Smothered Beef
Chop 2 pounds of lean beef very fine. Put it into a hot iron pan and set in a hot oven for fifteen minutes, stirring two or three times. Add 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, 1 teaspoonful of salt, and half a one of pepper. Serve at once.
A spare, almost brutal treatment of chopped beef that relies entirely on a screaming-hot pan and dry heat. Everything depends on the pan being fully preheated before the meat goes in.
- Heat the pan empty first"A hot iron pan" means a cast-iron skillet brought up to temperature in the oven before the beef touches it. A cold pan will pool juices and the meat will stew grey instead of browning.
- "Hot oven" in numbersPeriod usage for a "hot oven" generally falls somewhere around 400-450F. Fifteen minutes at much less than that will not drive off the moisture from two pounds of chopped beef.
- Chopped, not ground"Chop very fine" means knife-cut on a board, which gives irregular pieces that brown at the edges. Coarse ground chuck is the nearest modern substitute; avoid fine grind, which packs and turns pasty.
- Use a fatty cutTruly lean beef will be dry by the end of this method. Chuck at roughly 80/20, or lean beef with the butter accounted for, gives a better result.
- Stir with purposeThe two or three stirrings are there to break up clumps and expose new surfaces to the heat, not just to keep it from sticking. Scrape the browned film off the pan bottom each time.
- Butter goes in at the endThe butter, salt and pepper are seasoning, not cooking fat. Add them after the pan comes out and stir until the butter melts into the juices to make a thin sauce.
- Check the temperatureChopped raw beef should reach 160F throughout. Fifteen minutes in a hot oven usually gets there, but confirm with a thermometer rather than the clock.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two pounds of beef will serve roughly three to four. "Serve at once" means it goes straight from pan to plate.