Blubber Chicken and Middle-Class Pie

Hello, everybody—nice seeing you again.

I was reading a social history of housework, because that's the kind of thing I do for fun, and in the chapter on cooking the author said that now that a whole generation has grown up eating Hamburger Helper, that's what Americans think home cooking is. They associate a good, home-cooked meal with Mom dumping the contents of a box into a pan and mushing it up with some ground beef. This made me feel very un-American, because I'd never eaten Hamburger Helper in my life. Then one night I happened to have a pound of ground beef in the Kelvinator, and it was a night Sluggo wasn't going to be home for dinner, so I decided to experiment. I walked to the store and, mirabile dictu, Hamburger Helper was on sale that week. There were a lot of flavors; I hadn't expected that. I didn't know which was the correct, all-American flavor to get, but there were empty spaces on the shelf so I figured probably the "regular" flavor was already sold out. I wanted to do my experiment, but I wasn't so committed to it that I was willing to get a raincheck and another pound of ground beef the following week, so I finally chose "Oriental" because its name seemed more politically incorrect, and therefore more all-American, than "Stroganoff."

Well, it was dreadful. The predominant flavor was salt, apparently as an attempt to disguise the bizarre chemical flavors of the other ingredients. I like salt—I sometimes snack on sea salt straight from the box—but Hamburger Helper was too salty for me. I am sorry for the Americans who eat this stuff, but on the other hand I'm not a foodie, either. Foodie food is peculiar in its own way. For instance, foodies are responsible for blubber chicken. For hundreds of years, American cookbooks have advised folks to roast a chicken by letting it sit in a 350-degree oven for an hour or two, depending on the weight of the bird. It was delicious, and it was fool-proof—but unfortunately it wasn’t foodie-proof. Pick up any new-fangled foodie cookbook, and you’ll discover that you should be putting your chicken in a 500-degree oven for a while, and then lowering the temperature for another while, and then you will wind up with a nasty, undercooked, blubbery bird which apparently you are supposed to pretend to enjoy because if you don’t you are an unsophisticated rube who only wants your food to taste good.

I tried the new, improved, emperors-new-clothes chicken-roasting recipe, and when I ended up with blubber chicken I thought I’d done something wrong. When I tried it again, with the same result, I thought maybe my 1925 oven just wasn’t up to baking something at 500 degrees. But then we went for dinner at the home of a card-carrying foodie, who proudly served us blubber chicken from her zillion-dollar fancy imported European oven, and I realized it wasn’t me, it was them. Or rather, it WAS me, it’s that I’m an unsophisticated rube who only wants my food to taste good. How gauche is that?

The last straw was probably the pie contest at my day job. Every so often our office has these little competitions that are supposed to help morale or something, and a few weeks ago they had a pie-baking contest. Or at least I thought it was a baking contest. I am the little queen of Iowa pie. My Grammy Carlton taught me how to make a pie crust, and I yield to no one in my shao-lin pie skills. So I stayed up until midnight the night before the contest, baking Sluggo’s favorite apple-cranberry-walnut pie with local baking apples (Ida Reds, mostly) from the farmer’s market in our village. There were 9 pies entered the following day—and every one but mine had a boughten crust. One woman brought an entire boughten pie, still in the bakery box. The fillings were various things dumped out of cans or reconstituted from packaged powders—those pies weren’t baked, they were compiled. I felt like I’d been misled, and I made a little fuss about being the only person who’d actually baked anything. (“You see,” Sluggo says, “this is why they shun you at work.”) Everything else was so sweet it made my teeth hurt, and of course eating a bite of caramel-sludge-chocolate-waxy-chip-glop and then following it with a bite of apple pie with a tart cranberry in it was like eating a piece of candy and then drinking a nice glass of grapefruit juice. My pie didn’t even come in third. Of course I hate to lose, but I hate it even more when I’m not even playing the same game.

Clearly my tastes are too snooty for Americans, and too low-brow for foodies, so I guess I’m just a middle-class cook. But I’m staying home from work on Wednesday to bake apple-cranberry-walnut pies for Thanksgiving dinner, and when we eat them I will give thanks that at least I know what tastes good.

Thanks for reading my blog post this week, and have a happy Xgiving.

Comments

[Pete]

What, you're not going to tell us the name of the book?

[Trish]

I don't think of any cooking as being higher or lower, but a different spectral range of cooking.
And that apple-cranberry-walnut sounds very tasty that would be better matched in a race with a strawberry-rhubarb pie and a huckleberry/blueberry crumble.

