If You Have Potatoes and Ground Beef, Make This Old FARM Supper Tonight

Find All my recipes in one place! Otis Granger Cook Book: https://otisgranger.com/ If you have potatoes and a pound of ground beef in the house tonight, you have supper for six. No can of soup. No box. Just those two, an onion, some milk, and one pan. This is the hamburger potato hotdish my mother made on Mondays — wash day on every farm in Iowa. It went together in twenty minutes in the morning and went in the oven at four, and at half past five there was supper for eleven. I'm Otis. Forty years of barns and estate auctions across the Midwest, and the kitchen is the last room I clear. It's in every church cookbook I find, under twenty different names. WHAT YOU NEED 2½ lb russet potatoes (5–6) 1½ lb ground beef (80/20) 1 large yellow onion 3 Tbsp flour 2½ cups whole milk, warmed ½ tsp dry mustard Salt and pepper 1 cup shredded cheddar Butter for the pan HOW 1. Slice the potatoes ⅛ inch thick. Don't rinse them — that starch thickens the gravy. 2. Brown the hamburger with the sliced onion, salt and pepper. Let it sit between stirs so it browns. 3. Spoon out the meat. Keep 3 Tbsp of the drippings in the skillet. 4. Stir 3 Tbsp flour into the drippings for a minute, then the warm milk a little at a time. Salt, pepper, dry mustard. 5. Buttered pan: potatoes (salted), meat, gravy — three times. Gravy on top. 6. 350°F, covered 1 hour. Uncovered 25–30 min, cheddar on top for the last 15, until a knife slides through and the top is golden. 7. Rest 15 minutes. Cut a square. Ground beef: 160°F. It'll be well past that by the time the potatoes are done. What did your family call this — hotdish, casserole, potato bake? And what did your mother make when the cupboard was bare? Tell me, and tell me her name. I read every one.