Budget Country Meal: Hamburger Steaks, Homemade Gravy, Cheesy Tater Cakes & Creamy Corn

They say you are what you eat so I don't eat chicken feet. But I love me some of grandma's pickled beets. Well, cut it up, put it in the pan, throw it over your shoulder and see where it lands right here in Farmer's Kitchen. Meters, taters, beans and corn. The cows in the barn and the sheep's been shorn. Kids in the barnyard chasing grandpa's chicken. Spices, slices, cuts and dices. Gonna slash your grocery prices right here in Farmer's Kitchen. Help you grow your garden good with recipes to suit your mood. Try some grub you've never tried before. Smash it with a wooden mallet. Gonna educate your palate right here in Farmer's Kitchen. Until Farmer's Country Kitchen. We're gonna cook something good now. Hello and welcome to the Farmer's Kitchen. We're the farmers and this is our kitchen. That's right. It's not a set. It's where we cook and we're hungry. We actually eat. We eat what, five, six times a week? We do. Every week? Five, six times a day for me. That's true. We went to the grocery store the other day. I'm just being real here. Right. And I was like, let's get some of that. Let's see what we got in the freezer. It was really shocking. It is. So I thought, okay, what can we do? We're gonna make a meal for you today that is really, really cheap. And delicious. You can take something ever so plain and turn it into something just absolutely beautiful. Right. So we're gonna make you something wonderful today. Ground beef is what we're using today. Pound of ground beef. If you want to follow this recipe, I trust that you're gonna be smiling. Couldn't you do deer meat too with this? You could do deer meat. A lot of people have deer meat. Exactly. Good point. So say you've taken your deer, and in Kentucky, a lot of people do deer hunt. This is a perfect recipe for venison because we're gonna use some bread crumbs and things like that to, not for a filler, but to hold things together with some eggs so you get your protein. And really, if you had to parcel this thing out, we're talking cheapity cheap. Oh, yeah. But it's gonna be a beautiful plate when we're done. Yes. All right. So the first thing we're gonna do is take some leftover mashed potatoes. From yesterday. I always make extra. You know what? Sometimes we cook for lots of people, and we always make extra. We don't want anybody to go hungry. So we did have some mashed potatoes leftover. Beautiful, wonderful, organic potatoes that you fixed. All right. So what shall we call this? What do you think? Cheesy tater cake? I love it. Anything but the taters, you know I love. Now, we're not doing anything that a million people haven't already done. But over time, we've tried to figure out the consistency we like. We want to get it just like we like it, and the taste, and so on and so forth. So these are cheesy tater cakes. Sounds good to me. You like that? I love that. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go ahead and put some breadcrumbs in there. And I don't know. We went ahead and seasoned those up a little bit, too. If you want to put a little onion powder and a little garlic powder. As our friend Justin Wilson would say. That's right. Aguante. I love that guy. He was so entertaining and always had good recipes. And if the recipes weren't good, the show would still be great because of the stories he told. Now, what we're gonna do to bind this together is obviously we're gonna take some chicken eggs out from underneath our chicken. Just got these yesterday. And those are fresh. And so here's something that we want to do. We want to go ahead and put some chives in there. So what we've got to hold this thing together is the egg and the breadcrumbs. And that and the egg is going to hold us together. And we don't have any bread tonight. So that's our bread. That's right. Now, what else you want to add to that? A little bit of salt? Yes, this is like the best potato ever. Do you smell that already? I do. I'm excited about this. All right. Now, mom, whenever she did any kind of fried potatoes or anything, she would put some garlic in there. She always put garlic. So we're gonna take some ground garlic. Put that in there. And something I'm just I'm sorry. You got a problem with fennel. I love ground fennel. Just a little bit in that. And you know what else would be good in here as we go along? Just a little bit of thyme. Thyme's always good. Just a little bit. So again, that's two cups of mashed potatoes, approximately. We're gonna have some pepper. Where's our pepper? There we go. And this is some Tele Cherry we ground. It does not have to be Tele Cherry pepper. But it's so good. That smells good. Oh, you know what? Let's do a little more pepper. See, this pepper does not bother you. It doesn't ruin anything ever, does it? It's always just makes it good. Now, the pepper bandit, if he smelled that, he'd be crawling through the window right now. Good thing he's not here. We're gonna take some hash browns. How much is in there? That's a cup. Now, this will give it a little texture. When you're cooking those up in olive oil, by the way, it gives it a little texture. Just a little another yum factor. This is so amazing. This