Given the range of competition you described, I'd have bet on a pizza pie!

[Listener Paul]

Wow, can I identify! I might like being a foody, but I live in rural Arkansas, so that just isn't happening--there isn't a single recipe in the New Basics cookbook where I can get all the ingredients at the local Kroger.

I've never eaten Hamburger Helper either. Though I've eaten some Zatarains mixes, and they are salty. I do like Dinty Moore Beef stew, however.

So, I guess I too am a middle-class cook. I like making things from scratch, and feel morally superior to those who make things out of a box.

[joe]

Your pie story brought back painful/funny memories of the first office potluck I attended at one job. I worked my butt off the night before making an elaborate vegetable dish only to find out the next day that most everyone else brought in giant tubs of WalMart macaroni salad or a single loaf of Italian bread. One person off-handedly mentioned to me afterwards that they would never bring anything good to an office potluck.

[evan]

Any hope of us ever seeing that pie recipe, Ms. Firecracker? (please, please, please!)

[Nick the Bard]

Cheeseburger Macaroni/Bacon Cheeseburger is probably the closest to "regular" flavor Hamburger Helper has. Oriental I've never heard of, but Stroganoff is like, the God flavor of HH, especially after it's been in the fridge over night, then somewhat warmed in the microwave.

If you try Three Cheese, use ground turkey instead of ground beef though, it's worlds better.

The Sloppy Joe flavor was a joke though, you put the sloppy joe mix over flavorless cornbread, bleh. Only place I ever saw it was the Hostess store too.

[oh please - boo hoo]

middle class? I thought you were dead broke almost homeless?

Americans do not occupy New York. they live a little more towards the middle. like in IOWA.

[LUKEY from ozz]

We've got "Dinna Winna" (Dinner Winner)in oztralia.You guys know that one ? If not, very yucky indeed and probably the same product ,same company in a different box.What was that old rice helper called ? Ricey Rizzo ....
p.s. chill david , people were maybe a little enthusiastic at defending one of their favourite bloggers.Its over.
Maybe.

[Pseu Braun]

Growing up as a latchkey kid in a single-parent dwelling, we learned how to stretch a food stamp. Hambuger Helper twice a week, with leftovers for the next night. As a 12 year-old, I was responsible for preparing the meal before my Mother got home from work. Once, trying to balance the heavy skillet I dumped half of the bubbling contents onto my bare thigh causing a second degree burn and a giant white scar that stayed there almost a year.
My favorite though, was creamy Tuna Helper night, and looking back it was an ingenious way to share a 6 and 1/2 ounce can of tuna between two people.
xoxo
Pseu

[Janey Yonkers]

Dear oh please, what's your problem? Even poor people have to eat. Don't you think she's being sarcastic to call her taste middle class? Though you are right about Americans not living in New York. But what makes you think she lives there? Isn't WFMU from New Jersey?

[bleev]

the problem with modern chicken cooking, is that it is more important to be safe from salmonella, and then safe from the evil fats. having it taste good comes in a distant third.

[Listener Paul]

Actually, the problem with modern chicken cooking is modern chickens. They aren't really food.

[Ian]

I've only had Hamburger Helper once -- the cheeseburger macaroni kind -- and that was at someone else's house when I was four. I can't remember if I enjoyed it or not, but how un-American of me to have never had it again!

Your pie sounds utterly scrumptious, though!

[Michael]

Has anyone tried the "mock apple pie" recipe on the back of a Ritz Cracker's box? It always intrigued me...mashed up crackers replacing actual apples.

[DMcK]

Besides Stroganoff, The other "good" HH flava would be Salisbury; that awful phony cheese stuff that most HH varieties seem to rely on is pretty inedible. In my experience, so-called "oriental" flavors in ANY kind of shortcut meal thingy, boxed or frozen, are always nauseating, headache-inducing disasters.

[DisGus]

“You see,” Sluggo says, “this is why they shun you at work.”

That Sluggo is one funny character.

[buckeye girl]

I've eaten many a Hamburger Helper. There used to be this kind called Pizza or something and it was made with wagon wheel pasta and the salt powder stuff would get all gelled up in the spokes. MmM...Delicious.

I usually have some in the house, and on nights when my husband works late and I just need to eat something, anything, I make it. I eat half that day, and half lightly warmed up in the microwave just like nick the bard said.

Other guilty pleasures: Sweet Sue chicken and dumplings. Chef Boy-ar-dee pizza in a box.