Chipped Beef

Week: 1
Ingredient: Esskay Chipped Beef
From: Red Front Supermarket, Harrisonburg, VA
Recipe: Creamed Chipped Beef (from the package)

I made a quick stop at Red Front this week to pick up a few ingredients for a salad I was supposed to take to a dinner the next evening. While I was there, I decided to see what unusual things Red Front carried. Certainly there would be something interesting in the small grocery store I have always thought was very ... Mennonite. The first thing that caught my eye was a small jar of “Dried Beef.” Immediately, I was reminded of my grandmother—not the Mennonite one, but the the Baptist one. I had seen such a jar in her kitchen many times. I always thought the little rounds of red-brown meat in an otherwise-empty jar were funny. Seriously, who buys meat that way?

Nonetheless, it seemed perfect. The weather was so cold outside, exactly the kind of weather that makes one want to sit down to a hot, fattening, oh-so-comforting meal. And chipped beef gravy, the only thing I knew to do with dried beef, was all of these things. I added the little jar to my cart and continued through the store.

When I passed through the refrigerated meat section, I noticed a small, plastic package labeled “Chipped Beef.” But if that was chipped beef, what was this dried beef I had found amongst the SPAM and Vienna sausages? I was anxious to get home, out of the cold, so I added the similar-looking, but sooner-expiring, thinly-sliced beef to my cart, and hurried through the rest of my shopping trip.

Back at home, with the groceries unloaded, I set out to find out the difference between dried beef and chipped beef. Food Lover's Companion did not let me down: “Chipped beef is also referred to simply as dried beef.”¹ It was not surprising that the two dried beef products I purchased varied only in packaging. “Dried Beef” had a longer shelf life because it was sealed in a jar; “Chipped Beef” was packaged more like a fresh lunch meat and would spoil without refrigeration. Oh well. One can never have too much dried meat, right? (Yeah ... right.)

On Saturday I made chipped beef gravy. Butter + dried beef + flour + milk + pepper. That is really all there is to it—so easy! And just as comforting as I expected it would be. I had no bread at home, so I made biscuits to go with it. Unnecessary richness! In the future, I will serve it on toast. Also, chipped beef is quite salty, so next time I may start by parboiling the meat and draining the water. I can always add salt, if needed.

Conclusion: Chipped beef is pretty much what I expected: dry, salty meat. But not so very long ago dry, salty meat was a staple, right? I should probably branch out and try something else with chipped beef sometime. But I will always know that a classic like chipped beef gravy—with toast—is an excellent comfort food for a cold, winter morning.

¹Sharon Tyler Herbst, Food Lover's Companion, 3rd ed. (Hauppauge, NY: Barron's Educational Series, Inc., 2001), 133.