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.

Stuffed Potato Surprise: or, Are you plagued with leftover ham?

Autumn is upon us! Inflatable ghosts and witches have sprouted in many people's yards. The supermarkets are replacing the beach balls and picnic sets with pumpkins and plastic skeletons. Large hams are once again migrating into the meat section. For those who will soon struggle with the problem of leftover ham crowding out the drinks in your refrigerator, Helping the Homemaker is here for you!

Stuffed Potato Surprise 4 baked potatoes* 2 tbsp cream ¼ tsp paprika ¼ tsp onion salt ¼ tsp celery salt ½ cup chopped cooked ham 2 tbsp butter Heat oven to 375°. Cut potatoes in half lengthwise. Scoop out centers while still hot, and mash. Stir in rest of ingredients and beat until fluffy. Scoop this mixture back into the potato cases. Bake 10 minutes. *Even if you usually don't like microwaving your potatoes, it's fine for this recipe. They will get crisp after baking them again. "Helping the Homemaker;" Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram; October 17, 1934; page 5

Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram; October 17, 1934; page 5

Based on old refrigerator ads, leftover hams used to be quite the problem in earlier decades. Those of us who only purchase a ham for various large holidays will never know the struggle of earlier homemakers, who had to figure out how to get their grousing husbands and whining children to eat the rest of the extra-large ham that took up an entire shelf in the refrigerator. (As a reminder, most 1930s "family size" refrigerators and iceboxes were the size of the mini-fridges that college students put in their dorm rooms today. People did not have the space to casually let leftovers sit for a week.)

Getting to today's recipe, I like to make twice-baked potatoes as a way to stretch meat. However, I tend to be a little more extravagant than Helping the Homemaker, adding such expenses as chopped green onions and bell peppers. But even with such wanton grocery spending as fresh produce, twice-baked potatoes let you get four or even six economical servings out of a single pound of beef.  Helping the Homemaker is using the same method to make a single slice of ham serve four people.

 

I have to credit Helping the Homemaker for writing such an easy recipe. After scooping out the insides of the potatoes, we were halfway done. Also, the paltry amount of things in the mixing bowl is a harsh reminder that there was a depression on. We don't even have fresh onions-- just onion salt.

The quarter-teaspoon of paprika in this recipe is doing a lot of the work in making these potatoes look like we loaded them with rich ingredients. You would almost think I mixed in so much ham that the spuds can barely hold themselves together.

You will note that for one of the potatoes, I went off-recipe and added cheese on top. We all know that ham and cheese go together like pumpkin-spice and lattes. But because cheese may have been too expensive for the economizing household of 1934, I left it off the other spud. After all, it's silly to make big changes to a recipe without first trying it as written (unless you're omitting the walnuts from brownies, of course).

The cheese-topped potato had a certain "institutional cafeteria" pallor to it after baking, but a minute or two under the broiler would have solved that had I the patience.

I don't think I need to tell you that these were really good. It's hard to argue with ham and potatoes. Also, you can slap these together really quickly. They make a good hot lunch on a chilly day (when we get around to having those), and are also a nice light supper for when the rest of the day was full of rich, heavy foods.

I do love when the good recipes are also the easy ones. This one may seem too simple to be worth writing down, much less putting in the newspaper. But I had never thought to put ham into twice-baked potatoes before. As the season of leftover ham approaches, spuds are a great way to serve it.

Meatball-Mushroom Pie: or, Some things are too good to care how they look

I can't argue with a single thing that goes in this recipe.

