Category: Main Dishes

Phyllis’s Bar-B-Que Burgers

It was a typical summer day in southern Kansas—hot and dry and windy. Jerri’s oldest brother and his wife live a couple of miles west of a small city with a beautiful view of the Gyp Hills. On that day, Theron was 225 miles away at a bank meeting and Phyllis was home with three of their four daughters. The oldest daughter, Lynne, had driven the old Hudson to her job.

People in Kansas are alert for severe weather. When Phyllis heard the tornado warning, she herded the three girls into the basement. After the four of them were safely underground, she remembered the puppies upstairs and started to go back up to get them.

“There’s not much you can do except follow tornado precaution instructions and pray,” she said, explaining why she stopped at the foot of the steps. At that moment the cellar door blew off and “things got exciting.”

Lynne heard about the storm and headed home. Her fears of what might have happened intensified when she found the road blocked by a tree about a half mile from their house. A neighbor came along and managed to get around the tree and take her home.

When Phyllis and the girls climbed out of the basement, they first saw that their seventy foot tall antenna tower had been bent and blown over a building behind the house and that equipment and feed bunks were scattered across the yard and destroyed. Walking around the house, they saw that the top half of the big cedar tree in the front yard was gone.

Debris was everywhere, but at least their house was only slightly damaged. The house belonging to Mrs. Bauman, their neighbor across the road, had been blown four inches off its foundation.

As they surveyed the mess, four-year-old Leslie announced, “This never would have happened if daddy had been home.”

The whole family, especially Theron, loves the story. No one was hurt, the puppies survived and Theron’s old pickup didn’t even get scratched.

I don’t know whether they had electricity after the storm, but I’m sure Phyllis managed to put a good supper on the table. She might have made her Bar-B-Que Burgers which she could cook outside on the grill.

Many years ago, Lynne compiled The Krehbiel Family Cookbook to preserve some of the recipes and wisdom she and her siblings learned while growing up. Most of the recipes are from Phyllis, but a few originated with Theron and some were contributed by the girls themselves.

Phyllis found the recipe for Bar-B-Que Burgers in a Carnation milk advertisement. You can find an ad with the recipe here. Lynne noted that this was a “a favorite hamburger, nice and moist!” It might well become one of your family favorites too.

INGREDIENTS:
1 1/2 lbs. ground beef
1/2 cup cracker crumbs
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 large egg
2/3 cup evaporated milk

PROCEDURE:

Put the meat in a large mixing bowl. Crush the crackers, making sure no pieces are bigger than a quarter inch. Peel the onion and wash the pepper. Chop both into a fine dice. Mix the salt, pepper, crackers and vegetables with the meat. Add an unbeaten egg and the milk
and stir with a mixing fork until you have a smooth meat mixture.

Divide the meat into six equal parts and form the patties. Broil them for five to seven minutes.

NOTES: You might want to use just a little more salt, but diners can add salt if they want. You can use a red or yellow bell pepper if you don’t have a green one in your refrigerator.

Shrimp Étouffée

I was introduced to Creole cooking on my first visit to New Orleans many years ago.  I ate barbecue shrimp, jambalaya, gumbo and shrimp étouffée.  The only dish with which I was vaguely familiar was jambalaya, and that was because of the Hank Williams hit song, “On the Bayou.”  The food was so good that I bought a cookbook of Creole cuisine, La Bouche Creole,  by Leon E. Soniat, Jr. 

The title literally means “The Creole Mouth.”  It’s a fun book to read filled with Soniat’s accounts of how Mamere (his grandmother) and Mamete (his mother) prepared many of the recipes.  La Bouche Creole has been in print for over thirty years. You should get a copy if you want to enjoy authentic Creole cuisine.  Meanwhile, here is a modified version of one of my favorite recipes from Soniat’s collection, shrimp étouffée.

Étouffée means “smothered” so shrimp étouffée is shrimp smothered in a thick sauce.  It resembles shrimp creole like my mother used to make, but shrimp étouffée has a more complex flavor that I think you will find both intriguing and delicious. The secret is the beef broth and brown roux.  It takes longer to make shrimp étouffée than shrimp creole, but that roux creates a rich sauce that is heavenly.

Soniat calls for three pounds of shrimp, and that is what I used the first time I made the dish.   Shrimp are expensive, however, and I now use about two pounds, half medium and half large.

INGREDIENTS:

3 T butter

3 T vegetable oil

6 T all-purpose flour

2 cups chopped onions

1 cup chopped green bell pepper

1 cup chopped celery

4 or 5 cloves garlic

1 6 oz can tomato paste

3 cups beef broth

2 cups water

3 bay leaves

1 tsp. dried basil

1/2 tsp. dried thyme

1 tsp. chili powder

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1 tsp. salt

2- 3 lbs. peeled shrimp

1 cup chopped shallots

2 T chopped parsley

PROCEDURE:

First make a roux.  Heat three tablespoons each of butter and vegetable oil over low heat in a large pot or Dutch oven.  Add six tablespoons flour and use a wooden spoon to stir it frequently until the flour is medium brown, about the color of milk chocolate.  It will take about twenty minutes to do this right.

Pay close attention to the flour so it does not burn.  Prepare the vegetables while the roux is cooking.  Clean and chop the onion, bell pepper and celery into a quarter to half-inch dice.  Clean and mince the garlic.

When the roux is brown, add the vegetables followed by the tomato paste, beef broth and water.  Raise the heat and bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat.  While the vegetables simmer, add the bay leaves and stir in the basil, thyme, chili powder, cayenne pepper, black pepper and salt.  Clean and chop the shallots into a quarter-inch dice and finely chop the parsley.

Peel and devein the shrimp if necessary, or thaw frozen cooked shrimp and remove the tails.

After the vegetables have simmered about forty-five minutes, add the shallots and parsley.  Simmer for another ten minutes, then add the shrimp and bring the pot back to a simmer.  If you are using raw shrimp, allow the pot to simmer about seven or eight minutes, then turn off the heat.  With precooked shrimp, turn the heat off as soon as the pot begins to simmer.

Cover the pot and let it stand on the back of the stove for an hour or so to blend the flavors.  Reheat just to a simmer before serving.

Serve the étouffée over white rice with a green salad and crusty bread.

NOTES:  Soniat calls for raw shrimp, which you need to peel before cooking.  Not having any raw shrimp in the house one Sunday morning, I tried two packages of frozen cooked shrimp.  I thawed them, removed the tails, and added them to the pot as the final ingredient.  The dish was still delicious, so you can get by with cooked shrimp.

One cup of uncooked rice will produce about three cups of cooked rice, so if you start with one and one-half cups of uncooked rice, you will end up with six to eight servings to smother with shrimp étouffée.