It’s the time of year for us where we really begin to hunker down.  Andy is in the construction business, and when we’re under several feet of snow for several months of the year, that means time off for him.  After several years of not knowing if and when he’ll be working, we can now sort of begin to plan appropriately for that time off. Now is the time where we start stocking up a little bit, and I like to take the opportunity to get busy in the kitchen, trying out some new recipes that might be good contenders when the purse strings are tightened.

That’s exactly what today’s recipe is.  Poor Man’s Steak caught my attention because it was a different way to prepare ground meat.  I can’t tell you the number of times in the past where we’ve made it through a few rough weeks on ground meat.  On sale sometimes I can find ground turkey for 99 cents a pound, and ground beef is about twice that. When you’re on a budget and need some protein, it’s hard to beat that price! So we go through the gamut of chili, pasta, meatballs and meatloaf, hamburger stew and burgers if we’re feeling particularly decadent.  This poor man’s steak seemed like it would be a lot like meatballs in flavor and texture, but the process was different with an overnight rest to blend the flavors, and then you cut it into pieces, brown those, and then bake them slowly doused in a mushroom sauce.  Despite the many steps, this was really easy to put together, although you need to begin working on it the day before you want to eat it.

I did manage to remember that I was making this the day before and combined and patted the meat down before an overnight rest.  Then late the next afternoon I began browning the beef in pieces while putting together the mushroom sauce that it bakes in.   I have to say a few things about the mushrooms sauce.  First of all, the recipe called for combining the mushroom sauce with water.  I did that, and thought the resulting sauce a little bland in flavor.  I would totally use beef broth when I do this again.  Secondly, I have to also tell you that as I mixed the mushroom sauce together it reminded me an awful lot of that can of cream of mushroom soup.  By all means, skip the sauce altogether and use a can of soup mixed with beef broth and call it a day if you’d like.  I think budget-wise, that would actually be the more affordable solution, since a can of cream of mushroom soup is still less than a dollar here.  Taste-wise, it would come out pretty close.  I personally like the idea of making my own sauce because then I know exactly what’s in it and I can avoid the preservatives. I would be lying though if I said I was never going to use the can of soup for this… that just seems like a great alternative to me.

I browned the meat, poured the sauce mixture over the top and then baked the whole thing at 300 degrees for an hour and a half.  It smelled great while cooking.  (And again, another alternative idea- you could easily dump this in the crock pot and give it a few hours on low and do it that way.) I boiled up some egg noodles and roasted some cauliflower to go along with this.  We all thought it was remarkably tasty- one of those dishes that is way better than you would think it could be.  Abigail and Zander both enjoyed it a lot, which makes it an easy repeat in our book.  The recipe indicates that this makes four servings, but with young children at the table, this could have easily served six.  In fact, we ate about half of it- with Andy having seconds, and I dumped the rest into the freezer for a quick meal another night.

Even better- calculating the cost of this meal comes to $7.93 for the Poor Man’s Steak (not counting salt, pepper or flour, given the small amount and at $2.99 a pound for ground beef).  $1.29 for the egg noodles and 75 cents for the cauliflower (given that we ate half this night and the other half the next night in a frittata). That bring the grand total here to $10.97, with leftovers of the meat for another entire meal, and about two servings of noodles left for another purpose. Two dinners for four peoplefor ten bucks?  Beat that KFC. (You have seen those commercials- haven’t you?) Oh- and sorry about the photo…it’s a slab of ground meat, there just was no taking a good picture.

Poor Man’s Steak