Meatball-Mushroom Pie 1 pound ground beef (as lean as possible) ½ teaspoon salt Black pepper to taste 2-4 tbsp cooking oil 1 medium onion, diced 6 tablespoons flour 1 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced up to 3 cups cold water Salt and pepper Biscuit dough (recipe follows) Heat oven to 325°. Make the biscuit dough. Cover it to prevent it drying out (setting a dinner plate on top of the mixing bowl will be good enough), and set it aside. Mix beef with salt and pepper. Form it into small balls. Heat oil in a frying pan (or ovenproof skillet) over medium-high heat. Add the meatballs and toss around in the frying pan until lightly browned and partially cooked. You may need to brown the meatballs into multiple batches. Remove the meatballs from the pan. Add the mushrooms and onion. Season with salt and pepper to taste and cook until done, about ten minutes. Stir in the flour, quickly beating out any lumps. Then gradually add the water until you have a thick gravy (you may not use it all). Taste it, and add more salt and pepper if needed. Remove most of the gravy to a small saucepan, leaving enough to generously coat the mushrooms and onions. This is easier if you pour it by the ladle-full through a strainer or slotted spoon, and then tip whatever it catches back into the frying pan. Return the meatballs to the frying pan and stir well. Add more gravy if needed. If your frying pan is not oven-safe, pour its contents into a baking dish which you have coated with cooking spray. Roll the biscuit dough out to fit the pan. Lay it over the pie. Cut some holes for venting. Bake about 40 minutes, or until golden on top.     Biscuits 1½ cups flour 1 tbsp sugar 2 tsp baking powder ½ tsp salt ¼ cup shortening (or beef fat) ⅓ cup milk 1 egg Mix the dry ingredients together. Cut in the beef fat (or shortening) like a pie crust. Add the milk and egg. Knead 12 times. Set aside until the pie is ready for it. To make biscuits (instead of using the dough as the top crust for this pie), heat oven to 425°. Roll the dough out until it's a half-inch thick. Cut into circles of desired size, and lay on a greased baking sheet. Brush the tops with milk. Bake 10-15 minutes, or until golden. Mrs. J M Donahue; 7049 Greenwood Avenue, Stonehurst Hills, Delaware County, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Inquirer Recipe Exchange; January 10, 1936; page 11 Biscuit dough adapted from Pillsbury's Meat Cook Book, 1970 via Mid-Century Menu on the Wayback Machine

Philadelphia Inquirer Recipe Exchange; January 10, 1936; page 11

It's hardly news that nowadays, beef is a priced like a premeditated splurge instead of something you toss into the grocery cart next to the frozen spinach and the Windex. When I flip through older cookbooks (which I sometimes read instead of novels), I am amazed at how much beef people used to put into their food every day.

With that in mind, I saw these magazines at an antique store recently.

I am tempted to say that the magazine cover proves prove that some things never change. But I did some research (by which I mean I talked to my parents) and learned that apparently beef was very cheap until the prices shot up in the 1970s. (Note that the magazine is dated April 1972, just in time for the beginning of grilling season.) My mother said that before then, they used to grill T-bone steaks as casually as I grill pork chops.

So if we were making today's recipe when it was first printed, it would have been a lot more economical than it is now. And so, let's get to our starring ingredient!

This is the reason I haven't made this recipe before.

The recipe says to form the meat "into small balls." With that in mind, I decided to scoop out the meat by the tablespoon. In short order, we had a plate of salted and peppered balls of extravagance.

Because we at A Book of Cookrye are always economizing, I did not put our meatballs into a pan coated with cooking oil. Instead, I cooked them in beef fat. As I have mentioned, the rising price of beef has led me to obsessively save everything I drain from the frying pan. The beef fat in today's recipe represented 20% of the purchase price, and I refuse to send grocery money to the city dump. (Also, it turns out we're nearly out of oil.)

Cheapskatery aside, beef fat seems more period-correct than oil. Yes, cooking oil existed back then. But based on the recipes I've seen, people didn't start their dinners with a splash of oil in a hot frying pan until well after the Depression was over. Maybe people in those days also obsessively saved every cent of grocery money that they drained out of various meat-laden skillets.

Having melted the fat, Mrs. Donahue tells us to "lightly brown" the meatballs. Here I should note that I never make meatballs on the stovetop, instead favoring the more foolproof method of putting them in the oven to mind their own business. This picture shows why.

Pushing meatballs around a frying pan is a skill, and I do not have it. Fortunately, I didn't have to completely cook them at this stage. (I'm assuming "lightly browned" means halfway cooked.) 