is like my favorite thing. It is. Let me smell it. I'll see what we need. Oh. I could just eat that if you warmed it up. Oh, but what's the final? The coup de gras is some cheese. And this is just different cheeses that we're gonna put in here. Because who doesn't like cheese with potatoes? But look what we got going on here. And I'll tell you what we're gonna go on over here is olive oil. An old timer a long time ago said this. Do not get in a hurry and do not. You don't need to see smoke in your kitchen. If there's smoke in your kitchen, you probably need a fire extinguisher. That's right. We're not gonna do anything at extreme heats. It will cook if you let it. And let me tell you this. You say, oh, that's a lot of olive oil. Well, olive oil is good for you. That's gonna help all your joints, isn't it? It is. It's gonna. OK. Olive oil. I'm sorry, you can't get enough of it. OK. Nice peppery finish. You're crazy. I love olive oil. So look at that delicious goodness right there. And I am sure that most people out there have probably made these. So now Mrs. Farmer is going to scoop up some mashed taters. Kind of make them even a little bit. And all the wonderful stuff that's in them. Now see how the frozen hash browns kind of give that a texture. And a little fun thing going on inside here. We are gonna cook these in real time. And we're gonna set them on warm in the oven. And there's a final little thing that you can do at the end to just make them. Put them over the top. I'm excited. I want to make a bunch. We could make a ton of these. We can. Eat them all day long. Oh, I'm telling you. Good snack. And there's your mashed potatoes. And again, we've got quite a bit of olive oil in here. You smell that? I smell it. I'm gonna have to try one to make sure they're good before you put them away. That'll cost you one dollar. OK, I got a dollar. I made an omelet one time. And it's just so perfect looking. And I put a lot of olive oil in. When I want, I want olive oil in my diet several times a day. I really do. You look at the Mediterranean diets and how people are really doing well with those things. So somebody said, well, you put way too much olive oil in there. Nope, no such thing in that. You put it in there and the omelet was in there in that beautiful olive oil. And it was perfect. You could move it around and turn it over just like you wanted. And that's how, to me, you make the perfect omelet. And I save the olive oil and we make you every, I could use that every day. And if you don't, if you don't have to get it up to the smoke point. Now, the smoke point on olive oil is a little bit higher than what you would think. So it is reusable oil. And if you don't get it up to that smoke point and ruin it, you can reuse it. And we have many times. We fry our chicken in olive oil. So did you see how we were using two spatulas? Teamwork. And we are, I think, a pretty good team. What do you think? I do, too. Ready to do a flip? Let's do it. Oh, look at that. That's beautiful. Oh, look at that. Looking pretty? Oh, and the hits just keep on coming. Perfect. Look at that. Oh, those look so good. Now, you don't want these like fried all the way through. You could, you could probably deep fry these. They might come apart if you're too hot. But this right here, you want it a little bit soft in the middle. Mashed potatoes in the middle. And I got the one little thing at the end. I know you do. That's just unbelievable. That's right. I think those are ready. All right. Now, what we're going to do is take those and put them in the oven on warm. Let them continue to cook a little bit. And then we got the next yummy thing coming. So now let's put three pieces of bacon in here. The skillet's already hot. We just wiped a little bit of the crumblies out. And the next tasty, wonderful thing that we're going to do involves Kwon. Is that Kwon? This is my buddy from Massachusetts. You say Kwon. I used to fish with him. And he used Kwon to catch his trout. Yeah. And he had the most interesting accent. He was the nicest guy. World War II that lost his leg. Really? Was in a land mine. His name was Herb. Herb. All right. Now, if you'll notice, this bacon is not completely cooked. We're not going to eat this bacon right now. I'm going to be making some baked beans very shortly. And I'll be using it. There's no waste here in the Farmer Kitchen household. But what did I want that for? Because this right here. Now, did we put that corn in the freezer last year? This is corn. You see, you got different colors here. A couple different batches. Anytime we had extra corn on the cob, I put it up. I'm going to do a combination of two things. We travel a lot. We meet a lot of people. And when my dad growing up. Now, dad had a regular job, but he was also a preacher. So what happens when you're a Baptist preacher? Got a lot. What do you do on Sundays? You got a lot of little get togethers. You visit. Yes. And you eat. You eat. And everybody wants to have the preacher over and fix him dinner. And I'm telling you what. You ate good. In rural Mason County, I venture to say some of the best old timey cooks I have ever been around in my life. So this is fried creamed corn. I'll eat it. Can you dig it? I can. I'm