Just Add Ground Beef to Cabbage! The Skillet Supper Grandma Made Every Payday

📖 Texas Ranch Cooking (Straight from the Chuckwagon) — 428 pages, 116 recipes, 36 old ranch tricks. Link in the top comment 👇 Grandma's beef and cabbage skillet isn't its own recipe in the book, but every trick behind it is. Its closest cousins are Texas Hash, Recipe No. 055 (pages 132–133), and Picadillo Crispy Tacos, Recipe No. 057 (pages 136–137). Pages below. Most folks who cook ground beef and cabbage together in one covered pan end up with a gray, greasy, watery skillet, and it was never their fault. ⭐ WHAT YOU NEED (feeds 4, or 6 with potatoes or rice) • 1 lb ground beef • 1 small head green cabbage, cut in pieces about 1½ inches across • 2 onions, sliced thin • Salt and plenty of black pepper • Optional: 1 can tomato sauce, or 2 potatoes diced small, or ½ cup raw rice plus 1 cup water or broth • Your biggest skillet with a lid, a wooden spoon, and a can for the grease ⭐ THE 7 TRICKS (counting down) 7. A pound is plenty. Stretch it with diced potatoes or rice. [pp. 137, 132, 281, 23] 6. Brown the beef by itself, then tip the pan and leave about a spoonful of fat. [pp. 57, 133] 5. Cook two onions slowly, 12 to 15 minutes, until deep brown. [p. 57] 4. Tomato or no tomato. Neither is wrong, but if you use it, simmer it down. [p. 129] 3. Add the cabbage by the handful in your biggest skillet. [p. 273] 2. Pull it while the cabbage still has a little bite. [p. 137] 1. Fry, don't steam. No water, and the lid goes on last: "Beef first, cabbage second, lid last." [p. 133] 📄 EVERY PAGE NAMED IN THIS VIDEO • p. 23 · The line in Chuckwagon Cowboy Beans about Grandma's math and the grocery bill • p. 57 · Hamburger Steaks with Onion Gravy: brown the meat first, set it aside, cook the onions slowly in the drippings • p. 68 · Chicken & Dumplings (next video) • p. 129 · Skillet Tamale Pie: "filling too wet," simmer it down more • p. 132 · Texas Hash (No. 055): beef and rice cooked in one skillet • p. 133 · Texas Hash method: drain most of the fat, cover tightly for the rice • p. 137 · Picadillo method: diced potatoes stretch a pound of beef to feed six; filling too wet, simmer it down • p. 273 · Which pan for which job: the 12-inch skillet • p. 281 · Beans plus cornbread is a full supper • p. 303 · Freezing like a ranch wife: freeze flat, label everything THE HONEST WORDS: • Gray and watery → it steamed: the beef and cabbage went in together, or water was added • Greasy → the pan never got tipped • Crispy brown bits stuck to the bottom → not a failure, that's the cook's private reward Grandma June never had much on a payday. But she had a pound of beef, a head of cabbage, and one good skillet, and she never once let anybody leave her table hungry. Were you raised on the one-pot way too? Tell me your county in the comments. The best comment picks the next video. 👇