Category: Meats

Hot Beef Sandwiches

Two or three times a year my family went on a shopping trip. Hayward, Wisconsin had a good assortment of retail businesses, but like most families living in the wilds of northern Wisconsin, we also ordered things from Sears and Roebuck, Montgomery Ward and Spiegel catalogs.

But when Mom wanted to get a new dress for church, she wanted to try it on, and if Rivkins or Abramson’s, Hayward’s two department stores, didn’t have one she liked, we headed to Ashland, Wisconsin, or Duluth, Minnesota. Dad felt the same way about boots and shoes. Though he didn’t find out until many years later, he had broken a bone in one foot when he was a boy, and he had a hard time finding footwear that was comfortable.

Ashland was the nearest “big” city. Over 11,000 people lived there, and the wide main street boasted a dozen stores specializing in men’s and women’s clothing. If Mom happened to see an advertisement for a big sale at one of the big department stores in Duluth, we drove the extra twenty-five miles to a really big city with over 100,000 people living on the hill overlooking Lake Superior.

There was always a shopping trip in August. I used to think it was just because we needed to buy “school clothes,” but the hot August weather may have been a factor. Both Ashland and Duluth enjoyed cool breezes from Lake Superior that gave us a day’s relief from the dog days of summer. Supporting that theory was the fact that nearly every summer, Dad would announce some evening, “Let’s go for a drive to Ashland this Saturday. Be a good time to do some shopping or fill a few jugs at the artesian wells.”

It was also a good time to stop at a cafe for lunch.

Dad and I always had hot beef sandwiches: Thinly sliced roast beef on “store bought” white bread and a scoop of mashed potatoes covered with brown beef gravy. One slice of bread was cut diagonally. Most of the meat was stacked on the middle slice of bread. The two triangle-shaped pieces on each side of the middle slice gave an elegant appearance and supported extra meat and the mashed potatoes. It was a heavenly lunch, especially with a bottle of pop to help wash everything down.

If you’re lucky, you can still find places that serve real hot beef sandwiches. On our last trip back from Kansas, Jerri and I stopped in Kearney, Missouri. Jerri asked the clerk at the gas station if she could recommend any restaurants besides the fast food joints that we all know and love. J.J.’s Homestead was the first one out of her mouth. “Turn right after you go under the Interstate,” she told us.

We would have saved a few minutes if she had told us to turn left on the first street after we drove under I-35, but after a short visit to a business development and a U-turn we arrived in front of “J.J.’s Homestead Homestyle Family Restaurant”.

Diets are forgotten when we are traveling. My policy is that we need plenty of nourishment to support us if we slide into a ditch along the Interstate. Chicken Fried Steak, one of my favorites when we are on a trip to Kansas, caught my eye on the sandwich lunch menu. Right below it, however, was a listing for Hot Beef, described as “Slow-roasted beef piled high on traditional white bread, served open-face, and smothered in our savory beef gravy.” I ordered the beef.

When he took our order, our server told us that J.J. referred to Jesse James, the famous outlaw who was born about two miles from where we were seated. It made the meal even more special for me, as I thought of old Grandpa Weingarten who told me he remembered the bank robbery that ended the crime spree of the James and Younger gang in Northfield, Minnesota, when he was a boy.

After finishing off a rather large serving of beef, potatoes and gravy on two very good slices of white bread, I complimented the young man on how good the beef was. He told us that on Mondays when they roasted the meat, customers commented on how good it smelled. It was a wonderful lunch that took me back to those days when we sat around an oilcloth-covered table in a comfortable restaurant and enjoyed a meal out. The major difference was that we sat in a booth and were served by a friendly young man with a tattoo on his arm instead of a friendly young woman with pigtails.

Hot roast beef sandwiches are easy to make and wonderful to eat. The recipe is simple:

INGREDIENTS:

Enough roast beef to make the number of servings you need
Two slices of ordinary (or “traditional” if you wish) white bread for each serving
1/2 to 3/4 cup of mashed potatoes for each serving
Plenty of beef gravy

PROCEDURE:

Slice the beef thin. Heat the meat, potatoes and gravy. Cut half the slices of bread diagonally to make triangles. Put a full slice of bread slightly to the left of center on the plate. Place a triangle of bread on each side. Pile beef on the center slice, allowing a little to fall on the triangles. Put a big scoop of mashed potatoes to the right of the beef. Smoother everything with gravy.

What could be simpler? Use leftover beef and gravy from yesterday’s pot roast and use this easy recipe to make the mashed potatoes.

NOTES: If you don’t have enough leftover gravy, you can make more in a few minutes: Make a roux by melting four tablespoons of butter in a skillet. Stir in four tablespoons of all-purpose flour and cook it over moderate heat until it turns medium dark brown. Season the roux with a quarter teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper, dashes of celery salt and basil. Carefully blend two cups of beef broth into the roux and cook three or four minutes, stirring constantly, until it is smooth and thickened. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

If you want a darker gravy, you can stir in a little brown gravy sauce.