Having made an embarrassment of the beef, it was time to remove it from the pan and fail to convince myself that things would get better before the end of the recipe.

 

The plate of half-cooked, malformed meatballs would prove the aesthetic low point of this endeavor. But although things got better from here onward, the pie never turned into a visual masterpiece. 

In case you forgot there was a Depression on when this recipe came out, Mrs. Donahue uses a mountain of mushrooms and onions to stretch a single pound of beef into dinner for five. Granted, her recipe calls for canned mushrooms instead of fresh. But I added about the same amount of mushrooms by weight.

I thought the skillet might prove inadequate, but the mushrooms shrank as they cooked. After a few minutes, I dared to hope that the meatballs might actually fit in the pan. 

At this point, Mrs. Donahue's directions got a bit confusing. The part where we add flour and then water to make a gravy was straightforward enough. But one sentence after telling us to make a gravy with the mushrooms in the pan, she seems to tell us to skim off the excess gravy and then return the mushrooms to the pan. 

I had to reread the recipe several times before I realized I'm supposed to transfer everything from the frying pan to a baking dish. In theory, I'd scoop everything out with a slotted spoon, and then add just enough of the gravy to hold all together. The remaining gravy should stay in the frying pan until serving time, at which point everyone gets to spoon it over their pie.

However, we at A Book of Cookrye really like a single-pan recipe, so Mrs. Donahue's instructions got tactfully ignored.

After adding the flour to everything in the pan, our mushrooms and onions got a lot less photogenic. I'm not very good at flour-lump prevention. But even a perfectly smooth gravy wouldn't have prevented this from looking like dog food.

Mrs. Donahue has us adding three cups of water (that's 7-ish deciliters for our metric friends), which seemed a bit excessive to me. I was almost certain that adding nearly a quart of water would turn our gravy into a runny failure. Therefore, I went with the well-used method of gradually adding water until everything looked right. As expected, we used a lot less than Mrs. Donahue ordered.

And so, it was finally time for our meatballs to get back into the pool.

I had to look up Mrs. Donahue's address. Did she live in the middle of Pennsylvania coal country? Because this seemed perfect for feeding hungry miners. 

Well, you probably aren't surprised to find out that a town with a well-heeled name like "Stonehurst Hills" isn't near any mines. There isn't even a local steel mill. Instead, it's only a short streetcar ride away from Philadelphia.

Don't you hate when dinner looks like someone already vomited it back up?

Mrs. Donahue says to cover the pie with a "rich biscuit dough," but doesn't give a recipe for that. To be fair, this pie came from the newspaper. Printing a biscuit recipe under the main instructions would have used up precious column-inches and crowded other people out of the Recipe Exchange. Also, anyone who hadn't skipped home economics class probably didn't need directions to make biscuits.

I used the biscuit recipe that came from the disastrous cherry-ham cobbler. In keeping with the bovine theme of the recipe, I made the biscuit dough with beef fat. We have already learned that beef fat makes better biscuits than shortening. I then tried to tell myself that the mushrooms under the beefy bread count as a serving of vegetables.

As I laid the dough over the simmering mess in the pan, I thought to myself that canned biscuits might have been an ideal way to reduce the time and bowls that this recipe demands. I then considered that perhaps twenty years after Mrs. Donahue's recipe got printed in the newspaper, she might have modernized it by using canned cream of mushroom soup and canned bread dough.

Setting aside canned foods and returning to the pie at hand, I tried to make a decorative design with the excess dough trimmings. I don't think I succeeded.

Mrs. Donahue has us baking this pie at 425° for "about 40" minutes. I didn't know whether to believe her or not. On the one hand, that seemed like we'd burn the pie. On the other hand, we had a lot of raw beef under the rich biscuit dough. 

I cautiously trusted Mrs. Donahue's baking instructions, but I set the timer to go off ten minutes early anyway. I should have returned to the kitchen earlier still. Fifteen minutes after going into the oven, the pie was offensively well-done.

