MAN FOOD - SOS Chipped Beef and Gravy!

Recipes for Men and Women who Eat like Men

If you have never had "?^*! on a shingle" (SOS) you are missing out. I bet you are getting tired of all those funky noodles the women are cooking. Ever feel like you have had enough to eat but you are still hungry? What you need is some man food.

SOS
(besides grilled steak and potato) Hands Down the #1 all time man meal is SOS. Called "sh*t on a shingle" by many. Also known as "chipped beef and gravy" or "chipped beef on toast". Mass quantities. Yes this is that thinly sliced dried beef you see by the bologna at the market. It usually comes in a plastic package hanging on a hook by the other lunch meats. Lets see if we can't scrounge up a picture of the stuff.

Sometimes you may see it in a cylinder shaped jar of sorts. Finding this stuff is the hardest part of the recipe.

2 packages dried beef
2 cups milk
2 tbs. butter
1 tbs. worcestershire sauce
2 tbs. flour
Salt and pepper
bread, toast, biscuits......

Melt butter in pan while you slice up the dried beef into small desired dimensions. Add the sliced dried beef and worcestershire sauce into the melted butter. Cook 2-3 minutes to brown. Add salt & pepper and flour and stir until flour absorbs the rioux you created. Now pour in the milk. Stir with a wire whisk while milk warms. As it gets close to a boil, sauce will begin to thicken. Continue stirring until desired thickness is obtained. Serve this over bread, toast, biscuits or whatever your preference.

As you make this meal often you will begin to aquire your own taste to how it is prepared. Use a little less flour to make it thinner if so desired.

Secret Ingredient- Here is what will seperate your SOS from everyone else's. WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE. Right after you added the dried beef to the butter to cook for 2-3 minutes, put a splash of worcestershire sauce in. A splash meaning a small amount. A teaspoon to a tablespoon. This will give your gravy that ever so slight bite people won't be able to put their finger on. This is man food.

DiY Baked Potato

Baked potatoes cooked in the microwave taste as good as oven baked.
Wash some potatoes. Now wrap each potato in it's own paper towell. Completely wrap each potato in the paper towell so when you set the potato down on the plate it stays tucked under. Now sprinkle water over the potatoes and plate. Use a generous amount of water but don't completely soak them as to make the paper towells fall off. This should also leave a good puddle on the plate where the taters sit. Throw the plate in the microwave for 5-7 minutes depending on your microwave and elevation. Multiple potatoes cooked at the same time require slightly more cooking time.

Take the potatoes out of the microwave and serve them as you noramlly would. Notice how wonderful they taste. You know you have cooked them too long if you notice some tough spots.

BEANS & MEAT

1/2 to 1lb. of Ground Beef (hamburger)
1 or 2 cans of pork n' beans

Brown hamburger in a skillet. Drain almost all of the grease(fat). Leave some for flavor. Open pork and beans and drain almost all the juice from the can. Add the pork and beans to the skillet mixing it with the cooked hamburger. Cook on medium to high heat stirring constantly. Get the beans good and hot and keep stirring. Remember that beans take longer to get hot than most items you fry in a pan. Serve on a plate and eat. This is quick and easy man food. You can also serve this over torn up bread, toast or biscuits. It taste alot better than the ingredients suggest.

Bootleg Famous Daves Beans and Franks

Get this. You know that mild BBQ flavor that makes Famous Daves and other BBQ places beans taste so good? I am not saying this is what these places use, it's a secret formula. I can tell you how to reproduce this flavor with a simple can of pork and beans and some hot dogs.
1 Can of Pork and Beans, Hot Dogs, 1 Tablespoon of KC masterpiece BBQ sauce, 1 Tablespoon of Old El paso taco sauce, a good sprinkle of garlic powder, salt and pepper. Chop hot dogs and mix. You will be shocked at the taste. What sounds so simple and lame is now a secret recipe unlocked. Many of these secret recipes used by famous resteraunts are actually nothing more than clever use of simple ingredients. DiY Bum strikes again.

DiY Bum's BBQ'd Hamburgers

You are a man that has been watching alot of the survival tv shows. The family is away. You are hungry to grill out on the BBQ. There is only one problem, you are out of charcoal. No worries. A real man cooks his food over an open flame.
Gather sticks to start a fire. Dried twigs from nearby oak trees will do nicely. Make sure the twigs are dry and brittle. Don't use pine trees or green wood. Line the whole bottom of the grill with these twigs. Make a matress of twigs on the bottom of the grill. Put the smallest twigs at the bottom andalways stack the thicker ones on top. Now find some select bigger chunks of wood that resemble small logs. These would be a hard wood that is dried. A good size would be about the size of your wrist. Strip the bark from these small logs and make them about 6 inches long each. Lay these small logs on top of the matress of twigs in the bottom of the grill. Now you are going to want to raid the kitchen for the bottle of vegetable oil. Take this bottle of vegetable oil and lightly sprinkle the logs laying on the twigs in the grill. Don't douse them with this oil, simply lightly coat them with a few drops here and there. A few table spoons should do it. Now sprinkle a little lighter fluid under the twigs and light it up. Don't use alot of fluid. We don't want our burgers tasting like lighter fuid or wood. By this time you should have a pretty good blaze. Let it burn for a bit. Let it burn till the logs are really burning good. That corn oil will keep the blaze fired up for longer than usual allowing us to really get the logs flamed up. When you see the logs have been burning long enough to glow pretty good then snuff the fire. Put the lid on enough to extinguish the flames. When the fire is out you should be left with some glowing small logs that will act as our coals. Put your hamburgers on the grill and start BBQing. One thing you want to watch out for is the fact this fire will tend to flame up quite a bit compared to charcoal. Keep the burgers off to the side out of direct flame. When the flame gets too high calm it down by sprinkling very small drops of water. Do not put the lid on. Putting the lid on will smoke the flavor of the wood into the burger. This isn't exactly the wood you want to taste too strongly in your steak or burger. We want the heat of the flames and not so much the smoke. It may also help to keep the burgers up wind from the smoke blowing off the grill. Not a bad hamburger. Just enough open fire taste to make you feel like survivor man. The key to reducing the open fire taste is not putting the burgers on the grill untul the smaller twigs have all burned off. The bigger logs should have burned to the point where they are as glowing coals. It's the heat of the log coals that cook our burger and not the flame of burning wood. The taste is quite good and a refreshing change from typical charcoal or propane.

DiY Bum's Potato Soup
Wash and peel about 5 or 6 potatoes. Chop the potatoes into pieces like you see in a sunday roast. Throw them in a pot of water and boil for around 15 minutes. It depends. After ten minutes of boiling poke them with a fork. You want them tender but not soft. You want them a little harder than the potatoes in a sunday roast. Drain all the water from the potatoes. Now with the potatoes in the pot add a half a cup of water, a half a cup of milk and 2 tablespoons of butter. Start heating the mixture while you stir in about 2 tablespoons of flour. Bring this mixture to a slow boil while you stir. This is your base. You may need to add a little more of any of the ingredients to get it the thickness you desire. While it's boiling stirr in salt and pepper. Keep adding salt and pepper while stirring and tasting to get it just right. After you make this a few times you can vary the ingredients according to your own taste. Enjoy.