At yet another estate sale, I picked up a copy of The All American Crockery Cook Pot Cook Book for 10 cents. Apparently an early rival to, well, Rival, in the crockpot market, The All American Crockery Cook Pot apparently went by the wayside during the brutal crock pot wars of the 1970s. Their little 29 page pamphlet of recipes lives on, though, because I know at least one other person in the universe using it as a reference (here on cdkitchen.com):
http://cooking.cdkitchen.com/TheSavvySlowCooker/318.html
Anyway, the first recipe in the book is this:
Beef 'N Beans Casserole
1 1/2 lbs browned ground beef
salt, pepper, garlic salt to taste
1 ea 10 1/2 oz can chili beef soup
1 ea small jar black olives, sliced (optional)
1 ea No 2 can corn, well drained
1 ea small can kidney beans
1 ea one pound can tomatoes, drained
1 ea green pepper, chopped fine
1 ea medium onion, coarsely chopped
2-3 tbs chili powder
1/2 cup water
1 ea small can tomato sauce
Directions - in bottom of Cook-pot, place onions first, then peppers, tomatoes, then corn. Add lightly browned meat. Mix tomato sauce, water, and soup together and pour over meat. Cover, stir occasionally. Serve over noodles. Cook time 6-8 hours (low); 2-4 hours (high).
I used two pounds of browned pork rather than beef because, well, it happened to be in the house. Just as tasty, if a little more bland than ground beef. The gamier the meat, the more it will have aroma and taste. I wasn't unable to find a 10 1/2 oz can of condensed chili beef soup (I'm assuming Campbell's, but perhaps no longer in production) at the local Hyvee (and I'm assuming it called for condensed soup, as all of the other recipes in the book use condensed), so I had to substitute a 17 oz non-condensed Campbell's chili beef soup can instead. I used chili beans rather than kidney beans because, again, it happened to be lying around the pantry. I assumed the small jar of black olives would be the 4 to 4 1/2 oz size (which seemed reasonable), so that's what I used. A "No 2" can of corn is 20 oz, so I used about that amount.
In short, this was a good "clean out the pantry" recipe, as it calls for stuff that's usually in the kitchen somewhere, and no obscure ingredients (except for the condensed chili beef soup, but you can sub that as well). You can substitute a lot in it, and add or hold off on spices to moderate the spiciness level, as well as increasing the volume. You can also add frozen lima beans, or can of cut green beans, as a filler. I ended up using a 5 quart crock pot for this, as I'm not sure how you would have gotten it all to fit in a standard 4 quart). It also fills the house with that great stewy smell, which is so incredibly comforting on a cold autumn or winter day. Finally, I just couldn't see serving this over noodles (a rather 70s thing), so I served it either over rice, or by itself as a thick soup.
A great hit, especially with hungry teenagers. It disappeared pretty fast.
OK - now for the cringe-inducing stuff. The mini-cookbook/pamphlet, while a treasure trove of some, frankly, pretty awesome crock pot recipes, does give one room for pause. First, on the cover, the company is hyped as "Made in America by Americans for all the World" (a bit verbose, methinks). Frankly, that seemed a little extreme. I'm assuming the alternative was "Made in America by Illegal Aliens from South and Central America..." - but, hey, probably not as good an ad slogan. But, let's face it, if you're going to hype the whole "Made in America by Americans" bit, it would help if you didn't MISSPELL A WORD on the COVER of the book. At the top of the cover, it clearly states "It dosen't need watching".
Really. No kidding.
Grandinetti Products of Lynwood, California is, apparently, no longer around. Probably some much the worse for American manufacturers. Probably so much the better for America's English majors.
No comments:
Post a Comment