I should have seen this coming. A lot of our recipes from the Recipe Exchange never quite work as written. Indeed, this isn't even the first time the Recipe Exchange gave us a ruinously high baking temperature. 

Fortunately, only the top of the pie was overcooked. The biscuit dough underneath the half-burnt crust had turned into perfect bread. And the oven didn't harm the meatballs underneath.

I rarely write about the leftovers, but I have to note that while this pie could at best be called "homely" when fresh from the oven, it looked like pig slop when transferred to a storage container.

But the pie was too delicious to care how unsightly it looked. There are some leftovers that you only eat because you know how much grocery money went into making them. This pie was so good that I put the leftovers on the bottom refrigerator shelf and pushed them all the way back so no one thought to look for them.

Because I liked the pie so much, I made it again as soon as the grocery budget permitted. This time, I did a much better job of mixing in the flour without any lumps. Practice may not make perfect, but it makes a successful mushroom mud.

Emboldened by our improvement, I decided to dump the all three cups of water that the recipe demands into the pot all at once. After all, the flour was completely and thoroughly mixed in, which meant it would theoretically have better thickening powers than it did last time. And while that may have been true, we ended up with mushrooms floating in cloudy water. Our "gravy" tasted as diluted as it looked.

On the bright side, we had enough gravy to pour on top of the pie as well as bake in it. Things were going as the recipe intended. 

Incidentally, you can tell that this recipe comes from a time when money was tight. Instead of using up more grocery money making sauce to pour on top of the pie, we are directed to take it out of the pie itself.

I added more seasonings to the, um, "gravy" to make it taste less like water with mushrooms that fell in by accident. Then I added more flour because it was barely thicker than tap water. If this isn't how the recipe's supposed to look, it's got to be pretty darn close.

Incidentally, this is the first time I've ever poured gravy onto biscuits.

This recipe is unapologetically from before the social media era. While more adept hands could have made a prettier pie than I did, Mrs. Donahue clearly didn't care if this pie was good enough for Instagram. I actually like when recipes don't care about being good enough for a Tiktok video. 

Anyway, because I hate posting recipe directions that don't work (and also because I really like this pie), I made it a few weeks later. This time, I gradually added enough water to our befloured mushrooms to make a gravy without ruining it. Since I didn't over-dilute it, the resulting gravy tasted wonderfully of all the mushrooms, beef, and onions that were in it.

I then found a near-instantaneous way of separating out the gravy that is supposed to go on top.

Despite getting the recipe right, the actual pie looks like a dog's dinner before we put a crust on top. But it smelled amazing.

As baking time arrived, I decided to try another possible recipe error. The original directions call for baking the pie at 425° for forty minutes. (For our metric friends, 425°F is a searing 220°C, and forty minutes is 24 hectoseconds.) As previously mentioned, I thought the pie needed such a long and extra-hot baking time to cook the raw beef within. But every time we made it, the pie would be nearly burnt long before forty minutes had elapsed. 

After multiple nearly-burnt pies, I thought that perhaps someone in the Philadelphia Inquirer's typesetting department had accidentally grabbed the wrong number from the type drawer when they got to the baking temperature. (It has happened before.) And so, I reduced the temperature to a more moderate 325° (160° for our Celsius friends).

Our resulting pie was golden and perfect right on schedule. And because it was in the oven for 40 minutes, we knew that the meat was completely cooked by the time it was done.

In closing, this tastes so good. It's hard to argue with beef, onions, and mushrooms, but Mrs. Donahue took a promising group of ingredients and made them even better than expected. This pie is the dinner you want to come home to. I had feared it would be underseasoned and bland, but it came out far better than it needed to. I think that putting the meatballs into the pan while half-raw allowed the mushroom juices to penetrate them as they finished cooking.

