Monday, February 18, 2008

Random Recipe Monday - Sweet-Sour Beef

Vintage recipes are the food equivalent of playing Russian Roulette. You just never know if a vintage recipe is going to hold up to modern cooking. There are lots of reasons why a recipe might not wow a modern cook. Oven temperatures, type of product used, and just changing tastes. I tend to try vintage recipes when nothing is at stake - no party, no company, just an average day when I feel like taking chances. So, do you feel lucky? Well, here's a 1957 recipe - untried by me - but recommended to the readers of Household magazine. Who knows, it might be a culinary gem. If nothing else, it's a way to use up leftover beef and to prep something for a quick weeknight dinner.

2 cups cubed cold roast beef
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 cup vinegar
1 1/2 cups hot water
1 package dry onion soup
hot fluffy rice

Brown beef cubes with butter in skillet. Stir in flour. Combine remaining ingredients, except rice, and add to meat mixture. Simmer for 20 minutes. Cool. Put in freezer container, wrap and freeze. Reheat and serve over hot, fluffy rice. Makes 6 servings.

3 comments:

Speck said...

OK, you had me going there for a while with the excited rice thing. I read and re-read the instructions and decided I did not know how to excite rice. I surmised it was something akin to blanching vegetables prior to freezing. And since this was a vintage recipe, it was something cooks routinely did back in 1957. I finally figured it out.

What is purpose of freezing this dish prior to serving? Why not serve it hot right after preparation? That one still has me stumped.

This sounds pretty yummy to me. I'm gonna give it a try. Thanks.

rosemary said...

I'm just glad you didn't post a dessert! The last two dessert posts ended up with me eating two whole coffee cakes all by myself!

Kimberly Ann said...

Hi Speck - sorry about the "excite" typo. I've corrected it to read "except rice". I think the freezing thing is if you wanted to prep the meal for later in the week or something. I wouldn't freeze it either.

Rosemary: I know, I'm all about sweets. Gotta cut down my sugar intake.