excited about that, too. So this is corn that we put up. We got this locally. It's fairly cheap. So if you had to guess, I'd say this bag of corn was what? How much? A dollar? Maybe. If that. Yeah. So what are we going to do this? Well, a little salt. Now we got some baking grease. What do you do too much? You got to have pepper. Oh, yeah. Pepper for sure. For your corn. Now, this is an old timey deal. It's very common. I'm not doing anything new here. But once that gets to go on, once that gets just a little. We're not really frying that. We're just kind of heating it up for the taste. That bacon grease. The bacon grease is an excellent start. So lots of butter. I don't remember how much butter Linda and Ruby Cole used. I said there's never too much butter. But I mean, when you're doing when you're doing corn. Oh, yeah, come on. And we don't eat this way every day. And a lot of people say one of the most common questions. And I bet you we could find one here if we tried from somebody is. Why do you not weigh more than you do? Well, this is like a special occasion cooking deal for us. A lot of times when we're running around like crazy. And through the week and we're working and we got lots of places to go and lots of things. You don't have time to cook. What do we do when we have a head of cabbage? We make cabbage soup. We've been on that for a couple of days. Cabbage soup. Now we've had I don't know how many iterations of cabbage soup. But I made one here recently. And you think about that. You can eat to your fill with cabbage. Oh, yeah. And we use some ground beef in there and maybe some tomatoes. And we made something recently. Maybe we'll have to revisit the cabbage soup thing. If ever we do a tweak on that and we find something that's really good. We'll share it with you. Cabbage, tomatoes, ground beef. There's hardly any carbs in that. That's right. So I can eat a whole pot of it. And we do. Boy, we eat that up. We eat that a lot. Yes, we do. So right here, we have three quarters of a cup. This is half and half. You can use cream, whatever you want to do. We're going to use equal parts. Anything? That's probably good. Yeah. Cornstarch and corn. Thicken it up. Let me tell you what. This is another and I have to tell the truth. This is another Lunch Lady deal. You had good Lunch Ladies, didn't you? Oh, one story. Orangeburg Elementary. Anybody who went to Orangeburg Elementary outside of Maysville, Kentucky will tell you that the cinnamon rolls in the morning, the homemade yeast cinnamon rolls. These ladies cared about the kids. We love them. They knew us by name. We knew them by name. And they would make these cinnamon rolls, Nikki, that were just, I don't know, out of this world. But you know, my grandmother who had a restaurant after they sold it and moved to Florida, she was a Lunch Lady. Were those kids lucky? Those were some lucky kids. You ready? Yep. Just kind of move it in there. I'm going to mix this around. So we're making creamy corn. We're making creamy corn. Then we're going to put the rest of that cream in there. And you could have done that in reverse. You could have put that in there. Here's the secret. Now you can do this or you cannot do this. It's up to you. If you want to do a cream corn, a homemade cream corn, her last thing that she did was put sugar in it. I wouldn't hate that. No. And I mean, that's what made her cream corn special. This was her recipe. Just try one more little bite. And she was amazing. Of course, there's already plenty of sugar, plenty of calories. That's really good. Old fashioned, old timey stuff. And I tell you what we're going to do. That's cream corn. Not only cream corn, it's fried cream corn. You turn off? Yep. I'm going to put a little pepper on top of that. A little fresh cracked pepper all across top of that. And we'll put that in the oven. Keep it warm. So it's our two sides waiting. It's our two sides. Ready to go. So we're trying to minimize cost here. Come up with some things that are really good. But really cheap. So let's go ahead and get this started. And like I said, more olive oil. We're going to turn this on a really low setting. Let that start to warm up. And we're going to take more bread crumbs. Now we're not having bread tonight. So there's our bread. So you want all these in there? Let's put a little bit at a time until it gets where you think it needs to be. We're going to put an egg. Another binding agent. Fresh chicken egg. Mushrooms are optional in this dish if you like them. I think it really adds a lot to this particular dish. I do too. Nikki likes them. I love mushrooms. Now the one thing important, the taste that we're going for here is a very particular oniony taste. I like onion powder. Not any kind of dehydrated onion is not normally my favorite thing in the world. But to get that taste on this particular recipe, I think it's important. And I don't want to put raw onion in there because to me it won't get cooked adequately this way. And there's some garlic. And there's some salt. OK, now this, again, is not anything nobody else has done. Here's our Worcestershire sauce. If you were to pronounce Worcestershire sauce phonetically, it would have a lot of syllables. And a lot of people