I don’t know if I even need an intro for this one. It’s Jellied. Hamburger. Loaf.
AuthorRetroRuth
From Our Best Hamburger Recipes by Martha Logan
Tested Recipe!
[cooked-sharing]
Add salt to hamburger. Pan-fry with onion and celery until beef has lost the pink color and onions are lightly browned. Soak gelatin in water 10 minutes. Add to heated soup. Stir well. Combine all ingredients. Pour into a 8x4 inch loaf pan. Chill 2 hours or until set.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Ingredients
Directions
Add salt to hamburger. Pan-fry with onion and celery until beef has lost the pink color and onions are lightly browned. Soak gelatin in water 10 minutes. Add to heated soup. Stir well. Combine all ingredients. Pour into a 8x4 inch loaf pan. Chill 2 hours or until set.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Notes
This is another recipe chosen for us by the lovely patrons over on our Patreon. I know I mention Patreon quite a bit, but they really are the reason why I am able to keep bringing you this great content. I don’t think I would have made this on my own, so thank you to them for choosing this recipe for me and then chatting with me through the bumps in this recipe.
Bump #1: Did you know it’s really hard to find Knox gelatin right now? Even generic versions seem to be sold out all over!
Bump #2: I polled the electorate to see if they thought the recipe was referring to “condensed” canned soup or not. The overall answer was to just go for condensed.
Also: I used this as an excuse to bust out the alpha noodle soup!
Bump #3: They helped me get serious about this.
Okay, that wasn’t really a bump. I just wanted to spell something out on this mold. I tried to pour in some of the gelatinized broth and chill it before I put in the rest to get a layer with words in it, but it didn’t work!
At least I had my loaf moment.
And I think that was it for the bumps. At this point it started actually smelling really good, which was….not strange I guess. I mean, it’s basically meatloaf crumble into soup. I like both those things.
Oh, yes! Bump #4: I didn’t have lemon juice, so I subbed 1 tablespoon of vinegar and 1 tablespoon of water.
Glorp! This actually made a great slurp sound when I poured it in the bowl. Sadly, Tom is back at work so I wasn’t able to capture all the squelching.
Ready for the fridge!
I covered this with plastic wrap in the fridge, and it didn’t dry out too much. You can see there is a nice, solid gel. Probably aided by the fact that I used condensed soups.
Success! It unmolded pretty well and actually smelled pretty good. I was starting to have hope.
My “Loaf” design didn’t make it. Ah, well.
Garnished and ready for action!
Tom action.
“Do you want to know what’s in this?”
“You don’t need to tell me. I can totally smell what’s in this. It smells like a sloppy joe.”
“What do you think?”
“Interesting.”
“Is it bad?”
“Nope. Put some ketchup and mustard on this and I will eat it.”
Verdict: Sloppy Joe Alphaloaf
From The Tasting Notes –
I’m not sure if it was the vinegar or the copious amount of soup, but this tasted like cold sloppy joes. Which wasn’t a bad thing. And it makes sense, because Tom’s mom uses canned soup in her sloppy joes. So Tom was right at home with this thing. To me it also gave off taco salad vibes. Here in Michigan, if you order a taco salad it comes with cold taco meat on it, so this felt a lot like that to me. We actually ate this alphaloaf for dinner, covered with mustard and ketchup, and Alex had two slices! So it was a pretty good success at our house. I’m not sure if I’m going to make it again…because I would rather have hot sloppy joes. But if you are looking for an edible aspic for the main course, this is a good one.
It’s honestly pretty amazing that this turned out so well! Hooray for success!
Off-topic, one of my favorite things is cold taco salad with Russian or Catalina dressing on it. I suppose that dates to around the ’70s. A weird combo but I love it!
A teaspoon of salt AND two cans of salty soup? I’m not sure I could eat this without shriveling!
How much did you heat the soup to get it to dissolve? Curious how little heating I have to get away with to dissolve gelatin.
Like you and, I think, most people, I prefer my meatloaf-adjacent foods hot. I could see how this would be useful back in the days when A/C wasn’t universal, though.
Just love that little kid licking his lips!
Coming over from Instagram. Was not disappointed! LOVE the camera zooming in for the perfect chewing shot. 🙂
That was the right choice on the condensed soup. A ready-to-eat soup would be somewhere between 18-19 ounces. Plus, I’m not sure when Progresso introduced a ready-to-eat soup, but this recipe packet may be older.
Fascinating recipe, as always. 🙂
The whole idea of actually making terrifying looking mid-century recipes is brilliant, but I have to say, using alphabet soup here was especially genius.
If this is one of her best hamburger recipes, I’d hate to see her worst!
I know it’s been awhile since you posted this comment, Beth, but I wanted to thank you because it reminded me of something a friend from the past used to do. She made taco salad (always with Doritos, Nacho Cheese flavor only! lol) and she put Dorothy Lynch dressing on it. The first time she made that for dinner I thought she had lost her mind! Haha I told her that I would love to take mine before she added it, I would prefer it plain. Which is the way I had always made it, I might add sour cream or salsa, something like that on the side for each person to add as they wish, but definitely, NEVER SALAD DRESSING!! 🤢 Well, she wasn’t going for that idea (very stubborn friend), so I got the Taco Salad with the Dorothy Lynch, to say that I was apprehensive is certainly an understatement! Much to my surprise I really liked it though!! It was that sweet and salty thing, I guess. I feel like Dorothy is a pretty sweet dressing, also tangy, although I couldn’t even say when I may have last had any of it, and of course the chips are salty.
I hadn’t thought about that dish for years, at least 15, that makes me fee old! Anyway, I appreciate the reminder and now I have to make some Taco Salad!
OH, I agree with eating it cold as well! It’s definitely not something that can be reheated, so that’s really the only way to go and I enjoy it, only that next day though, it gets funky fast! lol
I’m afraid that I have to agree on that one…