This month I took advantage of my authority as the Bibliotheca Boss to choose two winners of our periodic theme poll: the somber Farewell, and the silly Soup. Oh, some imaginary reader interjects, but Kelp. Soup is serious business. I’m sure it can be, but I somehow doubt that’s what frillSquid had in mind when it was proposed.
Anyways.
Surprising no one, I decided to go with the literal option. I’ve mentioned in the past that one of the likely more successful savory gelatin recipes I’ve encountered in my vintage Jell-o cookbooks is Jellied Gazpacho.
The New Joys of Jell-o, page 76
Part of the reason I feel this way is that my main aversion to a lot of the recipes is the temperature. Why eat a cold mold of something better enjoyed steaming hot? Starting with a traditionally chilled soup negates this issue.
Why I’m Not Just Making Jellied Gazpacho
Well! Amongst my various chronic conditions is acid reflux. Would that I had the esophageal mucus to handle a heavily tomato-based soup, but alas. Nightshades are strictly limited for this blogger.
Speaking of tomato soup, I recently came across a bizarre bread recipe when combing through the archive of the Wisconsin Power Company’s (Christmas) Cooky/ie Books which involved a heck of a lot of soup.
Will you solve the mystery? Cuz I sure won’t
I asked my mother if she ever heard of such a thing, and she said yes, but not to the ratio specified. Usually when I spot unusual recipes like this, I usually can take a good look at the ingredients and gauge “Yeah, this should taste okay” or “This seems doomed”. But occasionally, as was the case with Halloween Squares, I really don’t know. I just don’t have any data points for comparison, which maybe is damning enough?
I remain quite curious about what this would end up as, but even if I were to reduce the yield significantly, I can’t bake this casually to find out.
So What Did You Make, Then
The Cooky Book came up because it was part of a little cookbook show-and-tell I did on my Streamiversary semi-recently. I also busted out the massive omnibus of Best Recipes (from the backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars)
I have a few cookbooks with the same idea as this one, but none as large and in charge. And what is a common ingredient with these sort of recipes? Condensed soup! Surely I can find something interesting in here, right?
Well. The first obstacle is that the index lists recipes by category and name, but not by name brands. So my hope to find a convenient list of all Condensed Soup-Using Recipes was quickly dashed. While I had the index open, I went ahead and browsed all the recipes that resulted in Soup, to perhaps take that approach instead. And while I found some interesting ones, nothing really grabbed me. For savory recipes especially, I want something that can serve as supper – Soup for my Family, as it were. So I prepared myself for a manual search, starting with the massive Main Dishes category.
The author of this particular book makes a constant note of mentioning their Texan background, so there’s a disproportionately large amount of Tex Mex type dishes here. Not that that’s a bad thing, but again. Acid reflux.
Luckily, it didn’t take too long before I ran into a number of dishes using good ol’ Campbell’s Condensed Soup, as I had originally envisioned. The first one that caught my eye was for Salisbury Steak – some of you may know I am a huge fan of the Japanese version ハンバーグステーキHamburg(er) Steak, so this was right up my alley. However, it called for Condensed Onion Soup, and while I was able to confirm the contemporary existence of a Condensed French Onion Soup, I was doubtful whether I would be able to actually find such a thing stocked in my local grocery store.
Good news, everybody!
Since we ended up with a double theme, however, I had already decided that as long as I could find the requisite ingredients, I would do double dishes. A few pages over there was various variations of meatloaf, billed as the first “dump a can of condensed soup in it” recipe promoted by Campbell’s back in 1916.
One of these variations was effectively “Swedish Meatloaf”, and knowing that’s a favorite of my family’s, I marked it for my second go-round of my probably overly ambition soup sojourn.
Totally Not Meatloaf
The first thing I did was fog my brain trying to reduce the yield for the Salisbury Steak recipe. At first I wasn’t too worried – the original recipe makes six patties, so I had the option of reducing it by half or thirds. The original recipe also calls for one (1) egg.
That wasn’t what tripped me up in the end though. You use a full can of condensed soup, but you divide it between the ground meat mix and the gravy base, and because I was only using half a can of soup due to halving the recipe…you see where this is going. Anyways. I had to jankily drain my definitely too wet patties a bit to compensate.
Halving the recipe plus my soup slip-up …plus me using a larger pan than I should have, also meant I was a bit worried about my gravy yield, so I added a little water to compensate…and a little was too much. I’ll just leave the lid off and cook it down! It’s fine. Everything’s fine.
To the tune of ‘My spoon is Too Big’, except it’s my pan
And it was, in fact, just fine, thanks to the magic of cooking. The condensed (French) onion soup was such a good substitute for, you know, caramelizing onions from scratch, that I’m surprised I haven’t run across it before as a time-saver. I guess because using condensed soups is out of vogue? Anyways, not only can I recommend this recipe, I look forward to making it again.
Recipe
1 10.5 oz can condensed French Onion soup
1½ lbs ground beef
½ cup dry bread crumbs*
1 egg, beaten
¼ tsp salt
*I use panko and soy sauce, respectively
1 tbsp flour
¼ cup ketchup
¼ cup water
1 tsp Worcester sauce*
½ tsp mustard
Pepper
- Thoroughly mix ⅓ cup condensed soup with ground beef, bread crumbs, beaten egg, salt, and pepper.
- Shape into 6 oval patties. Brown in skillet, pouring off fat (or don’t – depends on your mix and your preference).
- Combine remaining soup with flour. Mix in ketchup, Worcester sauce, and mustard.
- Add to skillet and cover, cooking for roughly 20 minutes over low heat or until well-done.
Okay This One is Meatloaf
Many weeks later, I finally had the chance to finish up my soup-ventures and make the Swedish Meat Loaf. Between my family’s multiple Thanksgiving dinners (my dad was testing out a new turkey prep method), traveling for Ursa Major, and general Santa Day Disarray, kitchen logistics just weren’t in my favor.
It probably won’t surprise you to hear I messed up making this recipe too, due partly in part to…you guessed it, halving it. Except this time, I was so focused on not repeating my soup portioning predicament I forgot to add the nutmeg to the meat mix. Whoops. (It did make it into the sour cream topping, though.) In all fairness to myself, the recipe could have used a re-write, as it was one of those “Follow the recipe above, except do X, Y, and Z, and don’t do steps A and B”.
Anyways, this one turned out okay. I get what they were going for – my version turned out a little bland, as in addition to the aforementioned missing nutmeg, I also omitted the added salt, thinking the soup’s sodium content was substantial enough, and omitted the onions. But even had I made it properly, I don’t think it could have beat out the Salisbury Steak. My resident non-acid reflux sufferer taste tester agrees that “cooking [ground beef] in a pan makes a real difference”.
kelp 