We've all been there. You make a big homemade meal for your family, they gobble it down, and then they vanish. Suddenly you realize how many pans and dishes you've used — and have to wash by yourself on top of all the dinner plates.
To me, that makes the idea of a meal-in-one-dish seem like a lifesaver. Folks at the Montgomery Advertiser in 1966 agreed and published a page full of one-dish wonders. They were part of an annual community cookbook series.
This week in Lost Recipes, we're bringing them back. Even if you've got an automatic dishwasher, your back and hands will thank you for cutting down the load.
You can make a delicious pot roast in one dish.
Meal-In-One Pot Roast
Honestly, I'm a sucker for a really good pot roast dinner — especially with homemade gravy. But making a meal of it with the fixings is almost always at least 3 or 4 pans. Here's how to cut it down to a single dish — kind of. There's a bit of a rules cheat to this one. You need:
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4-pound pot roast
2 tablespoons of drippings (probably more than that)
Quarter cup of room-temperature water
6 medium potatoes
4 stalks of celery, cut into 3-inch pieces
Half teaspoon salt
Half cup of hot water
1 package (9 ounces) of frozen cut green beans
Flour for gravy, if desired (Yes, I do!)
Brown the pot-roast in drippings. Pour the drippings into a bowl and set aside. Season the roast with salt and pepper. Add a quarter cup of water to the pan. Cover tightly with foil and cook at 350 degrees for 2 hours. Pare a 1-inch strip of peeling from center of each potato. After the roast has cooked for 2 hours, take it from the oven and add the potatoes, celery, salt and a half cup of hot water to the roast pan. Cover tightly again and let it cook another 30 minutes. Add green beans and continue cooking for 30 more minutes, or until the meat is tender and vegetables are done. Here's the cheat part. Remove meat and vegetables to heated platter. You're not cooking with the platter, just serving, so does that count? Put the original drippings back in the roasting pan with the liquids that are already there, heat it up, and thicken that with the flour to make the gravy. Serve it up with the roast and veggies.
You've got a little more than the one pan to wash from the cooking side — the serving dish and whatever you used for the gravy — but I really think it's worth it.
Ground Beef Spaghetti
This is one that I wouldn't have thought could be effective as a one-dish meal. After all, you've got to brown the beef, get the sauce in it, and cook the spaghetti. Seems like a minimum of a large pan for the meat and a boiler for the noodles. Not so, since they used what I'd consider a cheat to make this into a one-dish meal. Here's what you'll need:
Half pound of mushrooms
2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
6 large pimiento stuffed olives
Half cup chopped onions
2 tablespoons minced green pepper
Half cup American cheese cubes
2 cans of spaghetti (16 ounce) with ground beef. Here's the cheat. You're basically using some extra quality ingredients to dress up canned spaghetti.
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Wash and cut the mushroom and olives into slices. Add onions, green pepper, mushrooms and butter into an oven-safe dish. Cook until tender and lightly browned. Stir in sliced olives. Scoop all that into a mound in the middle of the dish. Pour the canned spaghetti around edge of dish. Insert cheese cubes in intervals along the spaghetti loop. Bake it for 20 minutes, until the spaghetti is heated and the cheese cubes are melted. This makes 4 servings, so double it up if you've got a big family.
Sure, it's not technically all "homemade," but the extra touches make it a unique spaghetti meal.
Tropical Hash
Hash seems like a good candidate for a one-dish meal. It's a classic comfort food made of diced or chopped meat (in this case, corned beef) that's usually mixed with potatoes and then fried or baked. In this case, we're swapping the potatoes for tropical fruit. Sounds tasty.
2 one-pound cans corned beef
Pineapple juice, from an 8.5 ounce can of sliced pineapple.
4 slices of canned pineapple
1 banana, mashed
2 bananas, split lengthwise
Half teaspoon of ground ginger
Place hash in a one quart shallow baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, and then combine the pineapple juice with mashed banana, sugar and ginger in the dish. Arrange the split banana and pineapple slices on the hash. Place the dish in the oven under on broil until the sliced bananas are golden brown. This makes four generous servings.
Carbonnades Flamande
Let's take things international with Carbonnades Flamande, also known as Flemish Beef Stew. Sounds like a good candidate for a one-dish meal. There's a little bit of alcohol in this.
3 tablespoons flour
2 teaspoons salt
4 teaspoons black pepper
2 pounds lean beef stew meat, cut in half inch cubes
2 tablespoons cooking oil
Half cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 12-ounce can of your favorite beer
11 ounces of beef broth
1 bay leaf
Quarter teaspoon of dried thyme, crumbled
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 and a quarter pounds of frozen stew vegetables
1 cup frozen peas
I cup sliced mushrooms (You can use canned, but I'd go fresh and slice them thin)
2 tablespoons of finely chopped parsley
Blend together flour, salt and pepper, and roll the meat pieces in the mixture. Heat oil in a 4-quart Dutch oven. Brown the meat, a few pieces at a time. Remove pieces as they brown. With the meat removed, add onion and cook until they're transparent. Sprinkle with sugar and mix well. Return the meat to the dish. Add beer, broth, bay leaf, thyme and vinegar. Bring it to a boil, then reduce heat. Cover it and let the stew simmer slowly for an hour, or place it in a preheated 325 degree oven for 1 hour. Add frozen stew vegetables, peas and mushrooms. Continue to cook for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the meat and vegetables are tender. Remove the bay leaf. Sprinkle the top of the stew with parsley.