in the UK call it Worcestershire sauce. And some people put the Worcestershire. But regardless, it's got a flavor that is just absolutely outstanding. And it involves actual little fishies. A lot of people don't know that. Really? I didn't know that. But the whole process, the whole thing was kind of an accident. And they used aged, fermented little fishies. Really? And tamarind. And it just has this wonderful, unique flavor that you need in some things. It smells good. When you combine that with a meat, oh, I smell it already. It smells really good. And the onion powder, you kind of got something special. So one more thing I'm going to do here. Anytime that I have a beef dish, a lot of times I'll put a little thyme in there, when it comes to prime rib. And even when I'm cooking a steak, I'll put some thyme in there. You do. It just adds something special. I know that seems maybe more like a chicken spice potato. We absolutely love thyme in our beef. Should we deform you a couple patties? If you want to, yes. And we'll kind of make those elongated. Here lately, you'll be noticing I fish a lot. So we use a lot of fillet knives. They actually work really well. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to take, and again, the mushrooms are optional. If you like those, we really like mushrooms. So we're going to use those. So I'm going to reach across for you and grab some of these onion rings. This is a yellow sweet onion. So we're going to take our onions. Doesn't it smell good? Onions cooking always. If you notice that a lot of the ingredients that we put into our hamburger steaks are very similar to some of the things you'd use in Salisbury steak. Same kind of seasoning profile. But how many times you go to a restaurant and want something like that? It's just that kind of day. You want to, you know, some sort of something that's just country. And this is, again, olive oil. In the end, what makes this the star? I think the gravy. It is the gravy. Using all this to cook everything. Perfect. And one of the most common things that you'll hear when you're out there and about, and people say, man, I can't make gravy. We're going to show you some inside stuff tonight. Inside secrets. A lot of the stuff that you get is so processed. When you, when you go to a restaurant, you'll get some gravy. That's, that's, you'll notice that you're, you're really like, oh, maybe I got a little indigestion. It's really highly processed. But to get that consistency and all that wonderful stuff, we're going to, we're going to give you a little insight, a little country insight tonight. So our onions are going in wonderful, healthy extra virgin olive oil. We'll put just enough mushrooms for us. And the smells already are kind of ridiculous. So we can go ahead and start seasoning this. A little pepper, a little salt. Healthy salt. This is not processed salt. It is sea salt that has not been processed and has very vital minerals in there for you. It's a little more expensive, but look up sea salts that aren't processed. You can find them and they're much better for you. So now that these are going, I'm gonna let them continue to cook. And again, we're not going crazy here on temperature. We're just not going to do it. We're going to take our beautiful piece of meat right there. I'm gonna pop that in right in the middle. Let this continue to cook around them on the sides. These are going to begin to cook. Yummy. We'll turn that temperature up just a little bit, but again, not enough to set off the smoke alarm. So that particular beef that we took was very lean. So we don't have to even drain this, but the little bit of fat that is coming out of that is going to help flavor the gravy. Oh, yeah. When you have already the wonderful taste of onions and mushrooms together, and then you have your beef in there and just that little bit of beef fat, then there's your base for your gravy. You're getting started on the right foot. Those are some big pieces we made. Oh, yeah. I hope I'm hungry. This is meant to stick to your ribs. I think so. Yeah. Our hamburger steak is beautiful. They are done. I like mine a little more rare than yours. Oh, they've got a little bit of brown on them. I'm gonna stick this in the oven. Stick that in the oven, if you will. Keep that warm. We're gonna deglaze a little beef stock. This comes together quickly. So if Mrs. Farmer, if you will make me a slurry. I will. I'm gonna go ahead and put a little garlic in here. Again, you want your gravy to be very flavorful. So we're gonna do, I don't know, a quarter tablespoon of onion powder and garlic. I'm gonna do it just a little bit of thyme, a little salt, a little pepper, and now a little more Worcestershire, if you want that. Now, there are all kinds of seasonings out there. Put your little all-purpose seasoning that you like, whatever brand name that you like, to make that depth of flavor a little bit more. And to bring up your umami, let's go ahead and put a little bouillon in there. Let's see where we're going. So most of that has reduced down, so all those flavors are there. Come back with more beef broth. We're gonna turn the temperature up. This is gonna reduce down pretty quick, so we gotta be careful. So that's