In our home Sunday around here usually means down-home cooking just like my Grandmothers and even my parents used to do when I was growing up. More times than not it means music playing and dancing in the kitchen, or there may be movies on, and a little binge-watching TV if there is something is on, and I might sit down with my Danielle Steel newest book The Wedding Planner when I get a chance.
David is at work. Charlie is at work. The internet is downstairs to connect the Roku TV is still not working, so we’re making do with what we’ve got. Gerald is downstairs trying to watch television on a TV a small I used to use in my office and was fine for me but with his eyes I’m not sure how much television he’s actually seeing.
And I’ve got hamburger meat out for dinner. I was thinking about making Taco Bell Crunchwraps, but then I started thinking about one of my favorite meals that my Grandma Dorie used to make for me. Hamburger steak and gravy. And once I started thinking about Grandma Dorie’s hamburger steak, the Crunchwraps didn’t sound quite as good anymore.
Grandma Dorie’s Hamburger Steak wasn’t just any hamburger steak. Grandma Dorie would make my hamburger steaks in her cast iron skillet, and she put the onions inside the hamburger steak. And let me tell you something: a true hamburger steak has onions inside the meat not on top of it although I don’t mind them inside and on top as well. The more onions you have the better the hamburger steak is.
Now, I know restaurants like to put grilled onions on top, and that’s fine if that’s what you like. But when I order hamburger steak at a restaurant and they bring me a hamburger patty with a pile of onions sitting on top, it really irks me. That’s not Grandma Dorie’s hamburger steak. That’s a hamburger patty with onions on top. The onions belong inside. This is why I ask a waitress how there hamburger steak is cooked before ordering it and also if they have Brown Gravy.
Dorie would mix the onions right into the meat, form those patties, and cook them in her cast iron skillet until they were browned and delicious. And there was always brown gravy. Not cream gravy. Brown gravy. That’s another one of my hamburger steak rules. More times than not, Grandma served those hamburger steaks with homemade mashed potatoes, and that gravy would run right over those potatoes. But if my brother was eating we would have Fried Taters with Onions and they were slap yo’ momma good and that’s Sunday dinner in my home when David cooks for me.
How I Taught David to Make Hamburger Steak for me is we start with ground beef and finely chopped onion. We mix the onions right into the hamburger meat along with my seasonings and we use Lawry’s Steak Seasoning or Kinder’s the Blend then we form the mixture into hamburger steaks ie patties.
Then I heat up my skillet and I don’t have a cast iron skillet like Dorie used but brown those hamburger steaks on both sides.
Once they’re browned, I make my brown gravy right in the same skillet so all those good browned bits from the meat become part of the gravy.
The hamburger steaks go back into the skillet and simmer in that gravy until they’re cooked through and tender.
Then I make mashed potatoes.
Because if you’re going to make hamburger steak and brown gravy, you really need something for that gravy to go on.
Homemade mashed potatoes are my favorite, but around our house, we don’t all eat our hamburger steak the same way.
And that’s one of the things I love about family meals.
Everybody has there own way they want there hamburger patties made when Gerald and I have Dorie’s Hamburger Steaks. David and Charlie don’t want onions in their hamburgers steaks. Although, once in a while Charlie will eat one with onions but David will not because he says onions bother him.
So when I’m making dinner, I usually make plain hamburger patties for them. They can turn theirs into regular hamburgers, or sometimes David will eat the hamburger patties with a few mashed potatoes. But he isn’t usually interested in the vegetables I’m serving with mine. Neither will Charlie and he also doesn’t eat the mashed potato’s because he prefers Instant Potato’s goofy child.
My brother has been staying here, and this is something I’ve really been enjoying because he eats it with me. Gerald and I will sit down with our hamburger steak, brown gravy, and mashed potatoes, and we’ll usually have black-eyed peas with it. And if we have fried potatoes, we’ll eat those instead sometimes.
There’s just something about sitting down and eating the same kind of food you grew up eating with somebody who remembers it too. It’s more than dinner. It’s a memory. I used to invite my sister over to have dinner with us but now that she has to follow a Gluten free diet a lot of the foods we fix she can’t eat so there is no, reason to invite her.
That’s why hamburger steak and gravy will always be special to me. It takes me back to Grandma Dorie and her cast iron skillet. It takes me back to onions mixed right into the meat. It takes me back to brown gravy poured over homemade mashed potatoes. And it reminds me that some of the best recipes aren’t the ones written down in a cookbook.
They’re the ones somebody made for you so many times that you never forget how they tasted. Today, I may still change my mind and make something completely different. That’s the way cooking goes around here. But if I do make hamburger steak and gravy, I’ll know exactly what I’m making.
I’m making Grandma Dorie’s hamburger steak. And I’ll be putting those onions inside, where they belong. Because Grandma Dorie knew what she was doing. And so did her cast iron skillet.
Grateful, Thankful, and Blessed.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates