Chamita Meatballs: or, You can't hide economization with potatoes

Autumn is officially here! Even though the nighttime temperature has barely dipped to 70 degrees (that's 21 degrees for our Celsius friends), people are determinedly going through all the rites of the season. This includes lighting their fireplaces, overworked air conditioning be damned. The whole neighborhood has that faint smell of woodsmoke that permeates the air when the frost really sets in. Of course, we at A Book of Cookrye aren't so cavalier about running up the electricity bill as to light a fire when our jackets are still in the closet from last winter. But we are letting ourselves get a little bit more carefree with the oven. 

It feels almost strange to turn on the oven in the midafternoon, but the lower temperatures allow us to do so without destroying the air conditioning or breaking the entire Texas power grid. Also, I don't need to fret so much when I find myself baking meatballs for an entire hour while the sun is out.

Chamita Meatballs ¼ cup milk 1 onion, finely chopped 1¼ teaspoons salt ½ teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon chili powder 1½ cups grated raw potatoes (no need to peel them) 1½ pounds ground beef ¼ cup shortening Place milk, onion, and seasonings into a large mixing bowl. Grate and add the potato. (You want to wait until you've got everything else in the bowl and ready before grating the potato, because shredded spud does not like to sit out in the open air.) Add the meat, mix well, and form into small balls. Put the shortening in the skillet and brown the meatballs. Cover and steam one hour. They may be steamed with spaghetti and tomato sauce. If desired, you can bake them instead (it's a lot easier). Place meatballs into a 9"x13" pan coated with cooking spray. (Don't bother to brown them first.) Cover tightly with foil and bake at 350° for 1 hour. Keep the foil on after removing them from the oven, and allow to rest for 5 minutes before uncovering and serving. Source: A program for a cooking school hosted by Mrs. George O. Thurn, sponsored by the Salina [Kansas] Journal, circa 1940-1941, via Yesterdish

Today, we are once again hearing from Mrs. George O. Thurn! But this time, we're not making a recipe from her book. For those who don't recall, a friend stopped at an antique store when taking a road trip and got me "the most ancient cookbook" (those were the exact words) on a rack of cheap ones. 

I had never heard of Mrs. George O. Thurn before getting her book. So naturally, I looked for whatever traces of her career were floating around the internet. There's not a lot, but I did find a handout from a cooking class she did in Kansas about six years after my book was printed. The person who posted it dates it from 1940-1941, because we see the World War II "Pledge of Health" but we haven't yet started rationing.

Conveniently, today's recipe is right next to her portrait. Source: Yesterdish

1940 must have been a rotten year (aside from the diversion of a music-hall cooking class). The news was full of the war brewing in Europe in a time when many people still were still on postcard terms with relatives "in the old country." Meanwhile, the Depression was still ruining everyone's lives. 

Even though no one was doing any wartime rationing yet, these meatballs are half beef and half economization by volume. Mrs. George Thurn's meat-stretching may prove timely again today, given how beef prices have shot through the stratosphere.

I had to ask: what is a "Chamita?" When I looked up the word, I only found a tiny town in New Mexico. Perhaps the recipe comes from the town of Chamita. Or, western/southwestern recipe names may have been code for "this is cheap," in the same way that the word "Hawaiian" means "contains canned pineapple." In other words, these meatballs might be as Chamita-related as Mrs. Wilson's economical sausages are Chinookan.

Depression-era budget concerns aside, potatoes seemed better than breadcrumbs or other fillers that go into a lot of meatballs. "Meat and potatoes" is a cliche for a reason.

I was going to cook these exactly as the recipe directs: browning them in a frying pan and then steaming. But these were the mushiest meatballs I have ever made. Any attempt to push them around a frying pan would have led to squishing them into the beginnings of Chamita chili (which is an unexpectedly catchy name). Apparently, the economizing (barely-)prewar housewife had to be very skilled with a spatula if she wanted meatballs.

In an act of self-kindness, I decided skip the frying pan and go right to steaming. Our rice cooker came with a steamer basket, which seemed perfect until I saw how many meatballs the recipe made. Keep in mind that since we only had one pound of beef in the freezer, I reduced the recipe by a third. Clearly, Mrs. George O. Thurn did not endorse wasting kitchen heat on tiny batches.

Cooking these for one hour (as specified in the recipe) seemed excessive. Perhaps this ensures that we don't have any raw potato in our beef?

Speaking of spuds, I didn't want to waste the potato after grating half of it into the meatballs. But as we all know, potatoes have absolutely no shelf life after cutting them. So, to economize on time and get the most use out of the oven heat, I plonked the half-spud onto the oven rack next to the pans of meat. It wasn't nearly as good as when we baked potatoes in an extra-hot oven for nearly two hours, but the weather isn't cold enough for that yet.

After baking, I peeled back the foil and unveiled... um... this.

Back when we made porcupine meatballs, I knew the raw rice would expand into bristly protrusions (as if the name doesn't give it away). But potatoes tend to stay the same size when you cook them. I therefore had thought these meatballs would look normal.

Perhaps the potato shreds didn't expand, but the meat shrank away from them as the fat rendered off. After all, we had a lot of melted fat in the pan by the time these were done. I saved it for future use in frying pans. (We don't throw away seasoned beef fat.)

Something tells me I should have served these with gravy.

The meatballs were unbelievably soft and moist. I almost thought they weren't fully cooked until I remembered that they baked for a full hour. 

They taste like a really good meatloaf. Unexpectedly, you can barely taste the potatoes. They certainly add, um, visual interest to the meatballs, but they don't alter the flavor at all. So while the hourlong baking time gives me pause during most of the year, I won't mind making these again as the nights get chilly.