Amish Recipe Series... Amish Poor Man's Steak

Do Amish women still use midwives for childbirth?

Some Amish women go to English doctors and have their babies in local hospitals; others go to birthing centers; and some choose to have midwives who will deliver the babies at home. It is a matter of preference.


Today's recipe... Remember... Disclaimer: The Amish don't always follow updated USDA canning methods, they follow methods passed down from generation to generation. Use this recipe at your own discretion, or adapt it to your own method. I am sharing these recipes EXACTLY as they were sent to me and take no responsibility for them.

Amish Poor Man's Steak

Found on challengedsurvival.blogspot

I knew I did not own anything large enough to mix up all the ingredients so I went down to the Dollar General and bought a 35 quart Sterlite Container. After a little soap, bleach and drying I was ready.

5 cups of celery

5 cups of onions

crushed 6 tubes of saltines which is 1 1/2 pounds

cracked open and whisked 2 dozen eggs

5 cups of milk

the recipe just reads...salt and pepper. Don't you just hate it when that happens? So I added salt and pepper. I don't exactly remember how I came up with my equation but it worked out pretty well at the time. I figured the saltine crackers are salty and the condensed mushroom soup is going to be salty so I added what I thought would be right and I will tell you how much when (if) I find the piece of paper I scribbled it on..... Just in case you want to be as adventurous as me and try this recipe.

celery, onions, saltines, eggs, milk, salt and pepper mixed together.

add the 30 pounds of ground beef

now I warn you... Run you a sink of warm/hot water near where you are working. When you start mixing and mixing and mixing all of these cold ingredients with your washed, cleaned and naked hands you are going to want to plunge them into something very warm every few minutes. My hands were burning with cold.

I used the wide mouth rim and lid again to form the patties, just like I did when I made the meatloaf last week. Using this method will ensure the patties will fit into the wide mouth canning jars.

I baked in preheated 375 degree oven for 35 minutes and alternated the pans about half way through cooking time. It took me a little over 4 hours to cook them all. I piled up 2 huge roasting pan and covered them with tinfoil and placed them in the refrigerator as they came from the oven.

I put 1/2 cup of the strained fat into a skillet and heated over medium heat until hot.

Next I added 1/2 cup of plain flour. The secret to making a good gravy base is to stir, stir, stir and don't cook it too fast. You can control this by lifting your pan on and off the eye of the stove. You want to brown the flour slowly without burning it.

I had already put 5 cans of the mushroom soup along with 5 cans of water in a pot to begin warming. I think this was almost 2 quarts. Trust me again. The recipe doesn't say how much gravy to make but you are going to need to make a lot. When I make this again I will try to get a good measurement. I had to make gravy 3 times during canning and even ended up using two more cans of soup than the recipe called for.

I added some of the mushroom soup mixture to the browned flour. Be careful...it gets angry during this procedure. Keep adding and stirring and things will calm down.

I then added my base from the skillet to the pot of mushroom soup, stirred it in well and simmered while I reheated patties in the microwave. Put a patty in the jar, cover that with the gravy mixture and then another patty and more gravy until the ingredients are one inch from the top. I got 5 patties in a jar.

I processed these for 90 minutes at 11 pounds of pressure on my dial gauge.

This recipe made 142 patties! I canned 28 quart jars

Photo of finished product as requested