Oven-barbecued Country Ribs

Sometime in the late 1950’s our family acquired its first charcoal grill. Before then we had cooked over open fires, mostly on the shores of lakes near Hayward. The meat was skin-on wieners from one of the local butcher shops or grocery stores and dessert was marshmallows toasted over the coals. Cooking utensils were a can opener and sticks of hazel brush for roasting the wieners and marshmallows and stirring the can of beans.

If we didn’t forget them, there would be spoons for serving Mom’s potato salad and eating the beans and salad from paper plates. Over the years I learned that you could open a can with a jack knife, carve sticks into substitute spoons and eat off birch bark plates. I also learned the truly valuable skill of how to build a fire, even if it had rained just a few minutes before we got to our picnic place.

Later I learned to toast sandwiches over an open fire when I began going deer hunting and ice fishing with my father. By that time I had my own jack knife and the patience to find the perfect stick with two twigs branching off the central stem to make a toasting tool. Besides learning to read a fire properly so my sandwich did not turn black or get too smoky, I also learned how close I could put my wet gloves to the fire without setting them ablaze.

Thus, when we got our first charcoal grill, I became the outdoor chef. The grill was a shallow flat tray on a tripod base. There was no cover; the kettle grill was not yet on the market. But ours worked just fine and in addition to wieners, we were soon enjoying hamburgers, bratwursts, chicken legs and pork ribs from the grill.

One year I even tried to grill some meat from a bear we had shot. My mother had given up trying to cook it. She explained, “It’s just too fat. When I fry steaks, they’re floating in fat. I tried making a roast, and the pan was half full of grease. Even Dad said it was too fat for him.”

I had what seemed like a logical suggestion. “Pick out a nice roast. We’ll cut it into two-inch cubes, and I’ll grill them for dinner. The fat will drip out and the meat should be delicious. We can brush on some barbecue sauce when it’s close to done.”

The incident is stamped indelibly in my memory. It was a cold New Year’s Day. I set the grill up on the front porch. I carefully arranged a big pile of charcoal briquets in the grill, lit them and waited until the coals were an even gray. Heaven help me, but I think I may have wiped the grate with some lard or bacon grease before I put the chunks of meat on the fire.

Everything looked promising for the first three or four minutes. When I turned the meat, the bottom sides looked perfect. A couple of coals flared up as fat dripped off the meat, but as this often happened I was ready to sprinkle a few drops of water on the hot spot. However, more flare-ups occurred and rapidly grew into a conflagration. The remaining water seemed to fan the flames when I tossed it on the grill. Have you ever seen four pounds of flaming bear meat sending black smoke into the sky?

My father came out the door and told me that we had to put the fire out. “If we don’t do something quick, someone will call the fire department and we’ll have a fine for a false alarm. If it is a false alarm,” he added, looking at the flames rising above the eaves on the porch.

My mother rescued us. She came out with her big tea kettle and bravely doused the flames.

I don’t remember what we had for dinner that day, but I do remember that we gave the bear meat to Uncle Ruel and his family. He said that it was some of the best bear meat he had ever tasted.

Today I don’t do much grilling outside in the winter. Maybe it’s just that I don’t like standing out in the cold while the meat cooks, but it might be that I have learned how to make tasty country back ribs in the comfort of the kitchen. Once you put them in the oven, they cook for at least two hours, so you have plenty of time to read a book, watch TV or even take a nap if you have a good timer to wake you after an hour or so to check that the liquid in the pan has not boiled away.

INGREDIENTS:

Non-stick cooking spray or vegetable oil
2 – 3 lbs. country pork ribs
1/4 cup water or wine
1 T liquid smoke seasoning
1/4 – 1/3 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. thyme
1/4 tsp. basil
1/4 tsp. rosemary
1/8 tsp. garlic powder
1/8 tsp. cayenne powder
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
About 3/4 cup barbecue sauce

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 325º and grease a nine by thirteen-inch covered baking pan or casserole.

If necessary cut the ribs into serving-size pieces and place them in a single layer in the pan. Pour a quarter cup of water around the meat and add a tablespoon of liquid smoke seasoning. If you have a mortar and pestle, grind the salt and spices together or just stir them together in cup and sprinkle the mixture evenly over the meat. Dribble your preferred barbecue sauce over and around the meat. I use from two-thirds to three-fourth cup of sauce, depending on how much meat is in the pan.

Cover the pan and put it on a center shelf in the oven. After an hour, check to make sure that there is still adequate liquid in the pan. Add a little water or wine if necessary. Check the pan every thirty minutes or so after the first hour.

Serve with more barbecue sauce and your choice of bread, potatoes and salad.

NOTES: Feel free to adjust the seasonings, but start with at least a teaspoon of liquid smoke seasoning. Make sure your oven is at or slightly below 325º when you start cooking the ribs. If you worry about the pan going dry, feel free to check the amount of liquid after forty-five minutes or so. You don’t want to boil the meat, so be careful not to add too much water.