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Lima Beans and Hamburg
2 tablespoons shortening 1 1/2 lbs. ground beef 1 pint dried lima beans soaked over night 1 onion 1 sweet red pepper salt 1 tablespoon flour Brown meat in fat, stirring it about while cooking. Cover beans with fresh water and boil a few minutes till meat is browned. Then add meat to beans, together with chopped onion and peppers, season, and cook slowly till both meat and beans are tender, about 1 1/2 hours. Thicken the sauce with the flour rubbed to paste in cold water.
A one-pot supper of the sort that filled weekday menu slots in the 1930s. The instructions assume you know that dried beans cook on their own schedule, so the timings are worth reading as guidance rather than gospel.
- "Hamburg"Period shorthand for ground beef, not a shaped patty. A coarse chuck grind around 80/20 suits this best; very lean beef will dry out over the long simmer.
- A pint of dried beansMeasured by volume, 2 cups, which will weigh a little under a pound. After overnight soaking they roughly double or better in volume.
- Order of operationsThe two pans run in parallel: beans go on to boil in fresh water while the beef browns in the shortening, then the beef is tipped into the beans. Discard the soaking water and start the beans in fresh.
- The 1 1/2 hours is a floor, not a ceilingThe 1 1/2 hours is an approximation -- Soaked limas can be tender in well under that, while old or hard-water beans can take longer still. Test a bean before you commit to serving.
- Keep it barely bubbling"Cook slowly" matters here. A hard boil breaks lima skins and turns the pot to mush, and it drives off the liquid you need for the sauce. Keep the beans covered with water throughout.
- Salt timingThe recipe seasons partway through. Older cookery lore holds that salting early keeps bean skins tough, though this is disputed and later testing suggests it makes little difference.
- Sweet red pepperAn ordinary sweet bell pepper, seeded and chopped, not a chile and not paprika. Added with the onion, it collapses into the sauce over the long cook.
- The flour pasteOne tablespoon rubbed smooth in cold water is a light thickening for the pot liquor. Stir it in at the end and let it simmer two or three minutes so the raw flour taste cooks out.
- ShorteningVegetable shortening or lard would have been the usual choice; any neutral oil or a little beef fat browns the meat the same way. The recipe has it stirred about rather than left to crust.
- YieldGenerous servings for six.