I'm getting oser to properly replicating my grandmother's Amerixan chop suey but bad habits keep me failing. I need to shed every last thing I've ever learned about "proper" cooking and embrace the simple tenents of comfort food.
- 1lb ground chuck. Round in an emergency but chuck should be the default. And it has to be quality from a butcher that grinds his own. Skip anything from a proper grocery store.
- 1/2 each yellow onion and green bell pepper. It has to be a yellow onion or maybe a chunk of Spanish in a crisis. And no fancy colors or oyher pepper variants. A green bell pepper.
- No garlic though I'll tolerate a dash of garlic powder in someone else's house to be polite.
- 28 ounces of plain stewed tomatoes. Not Italian style, no low-sodium, not no salt added, not Mexican, not whole, and certainly not diced.
- 14 punce can of tomato sauce. Plain, no fancy variant, preferably even store brand if palatable.
- One regular can of condensed tomato soup. Default to Campbell's as other brands vary too wildly to risk it.
- 1/2 pound good quality elbow macaroni. No other shapes. No fancy bronze die extruded pasta but not bottom rund garbage, either. The texture of both finished pasta and sauce are at stake and tgis is critical
- Salt. Table or kosher (if you like to burn money for no reason), iodized or not. I use non iodized table salt because no reason whatsoever.
Heat a cast iron skillet and add the coarsely chopped onion and bell pepper with the hamburg and corasely break up the beef as it stews. Sprinkle with enough salt. Yes, the skillet is overloaded. No, the meat will not brown. No, the onions and peppers will not be priperly softened by the time the meat has simmered to gery, tender doneness. Brinwed beef is wrong, soft veggied are sloppy goop and ruin the sauce. They should retain some resistance. Drain the fat if the chuck is particularly over-the-top or leave it if a reasonable amount. In with the stewed tomatoes and break the up very roughly with a wooden spoon. Chunks should range in size from fine about average diced tomatoes to half a slice. This will help finish breking up the hamburg at the proper texture. In with the tomato soup and tomato sauce. Mix until just starting to simmer and kill the burner. The sauce will be warm, not hot.
As all this happens, cook the macaroni about a minute past al dente in salted water, drain, and rince until chilled by the water. This is crucial for the sauce and pasta both. Any heat left in the macaroni will overcook it. Any dtarch left on it will overthicken the sauce.
Mix the cold, still wet macaroni into the sauce if room or in another room temperature dish.
Serve soupy on a plate, not a bowl or you bring shame upon your family. And now for the most important part of thw meal: split-top wheat sandwich bread and margarine. Butter is the wrong consistency and destroys yhe bread in the winter. It also costs too much for a depression-born cook's kitchen. White sandwich bread is too bland and lacks body to hold up to the soupy dish. Whole grain bread is too dry and the wrong texture.
Table Service: Salt and black pepper at the table. LOTS of black pepper to balance the sweetness of the tomato soup concentrate. The plate should look like it was hit by a black blizzard.
Properly cook the pasta? Ruined. Thicken the sauce? It will be dry garbage and leftovers are the stuff of nightmares. Leave the macaroni unrinsed? Ruin the sauce with overthickening and imbalance. Any other aromatic veg? Gilding the lilly and ruining a surprisingly comforting natural balance. Other herbs and spices? Save it for proper wop-chow, this is food desert Americana. Tomato paste in place of soup? That is a mortal sin and your family should immediately disown you on top of both the flavor and texture being totally wrong. Pre-seasoned tinned tomato products? Ruin the flavor profile if in the tomato sauce, bring out too much sweetness if in the stewed tomatoes, taste like garbage if the soup concentrate.
It all sounds simple but consitently turning out a soupy plate just right and doing it consistently takes practice. And letting a "proper" technique or top shelf ingredient pick slip in via habit will result in a swing and a miss. Let hot pasta and/or hot sauce meet and get overly thick goop. The whole thing was a nation-wide comfort food precisely because it properly combined the correct mid-grade ingrediemts with the correct harried housewife techniques to result in a unique and delicious warm plate of comfort.
And you probably don't own a skillet big enough to double the recipe. I just barely do with an ancient lumber camp monster but it's best to make multiple batches for a large family service. By the way, plan on serving an entire loaf of sandwich bread with even a single batch. I've never seen someone eat fewer than two slices, on for a white trash pasta taco and another to sop the plate.
For drink pairings, some cola, milk, water, or a very cheap table wine either a bit dry and tannic of just barely sweet.
For bonus points buy the increasingly rare white margarine with coloring packet and have a kid mix it up.
What did I screw up, this time? Italian style stewed tomatoes pulled from the pantry and already in before I noticed. I'll nail it, next time.
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Originally Posted by SCCY Marshal