However, today's pie involved a lot more mixing bowls most single-pan meals. As another cleanup note, I baked this in a cast-iron skillet so I could do it all in one pan. Unfortunately, the errant splatters of gravy (of which there were many) welded themselves to the iron. Even though I cleaned the pan before it had time to get cold, it was as hard to wash as if I'd let it dry on the countertop for several days. So, you may want to do the stovetop part of this recipe in an ordinary, dishwasher-safe frying pan. You can then transfer the hot mushrooms and meat into a casserole dish that can soak overnight in the sink without rusting.

Chinook Sausages: or, Economical deep fried breakfast

Do the ingrates in your home demand steak three times a day with no regard for the budget? You don't need to put rat poison in the hashed mutton, Mrs. Wilson of the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger is here to help!

Chinook Sausage 2 oz dried beef, or ¾-1 cup leftover meat* 2 white or yellow onions ½ tsp powdered thyme ½ tsp black pepper 1 cup cornmeal 2 cups water Flour for coating Run the meat and onions through the food processor. Place in a saucepan. Add thyme, pepper, cornmeal, and water. Cook over medium heat until it is very thick. (It should just about hold up a spoon.) Allow to cool completely. Scoop out portions of this mixture and roll it into sausages. Roll these in flour. Fry until golden-brown. Serve hot with white or brown gravy. You can make these the night before, refrigerate them, and fry them the next day. *If using leftover meat, add 1 teaspoon salt. Note: These are very good if you stir in about ½ cup shredded provolone or mozzarella. Add the cheese as soon as you take the pot off the stove, stir until melted, and then allow to cool before shaping. Source: "Ask Mrs. Wilson," Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, 29 September 1919, page 12

Evening Public Ledger, 29 September 1919, page 12

 Today, Philadelphia's cooking columnist extraordinaire comes to the aid of a constant reader who has to take in lodgers who apparently don't appreciate the food she puts on the table. Exasperation fills "A Constant Reader's" one-paragraph plea, culminating with "These men seem to think I should have a steak three times a day, which is entirely out of the question."

Mrs. Wilson's tips are still useful today: buy foods in bulk, make good use of leftovers, cook ahead of time whenever possible, etc. She suggests serving a lot of potatoes (fair advice in any era), making pancake and cornbread batter ahead of time and refrigerating it, and tells how to easily make eight omelets at a time in the oven (while stretching your eggs with breadcrumbs).

Mrs. Wilson's domestic-science credentials really come through when she brings men's bowels into a cookery column. She directly addresses this three-steaks-a-day nonsense: "To provide eight healthy men with meat three times a day would really be doing them an injury. Eating meat constantly like this would in time lead to serious intestinal disorders."

As we noted in an earlier post, digestion and digestibility were big business in the early days of home economics. Even in this modern time when we've realized that fresh greens are good for you without boiling them to a paste, I have to agree with Mrs. Wilson's take on excess meat. I'm not necessarily worried about destroying men's digestive tracts with three steaks a day, but I don't think the bathroom fan could keep up with the aftermath.

But enough about early 20^th century domestic science (and its peculiar obsession with one's internal business). Let's get to the sausages. At the bottom of the recipe, Mrs. Wilson notes that "corned beef or other meat may be used to replace the dried beef." And so, with Mrs. Wilson's blessing, last night's dinner and a lot of onions got shoved through the meat grinder.

You may wonder where we found the means to pulverize so much meat. For various complicated economic reasons, pork has been astonishingly cheap of late. Or at least, the big roasts have been cheap. As I have speculated in earlier posts, I think a lot of people believe a 7-pound anvil of meat is a daunting project whereas the pre-sliced pork chops and ever-present boneless skinless chicken breasts seem friendlier. Regardless of whether I'm right about this or not, big pork roasts are cheap(ish) these days.

And so, following grocery the budget where it leads us, I decided we would have a "Sunday roast" every week like the people in those exported British TV shows. While there has been no objection to a weekly slab of meat, the leftovers tend to languish until I discreetly dispatch them to the municipal hereafter. Since no one was eating the extra meat anyway, it was a blank canvas of cut-price protein for me to use however I want.

