Food too salty?

Yesterday I made a Yankee style pot roast - you know the kind, a chuck roast browned and

Classic American Comfort Food

simmered, with roasted potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, mushrooms and a rich gravy?  Oh yeah.  I found the recipe online and because of the ingredients used to season the roast, the finished product (mostly the gravy, not the meat) turned out to be very salty.  It was too salty for me, and my Mom couldn't even have tolerated one bite.  But everything else about it was perfect.

A lot of old fashioned cooks probably know this trick -- I was not sure it would work, but I remember someone saying that potatoes soak up salt.  You can salt and salt and salt the little buggers but it just disappears into that starchy potato-ness without much effect.

So I stored the gravy from the roast separately (from the meat and vegetables, after cooking), and tonight I put that into a saucepan and added a peeled and diced russet to it.  The gravy was very thick (almost completely a solid after it cooled), so I also added a little water.  I brought it a boil then simmered it for about 30 minutes.  I added a little more water to keep it fluid, and after thirty minutes or so of cooking and another 30 minutes or so of sitting there resting, I fished the potato chunks out of the gravy with a slotted spoon, leaving as much of the gravy in the sauce pan as possible.  Then I rinsed them with a little bit more water, swished that around amongst the tater chunks, and poured that "gravy-rinse" back into the gravy in the pan.  I then tossed out the potatoes -- along with all that sodium they'd soaked up.  The remaining gravy is perfect -- all that lovely beef flavor intact and not salty at all.

You could use this same idea with other liquid foods that are overly salty, whether accidentally or otherwise.  I was happy to be able to figure out a way to "save" that gravy - it's just not Yankee Pot Roast without it.

Buen Provecho!

Cowboy Canned Supper

Use these...

Back in the olden days, cowboys often had to throw dinner together with whatever they had. Heck, I remember times when all there was, was an old burlap sack and some muddy water to make soup outta (you had to boil that a long time, which by then you might coulda rode inter town fer a steak.)  So this recipe here was for days when the chuck wagon had a bit of a surplus for Cookie to work with.  It ain't much, but it'll make you lose your appetite. 

2 slices bacon, chopped
1/4 cup or so chopped onion
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 garlic bulb, chopped
2 wienies or hot links, etc, sliced thin
1 can pintos
Salt and pepper to taste

Start by frying up the bacon until it is about halfway to crispy.  Then add the vegetables.  You can use others just as easy -- green pepper, or chilies, whatever suits you, but keep it simple.  Simple is better.  Fry those and the hot link slices (add the meat about half-way through) over med-low heat until the onions and celery are tender.  By now, the bacon should be all the way crispy.

Next step is drain off most of the bacon fat, but leave a little bit for flavor.

Dump in the pintos with their sauce and a touch of liquid smoke if you like it, or maybe a dash or two of pepper sauce, and simmer until it cooks down a little.  Salt and pepper to taste and serve it with cornbread or biskits.

This'll serve one hungry, or two skinny. Like I said, you won't be hungry no more after you-ins eat this.

This recipe came from this old guy here... he war ugly, but he wouldn't lie to ya none.