got a little boiling on it. Now I'm gonna come in with a little red wine. I think it was a quarter cup in there. Don't need much. You can use red wine vinegar. You want to get that little tart taste going on in there. I'm actually coming here. I got them sitting here, so might as well use them. I'm making it fancy. Just a little bit of chives. Raul gave me this simple formula for so many things. The reduction, that is just a basic currant jelly. Just to give you that little bit of sweet. Oh, yeah. You got some good quality bouillon, some good quality broth, maybe a little red wine, and you got something magic every time. So what is it now that turns this into a beautiful gravy? Ta-da! Our slurry. So this is just beef broth and cornstarch. Watch what happens in a very short amount of time. Watch what happens almost immediately. Oh, yeah. Watch the consistency. Look what happens. Picking up the yum. Look what happens right there, immediately, right before your eyes. Did you see what happened there? Yeah, nice and thick. A little more slurry, a little more slurry. Be careful because it'll all boil off and reduce down on you. A little bit more. Let's go ahead and use it all. And look what we've got. Look what we have suddenly. We have thick, tasty, wonderful gravy. You see what happened there? We're going to plate this food up because it's ready. Let's eat. Just like that. Ms. Farmer? Wow. I can't eat it. It's too beautiful. Can I? You don't need to think about it. Look at this though first. Look at the color. You think about the processed stuff that you get out there that is just, you taste it, you know, oh my goodness, I'm going to be, I'm going to need some antacids here in a little while. This is not like that. This is so fresh and so real. Can I go ahead? I want you to do the honors. Wow. Now look at that. That is so good. Leftover mashed potatoes, corn we put up just a couple of months ago. I can't describe that. That's delicious. Ground beef. Tastes like a fancy, like a, it tastes like steak. It's a hamburger steak. It tastes like steak. Tastes like a good steak. Wow, that's delicious. Your gravy. So good. It's salty and it's got the tinge of sweet in it. It's really good. And I love the mushrooms. Oh my, Mrs. Farmer. Can I try your corn? Oh yeah. That's what it's for. I already snuck some of that. And there's our old fashioned cream corn. We got, we got butter and we got. That is really good. You had that in school? You were lucky. I think you could live on potatoes. I really do. I could live on potatoes. So I want you to have that first bite. I want you to get your little sour cream on there. That sour cream. That's, that's a great. Just remember that there's cheese. Oh wow. And everything that you like in there. I bet you, you're going to dig it deeply. What do you think? There's so many wonderful flavors in that. That is delicious. And I can taste the cheese in it. Oh, did yourself on that too. Okay, I'm having trouble. I want to eat. I do too. I really want to dive into that. So you know what, Mrs. Farmer? I looked at my watch. You know what time it is? It's been a half hour, hasn't it? Our half hour is up. That's right. So that means that we have to say goodbye. But a few things before we leave. Okay. A lot of folks come up to Mrs. Farmer when she's shopping. All the time, yes. And they say, Mrs. Farmer, where did you get that recipe for that such and such? And you say. Tim Farmer's CountryKitchen.com. And then we meet a lot of people who I'll recognize in the store or in another state. Right. I'll say, you're such and such on Facebook. We talk to her on occasion. But it's difficult to get on a page. How do you do it, Mrs. Farmer? It's difficult. You hit like. You hit like and that's it. Our half hour is up again. Sadly, we'd like to visit with you more, but we got to eat. Yes, we do. If we don't eat, we'll perish. I got one more thing I want to start saying at the end of the show. What's that? Before we say good times, good friends and good eats. What do you want to say? There's one thing that we could do to make the world better. What's that? Is we could be kind to each other out there. I agree. When you meet somebody, let's be kind to each other. It's contagious. Yes, it is. So remember, Farmer, it's all about. Good times. Good friends. And good eats. You want to dig in? I do. All right, I'm getting some more of that beef. I'm liking your corn. We have been catering for a lot of years and I wanted everything to have a specific taste. Therefore, I had to come up with my own products. My dry rub, chow chow, and our barbecue sauce are something that we use in all our catering gigs. I developed this barbecue sauce that is not the really thick syrupy stuff that you get. This has more of a natural, it's got some pepper and onion flavor. And you can actually see the particulates in there. You know, a lot of people are asking what we use our dry rub on. Now, obviously, pork and chicken are two of the more common things. Also, we've been using our corn on the cob with butter. That is wonderful. I'm telling you, this stuff with potatoes is fantastic. So 40 years in the making, Tim Farmer's Country Kitchen Dry Rub. 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