Poor Man's Steak-recipe

Remember my post about this little cookbook? Well, I did one of the recipes in it last week.  The one from my  late Grandma Riemenschneider.  This makes me chuckle because being an 'old farm wife moved to town' she rarely cooked anything for us kids homemade. Stove Top stuffing, angel food cake from a mix, shake & bake chicken, canned green beans. LOL I assume she cooked this way when we were around for a couple of reasons.  1. having 3 grandkids around does not leave a lot of time for made from scratch meals, as she was always very attentive, active & overall present when we were with them. I never had to 'go looking for her' as she was always with in close range. 2. coming from the farm, where they did everything from scratch due to necessity, having the box options was probably pretty appealing (which I have seen & heard from many in that generation) & I find it amusing that now, with all the box options, we are choosing to make time & take the effort to go back to making more homemade :)  Okay, all that said, lets get on with the goodies!

Poor Man's Steak

3# ground beef (I used 2)
1 c milk
1 c bread or cracker crumbs (I used bread)
1/4 c grated onion (optional) (I used 1tbs onion onion seasoning from Tastefully Simple)
1 can mushroom or celery soup (I used homemade cream soup mix + water)
1 can water

mix together meat, milk, crumbs &  onion. At this point I also added 2 tsp black pepper & 1 tbs garlic garlic (also from Tastefully Simple-using up what I have in the cupboards). Spread on cookie sheet or 9x13 (I used a 9x13 so I could reuse it later), cover & chill 3 hours to overnight.  (I ended up leaving it for 48 hours) When ready to cook, pull out & cut into squares, flour & brown in a skillet (I thought at the time that this was a huge waste of time but in the end it was TOTALLY worth it + I had to add oil to my skillet b/c my beef is pretty lean) before placing in the baking dish (this is where I reused my 9x13). Cover with soup & water, bake @ 350 for an hour.

This reminded me of my salisbury steak recipe with a longer process but ended up being totally worth it & will be repeated as it was even approved by Tim (the critic) :)  The leftovers were served to the kids & they LOVED it! Win-Win!