Hamburger Budget Stretch

"When money is tight this will stretch your hamburger meat. It's another recipe from my favorite cook book - Stories & Recipes of the Great Depression by Rita Van Amber. This recipe is attributed to Alma Smith of Woodville, WI. She wrote: "This was a popular dish when meat was rationed through the war." Use what you need in whatever dish you're making and freeze the rest."
 
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Ready In:
5mins
Ingredients:
4
Serves:
6-10
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ingredients

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directions

  • Mix and season to taste; Alma's recipe called for "some" onion, so use however much you'd like.

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Reviews

  1. This was a great way to extend our ground beef! We were having tacos tonight, and we needed to make the meat go just a little further (with a hubby that eats like a horse sometimes, and 3 kids and me, we needed it). We only had one lb of meat, and I remembered this recipe. Once I browned the mixture, it didnt get the dark brown that you normally see with ground beef, but I am betting it was from all the oatmeal. Also, I think next time I will use just 1 cup of oatmeal and see how that works. It didnt taste alot like ground beef, although it didnt really matter because I really spice up my taco meat. Overall, this is a recipe I will use again and I am thankful that when I had $40 to my name for 2 weeks, that this was here for my using! Thanks 4Susan!
     
  2. Based on the reviews I only used one cup of oatmeal also, and I used quick oats, because its what I had. It worked out great. Since I'm feeding 2 more this is a big help! Thanks!
     
  3. Based on the reviews I only used one cup of oatmeal, and I used the quick oats. this was great, I feel like it almost doubled the amount of meat I had to begin with, and I couldn't tell a difference with the meal I made.
     
  4. I am trying to budget my meals, so this was great. I used dried onions and added some Worc. sauce and seasonings. I had lean ground turkey and it was hard to tell if it was browned, but I put it in a baked bean dish and it turned out well. I will probably do this for a majority of my ground turkey now. Thanks!
     
  5. This is the recipe my mom would make while I was growing up. She came from a large family that needed to pinch pennies and when I was young she operated a day care out of our house. It works great and tastes fine. She would most use it for hamburgers and hotdish. I don't think she uses quite 2 cups of oatmeal...probably closer to 1 cup but, it depends on how far you want/need to stretch it. Thanks for posting this blast from the past recipe.
     
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