They looked like giant steak fries with the skin on them. To a plastic bag, I added olive oil, plenty of salt, black pepper, dried thyme and dried rosemary. I put the potatoes into the bag and made sure all the wedges got herbed n' oiled. Then I threw them onto a sheet pan. I stood them upright with the skin side down. I baked them up on a high'ish heat and then later cranked up the heat to try to get them crispier. Oh, and I nuked up some frozen Bird's Eye peas and also some corn.

The verdict. Ok. Steve enjoyed it as did I, however, I didn't love it. I'll tell you why. It was all in the sauce. First of all, I shouldn't have added the cream of mushroom. Sounded like a good idea and people swore by it. I shouldn't have followed their lead. And there was sort of a gross taste to the sauce. Steve thought the tang could've been from the onions in the french onion soup. But I quickly pointed out that it was really the ketchup and dried mustard combo that I didn't love. Sometimes I have burgers or hot dogs with both ketchup and mustard on them. Sometimes I'm just in that kind of mood. Last night, I wasn't. And I wasn't expecting it in this dish. A word about the texture. It was very good. Very, very good. It was uniformly soft and tender but still had a meatiness to it. I think the panko really helped. If I were to repeat this dish with changes, I'd do the steak part the same way. It was almost perfect. I thought the texture was great.

The potato wedges were good. At first, Steve didn't like them cause he thought the outsides were too leathery. I didn't get the crisp that I was looking for. But once he hit it with the sauce, he raved about them. I liked them right off the batt. I'll definitely do the potato wedges again. The peas and corn were fine. I think, however, that canned green beans would've been a better match for this trash meal.

Settle in for some down home cookin' and Eat Something Good!