April's Microwave Salisbury Steak

The original recipe is from a friend who writes a gluten-free cooking (and other stuff too) blog at An April a Day.  This recipe, she tells me, is not gluten-free thanks to the canned golden mushroom soup.  I'm not wild in general about using store-bought canned soups, but golden mushroom soup would be a PITA to recreate homemade (and I'm willing to go aways in the direction of homemade substitutions) so take that as you will.  And it's so good that it's worth it...my 18 month old would have licked his plate, if he had better hand-eye coordination.

This is an awfully fast dish to put together thanks to the store-bought help and use of the microwave for cooking, but it's EVEN FASTER when you prep it ahead and stash it in the freezer.  Plan ahead for your storage needs...the patties will  need to cook in a microwave-safe baking dish, so you'll either need to freeze in an appropriate container or be prepared to transfer the somewhat delicate patties between freezer container and microwave cooking dish.

I have also used this recipe as the basis for a crockpot roast.  Instead of making patties with ground meat, brown a roast on all sides, then put in a crockpot.  Combine the remaining seasonings (omit breadcrumbs and egg) and sauce ingredients and pour over.  Cook 8-10 hours on low. 

Pin It

Microwaved Beet Chips

These are delicious and cooking them won't heat up the house because it's done entirely in the microwave.  Woot-woot!  Beets are a sweet veg, and the flavor-texture result here is crunchy but melt-in-your-mouth, lightly sweet and lightly salty all at once.

The two in the back left are a leetle burned, but the rest are as they should be

The tricky part is that I can't tell you how long to nuke 'em.  It depends on how thinly you've sliced the beets, how powerful your microwave is, how many slices you're cooking at once.  I can tell you that these will burn between one second and the next if you're not careful though.  Start with a short time frame, then add time in 1 minute or 30 second intervals when you're getting close.  And watch them like a hawk with your finger on the STOP button in case you start to see or smell carbonization.  As usual, I screw up so you don't have to.

What I can tell you is what I did.  I have a "mid-size" microwave (don't know offhand how many watts).  I used 4 2" diameter beets and hand sliced them as thin as possible (pretty thin, but not totally regular or even).  I made the first batch with as many slices as I could fit in the microwave (about 3/4 of the slices).  You'll see the slices go from hard, to softened, to slightly curled to leathery to burned.  I started with 3 minutes.  They were just starting to look softened, so I added 3 minutes.  Then I added 1 more minute.  After 7 total minutes of cooking, they looked a little leathery but I thought they could use more time.  At 7 minutes 45 seconds, they were done but I didn't pull the emergency stop fast enough.  Fifteen more seconds gave me smoking briquettes and a reeky microwave. 

The second batch was much smaller, so at 3 minutes they were looking just leathery.  I gave them 30 more seconds, and stopped the microwave with 12 seconds left to go.  I spread the cooked chips on a paper towel and let them stand a few minutes.  They crisped up as they cooled. 

Four tennis ball sized beets will give you four small (about 1/3 cup) servings of chips.  Or one big afternoon snack.

Pin It

Microwave Pumpernickel Muffins

These are not too bad.  What a ringing endorsement, huh?  Haha!  But did anyone else try those microwave cake kits in approximately 1987?  Blark.  These muffins do not suffer from the same ills I recall from microwave baking 20+ years ago.  Microwaves are famous for not browning food, but these delicious whole grain muffins don't need extra browning.  The microwave leaves the muffins extra tender and of course, it's unbelievably fast, kid-friendly baking without heating up your house.  I also experimented with freezing the uncooked batter and baking single muffins from their frozen state...results are a little ugly, but still tasty.  I think these may enter the lineup of quick ready-made breakfast/snack options.

This is a recipe I dredged up out of a 1980's era cookbook, but unfortunately I don't have the citation.  The only adaptations I've made are to use what I routinely keep in my pantry/freezer and to make the whole process a little less fussy. 

I was a bit short on my 3 oz. of cream cheese when I tested these on account of a certain Little Dude liberating some of the product and giving himself a little moisturizing cream cheese facial in the middle of Meijer, but I think it turned out okay.  I think using a teaspoonful of prepared flavored cream cheese would be on point here, too--the muffins are not so insistently pumpernickel-y that a sweet fruity cream cheese would be out of place, but they are savory enough to support a garlic-and-herb type of filling as well. 
Pin It