Savory Stew: It lives up to the name!

A surprising amount of recipes from the Depression have proven good enough to keep in the kitchen.

Savory Stew 3 tbsp bacon fat 3 tbsp chopped celery 2 tbsp chopped onion ½ cup chopped carrots ½ cup cooked rice* ½ cup peas, fresh or frozen 1 can (16 oz, or the nearest size to it) diced tomatoes, undrained ⅔ tsp salt (or to taste) Chili powder and other seasonings to taste Melt bacon fat in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add celery and onion. Cook over medium heat until they are browned. (If you don't have a heavy-bottomed saucepan, do this in a small frying pan. Then tip everything into a saucepan.) While the celery and onion are cooking, place the carrots in a microwave-safe container with a spoonful of water. Set the lid loosely on the container. Microwave the carrots 45 seconds at a time until they are fork-tender. When the celery and onions are ready, add the carrots and all remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Place a lid on the pot and let simmer undisturbed for 20 minutes. Add remaining ingredients, and bring to a boil. If desired, sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese on top when serving. *If you don't have leftover rice, use 8 teaspoons of raw white rice and ⅓ cup water. There's no need to change the recipe directions. Just add them to the pot with everything else. Adapted from "Helping the Homemaker," Fort Worth [Texas] Star-Telegram morning edition, October 28 1933, page 5

"Helping the Homemaker," Fort Worth [Texas] Star-Telegram morning edition, October 28 1933, page 5

Actually, that image came out just a little too blurry to read some of the numbers in the ingredient list. And so, I went to the local library. Through the magic of library database access, I found the recipe in a different newspaper. (As we previously discovered, "Helping the Homemaker" was a syndicated column.) This scan is also blurry, but it's nevertheless easier to read the ingredient amounts.

Abilene [Texas] Daily Reporter, October 27 1933, page 7

Since we went to the library for today's recipe, this is the perfect time for a word from the author of Coraline, American Gods, the Sandman comics, Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett), and other works that have become popular Netflix series:

Let's get back to savory stew. The first thing I noticed: This recipe doesn't make a lot of it. These days, most people I know make soup in large quantities, even if they live alone. But we should keep in mind that in 1933, relatively few people had a refrigerator to put a vat of soup in. Although people cooked food ahead of time in those days, the available appliances at the time didn't allow for "meal prep" as we know it. 

It's true that you could buy an electric refrigerator in 1933. But if you had the money for one, you were probably so wealthy that you could hire servants and never personally enter the kitchen. Many people in the 1930s had iceboxes, which were more affordable but weren't exactly suited for loading with planned leftovers. Given these limitations, our friends at "Helping the Homemaker" were a bit more helpful to the home cooks of 1933 than it may seem to our 21st-century eyes.

This recipe has us cooking the onions and celery in bacon grease. Because the last few years have inspired some Depression-grade cooking habits in our own kitchen, we actually had bacon grease on hand. In addition to saving beef fat, I have been carefully pouring bacon grease into little containers and putting them in the refrigerator for quite some time. It was nice to live in the pre-pandemic times when I could carelessly throw all that fat away. But while things have been on heading downhill for a while now, at least I have discovered that onions cooked in bacon fat are delicious.

This recipe doesn't use a lot of onions or celery. But it uses a lot of bacon fat. I wasn't planning on deep-frying our chopped onions, but "Helping the Homemaker" had other ideas.

The recipe directs us to "brown celery and onions." I left the pan to mind its own spattery business while I got the rest of supper into the oven. That may have been a mistake, because I accidentally let the onions go past browned and right into taco-platter territory.

To round out the ingredients, "Helping the Homemaker" calls for a smattering of cooked vegetables and a little cooked rice. But as much as I love trying the foods of other times, I did not want to thoroughly cook the vegetables and then put them into a pot to slowly boil for another twenty minutes. We already know what happens to vegetables that get boiled for almost an hour. We also already know that Helping the Homemaker's recipes sometimes had good ingredients listed above bad instructions.

The ingredient list may say that all the vegetables should be cooked before beginning the recipe, but don't think "Helping the Homemaker" meant for us to get out multiple small pots and separately cook all these vegetables before putting them into the stewpot. Instead, I think we're meant to put a smattering of leftover vegetables into the pot, and also add the extra rice that no one ate last night.

I didn't have any leftover vegetables sitting in the refrigerator, so I went with the fresh or frozen ones instead. Because I'm convinced that this recipe is meant for leftovers, I figured that the vegetables would have been seasoned when I first served them. And so, I figured a generous shake of chili powder would not go amiss. 

I also didn't have leftover cooked rice, so I added enough raw rice and water to theoretically add up to the correct amount after the stew was ready. It occurred to me that perhaps cooking leftover rice for another 20 minutes (as directed in the original recipe) might be intended to soften the rice until it breaks down and thickens the whole stew instead of merely floating in it. But then I figured that this wasn't a recipe worth getting pedantic over.

I briefly considered that 20 minutes might be too long a cooking time for the peas. If I was really obsessed with having every ingredient in its finest state, I might have waited until the stew was nearly done to add them. Then I decided that I wasn't in the mood to put excessive effort into this recipe. And so, I dumped everything in the pot all at once, clapped on the lid, and called it done.

Assuming one has the leftover vegetables on hand, "Helping the Homemaker" really lives up to its name with this recipe. After browning a little bit of celery and onion (the small amounts used in the recipe mean you can frugally save the rest of the onion for another day), you just put your leftover vegetables into a pot, add a can of tomatoes, and let it all sit on a hot stove for a while. Personally, I would only let the pot simmer for a few minutes if the vegetables were already cooked, rather than the full twenty minutes that the recipe demands.

For such a simple recipe, this was unexpectedly satisfying. Unfortunately, the carrots weren't quite done, but that is my fault and not the recipe's. The ingredients clearly specified "½ cup cooked carrots," and I arrogantly thought I knew better than the recipe professionals. (I corrected my mistake when writing out the recipe directions.) 

In serving this, I added something that may have been an extravagance in this recipe was first printed: shredded cheese.

I liked this stew. But unlike a lot of stew recipes, this isn't really a complete meal in a pot. It's more of a side dish. However, it's a really good side dish. The flavor reminded me of Uncle Joe's Minestrone, which we got out of that Italian cookbook and still make on a semi-regular basis. Given the very similar ingredient lists, the resemblance shouldn't be a surprise. 

In short, we at A Book of Cookrye recommend this recipe. Like most things we've made from "Helping the Homemaker," it is easy, cheap, low-effort, and a lot better than the starting ingredients suggest.