Cooking directions state “Do not prepare in toaster oven.” Why the hell not? Heat is heat. Make atoms move faster and you have heat. Tonight’s culinary mess is the 5th time I heated up the frozen things and they tasted fine to me. I used a thermometer to ensure the recommended 165-degrees Fahrenheit was reached. Still alive after past toaster over heating events and nary any vomiting so I must be doing something right. I wonder why toaster ovens are not recommended? A safety issue? My gas stove works fine but the oven is broken and the needed parts are no longer stocked anywhere… and I looked across the Web. New stoves are expensive. I have used the toaster over for baking the last ten-years. I can’t do big turkeys, etc. but it’s just me so I get along fine.
Tonight’s dinner is quick and easy to cook and it makes enough food for several meals if cooking for one. Results will vary. If you blow it and contract food poisoning you are on your own. I am poor and all I have is this shack in the bad part of town that I will burn down before I ever let some greedy low-life and a scum-sucking lawyer sue me and win and force an auction to satisfy all or part of the judgment. Then I am coming for you. As Pa told me many decades ago never mess with an old guy, They have very little to lose, especially as they get ever closer to death.
Picture this; a healthy young lad of 18-years stands in front of the judge whose gavel comes down hard as he growls “I sentence you to life in prison with no chance of parole.” What a blow!!! Decades, maybe many decades of a wretched life in the midst of filth and scum and evil. Do the same with an old fart that will likely be released for the appeal process and the odds are excellent he dies of natural causes before that future court date arrives. Mess with a feeble old fart and the law of unintended consequences can whip around and bite you on the butt. You have been warned.
Here how to cook this relatively low-cost concoction. First, follow the heating/cooking directions on the Salisbury steaks & brown gravy made with chicken, pork and beef. Does federal law require the most common item within the product to be listed first? That ingredients label on the rear of the package is supposed to be done that way, I believe. Meat is meat. There is gravy in the tray so that taste will likely dominate everything anyway.This was true with food in Oriental ports. No matter what the meat and mystery meat it truly was the strongly-flavored sauce placed upon the meat while cooking overwhelmed whatever meat taste was present.
The chicken/pork/beef is heating. Take a break. Take a nap and you risk sleeping too long and you ruin the meat part of the meal and maybe even start a damn fire that burns your house down killing you in the process. If you live in an apartment you may be responsible for burning a hundred units down killing dozens of innocent people. That is one reason I will never live in an apartment or in any housing unit that shares a wall with one or more other people. The world is full of idiots. And buffoons. And untrained idiots bumbling through life and even when given instructions the shared knowledge caroms around their empty head and dribbles out their nostrils. Do not be a buffoon.
Judgment time. When to start cooking the noodles. I used these for this event:
Use any noodle-type desired. These were the cheapest ones on the store shelf. Cheap is good. specially if money is tight. When money is real type you can cook up noodles, add the cheap generic powdered brown gravy for taste and eat that for a meal. Tonight’s delight is special so I splurged with the chicken/pork/beef addition. I cooked the entire bag in a pot big enough to allow the noodle cooking and to add the cooked chicken/pork/beef and the gravy that comes with the stuff. Drain the noodles when they are cooked to your desired consistency. I like mine a little chewy to add substance to the meal. Sometimes I rinse the noodles with hot water from the faucet to clean off the excess starch. I did that tonight. Sometimes I do not. I can not detect any differences in the end result of rinse versus no rinsing. After draining dump the noodles in the now-empty pot.
Next… tonight I added one package of the powder brown gravy mix that was on sale for four packs for a buck:
Sprinkle atop the noodles and mix it in. This adds some taste. The Salisbury steak frozen stuff does not have a lot of gravy so this mix adds to the taste. The noodles are now ready to add the properly heated chicken/pork/beef and gravy and mix it in. While mixing I use the large plastic mixing spoon to break up the patties into small chunks. After thoroughly mixed it’s ready to eat. Eat. I reduce the amount of dishes to do by eating from the big pot. After I am full place the pot lid atop the pot and refrigerate.
When the next meal time arrives add enough water to cover the pot bottom to assist with keeping the noodles from sticking to the pot and the steam assists with heating the contents. Stir regularly. When warm eat from the pot. When full. Replace lid and refrigerate. Repeat when hungry. Easy. Simple.
And this is the Disgruntled Old Coot’s method of meal preparation for Noodles & Heated Frozen Salisbury Steaks. Beats the hell out of fried bats at a street vendor in Wuhan, China. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
I Adore Food 