Getting back to the sausages, Mrs. Wilson's recipe goes together unexpectedly fast. It's therefore perfect for someone who has eight ungrateful lodgers and a million chores to do. After a short(ish) time at the meat grinder, we could get everything into the pot and onto the stove.

You know the saying "It's going to look worse before it looks better?"

We are directed to make a meat-infused cornmeal mush after grinding our ingredients. I am fine with this, but I made a ruinous mistake with the first batch. We didn't have normal cornmeal, but we had the kind you use for tortillas. I thought it's the same thing, but more finely ground. It is not.

As a result of out ill-advised substitution, our mush never set. It thickened a little bit, but it remained too goopy to shape into sausages no matter how long I stirred it over a hot burner. Because onions are too beautiful to waste, I gamely plopped it by the spoonful onto a flour-coated plate and flattened it into patties. After letting them spend the night in the refrigerator in the hopes that they'd firm up (they didn't), I fried them the next day.

We didn't have any cooking oil. But we do have a lot of beef fat in the freezer. If you ever get nostalgic for "the old McDonald's fries," this moment may mean a lot to you.

We dropped our first Chinook patties into the hot fat, which spattered and reminded me why (aside from diet-watching) I never fry anything unless paper towels are on sale. 

 

The casual prevalence of deep frying in older recipes astounds me. It's popular to joke about how Americans can and will fry anything, but I don't know many people who do it at home unless it's a special occasion. Or at least, people don't get out a deep fryer without saying something like "I thought we'd have something really special tonight!" Apparently people in Mrs. Wilson's day would routinely put a vat of hot fat on the stove almost as routinely as we start a pot of boiling water. 

I thought our sausage patties would firm up in the hot fat the same way pancake batter turns into funnel cakes. But frying merely added a brown crust to the otherwise unchanged goo.

 Because I wanted to see if these were still good without immersing them in fat, I put one of our "sausage" patties onto a hot griddle. And... let's just say you want to deep-fry these.

After these goopy things failed to turn into sausages, I was willing to discard the entire mess and mutter that even Mrs. Wilson has dud recipes sometimes. But as aforementioned, we didn't use the right type of cornmeal in this. In the name of testing the Chinook sausages as Mrs. Wilson intended them (and also because shoving leftovers through a meat grinder is therapeutic), I obtained cornmeal and made them again.

It turns out that when you actually use the ingredients listed in a recipe, it's more likely to turn out right. After a few minutes on the stove, our cornmeal mush became thick enough to hold up a spoon. It felt like slightly gritty Play-Doh. And so, like children making clay worms, we turned it into sausages.

It looks more impressive when you have a whole plate of them.

Upon tasting the sausage mixture as it was meant to be, I thought it needed cheese. I don't mean that cheese would make the sausages better. I mean it seemed like cheese was missing. I put a big steaming spoonful of hot Chinook mush into a bowl and stirred in a handful of shredded mozzarella until it was melted. And indeed, it tasted complete. I don't think you need a lot of cheese to make this recipe taste right. It just needs that little bit of extra cheesy lift, not a Wisconsin-grade dairy infusion.

Because I didn't want to waste any beef fat (even though I have a lot of it), I got out the smallest pan in the house. I think you're supposed to cook individual fried eggs in it.

After turning the sausage to reveal the golden-colored underside, I briefly thought I should call these "mock fish sticks." They look like fish sticks to me.

Mrs. Wilson's Chinook sausages tasted like something caught between Thanksgiving turkey stuffing and onion rings. I've heard that fried turkey stuffing is a thing some people do with their holiday leftovers, so this recipe doesn't seem very farfetched.  Had I used a bigger frying pan, I can easily imagine putting them into the oil at once and cranking them out for hungry lodgers.

I liked these sausages a lot more than I expected to. Yes, deep-frying them definitely helps the recipe a lot. But if you're going to get out the deep fryer and spatter grease all over your stove, this is a pretty good recipe to do it with. If you can spare a few more coins from your purse than someone with eight lodgers to feed, you should definitely add cheese.