Well, I hope you all have something exciting planned this year for St. Patrick’s Day. If not, maybe you can get crazy by making a vintage St. Patrick’s Day dinner. And I have just the thing for you to try. May I present to you…
Corned Beef Supper Snacks!
AuthorRetroRuth
From Thrifty New Tips for Grand Old Favorites, Heinz, 1932
[cooked-sharing]
Chill corned beef in can several hours, then cut in thin slices. Mash beans and combine with pickle and mustard sauce. (I didn't separate the chow chow from the sauce, I just added it all together) Spread baked bean mixture between slices of corned beef. Arrange on a platter and garnish with parsley.
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Ingredients
Directions
Chill corned beef in can several hours, then cut in thin slices. Mash beans and combine with pickle and mustard sauce. (I didn't separate the chow chow from the sauce, I just added it all together) Spread baked bean mixture between slices of corned beef. Arrange on a platter and garnish with parsley.
Notes
This recipe is from Thrifty New Tips for Grand Old Favorites that was published by Heinz in 1932. This book is basically about how to make the most out of a can of baked beans, and it does so quite spectacularly. This book is also illustrated rather than having food photos, which was a common thing for cookbooks and pamphlets in the 1920’s and 1930’s and is very fun. And I love the illustrations. In fact, the illustration of this recipe is the reason I picked this to test. At first I thought it was some sort of crazy gelatin salad, but then I realized it was actually a bread-less sandwich and I was even more intrigued. It also uses chow chow relish, which is a veggie relish that varies greatly, but basically you can use any vegetable, but most of the time I see recipes that use primarily cabbage. I see recipes for chow chow itself a lot in vintage cookbooks, but you hardly ever see recipes that use chow chow in them. I think because it is meant to be a sandwich condiment.
This is usually the part where I poke a little fun at a recipe, but I just want to say that it’s only gentle fun. I have a lot of respect for Depression food. It is right up there with recipes from the World Wars in terms of creativity and ingenuity. So if I am going to say anything about this recipe, its that I think the hook of in this recipe is coming from the ability to chill your can of corned beef and serving everything cold rather than heating it. Since refrigerators were still relatively new, the cold food trend was very big and very classy, so I think this was an attempt to fancy up some canned corned beef. And maybe sell some vegetarian beans.
Speaking of beans, I actually could not find vegetarian oven-baked beans in my local grocery store. According to the Heinz pamphlet, these are not regular baked beans, like Bush’s Baked beans in the orange can that we are all familiar with. These are a cousin of pork and beans, but obviously without the pork. They are available on Amazon, but I decided to skip that because of the cost. And because I didn’t think the taste would be too different with or without the pork. So I just went with regular pork and beans. And I also drained off most of the sauce, anyway. They were really runny.
Two kinds of chow chow!
The Crosse and Blackwell I actually did find at my local Kroger. The Mrs. Campbell’s was another Amazon find. (affiliate link) As far as I can tell, the Crosse and Blackwell is the closest to the Heinz version, but since I had both, we decided to test both.
Plus, then Alex got to do more mixing, which she was pretty excited about.
Another side note, we ended up adding onion powder instead of actual onion because our onion was moldy. Such is life.
Very, very thin slices of canned corned beef. It actually stayed together really well.
Bam. Little beef-bean sandwiches.
“What. What’s that look for. Is it awful?”
“It’s not awful. It just needs bread.”
The Verdict: Fine
These were fine. They tasted like cold, canned corned beef with a tart, vinegar-y filling. So if that’s your thing, then you will love these. The bean filling was actually quite good. It was smooth and had a good flavor from the chow chow. The mustard-y Crosse and Blackwell chow chow was better, in my opinion. The Southern style chow chow was on the sweet side and would have been better on hamburgers or hot dogs. But it wasn’t offensive. Tom never really got over the no bread thing, but Alex thought it was really cool. She ended up eating a lot of these, which I thought was interesting. She also preferred the mustard chow chow vs. the southern one. And, just for experimentation purposes, I heated one up to see the difference. I thought it was improved with heating because I’m not a fan of cold canned corned beef, but Alex and Tom preferred it cold.
Fun bonus: While we were taking photos of Tom tasting, Alex decided she wanted to add some more parsley to the platter. Until it was perfect.
Parsley forest.
I worked in Quality Assurance for the company that owned VanCamp’s up until about 1994. Vegetarian Pork & Beans are identical to Pork & Beans in formulation — minus the pork fat blob, of course. So, good call on just buying pork & beans and discarding the pork!
I am Southern, so obviously things vary regionally, but I have ONLY had chow chow on soup beans (pinto, white navy, black eyed peas), never on a sandwich. I think I have maybe seen it as a hot dog topping. The Mrs. Campbell’s would probably be best in that application.
I learnt something new today. Chow chow!
Yum! These are right up my alley! And yes, the parsley is perfect.
This doesn’t look appetizing, but I’ve definitely seen worse. I’m in the south, and chow chow is fantastic in a bowl of beans. I’m not familiar with putting it on sandwiches, though.
If I ever couldn’t get the vegetarian beans in tomato sauce, I might cry! They’re so good and so easy to doctor up into a meal.
I am a fan of cold canned baked bean sandwiches, something my French Canadian grandfather taught me. Could be worth a try substituting Spam for the corned beef in this concoction.
Interesting application of mashed beans, almost like hummus. I think maybe the vegetarian beans are similar to the baked beans we eat in the UK (I think ours are different to the standard US baked beans and I’m sure I’ve seen vintage cans where they are specifically marked as vegetarian).
Here we eat baked beans as a staple food, served as a vegetable in canteens and cafeterias in the same way that you would serve peas or boiled carrots, and also on top of various carbs (toast and baked potatoes being the commonest) as a light meal, frequently with grated cheddar sprinkled on top of the beans.
Just a quick note here, two years too late, to say that the old Heinz beans this recipe calls for are not even REMOTELY the same as Pork & Beans, IMO at least, especially the American Heinz beans. They would have been the same as the Heinz Beans now only (seemingly) sold in the UK. You can pick them up in the expat section of Publix/Kroger/FM, or a World Market.
Much different flavour than the normal Heinz beans and the Heinz Pork & Beans.
Hi! Thank you for the comment. I live in a more metro area now, so I will try and hunt some of them down to taste the difference. Thanks for the tip!
I keep thinking at some point instructions will be to heat these through before serving…..wow! I do not think I could do the cold version….
I actually invested in a luncheon meat slicer to save my fingers and religion. Will have to try this one.