Unstuck Salisbury Steak

I had never heard of Salisbury steak until I started food blogging and seriously checking out food on Pinterest.  I have had a bit of a read about them on Wikipedia, that source of all knowledge that says they were developed to be a component of low-carb diets in about 1897.  I suspect they were developed to be a cheap alternative to a real steak, a bit like meatloaf.  I am a bit of a fan of the budget meal and I like mince when cooking for one so the Salisbury steak looked like a good edition to my cooking repertoire.

There are quite a few recipes out there but I liked the look of this one from Libby of Lemony Thyme, not that least because it came with mushroom gravy.  The big problem was it contained an egg which you can’t really reduce easily.  I tried to use my usual egg replacement, chia seeds but the steak would just not stick together.  But rather than throw the towel in I just went with an unstuck version.

It did mean the gravy got a bit more soaked up and not very gravy like but other than that the flavours in this recipe are fabulous.  It reminds me a bit of a good beef stroganoff as the mushroom flavours really shine through and good depth about them. What surprised me the most about the recipe is how big the flavours are given it doesn’t take that long to cook this unstuck Salisbury steak.  The flavours are the type I normally expect from casseroles that have been cooking for ages.  I think the key is to make sure the mushrooms are a lovely golden brown when you fry them.

The original recipe says to serve with mashed potato and I did because the potatoes were boiling away before I had my unsticky issues and it is a great match.  But the unstuck version would also go well with rice or some lovely buttery noodles.

To make this for one I used the following ingredients:

For the minced beef

• 130g of minced beef (ground beef)
• 1/4 of a brown onion finely diced
• 1 tbs of panko bread crumbs
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tbs of minced parsley
• 1/4 tsp of minced garlic
• 1 tsp of fried shallot (instead of dried shallot)
• a pinch of salt and pepper
• 1/2 tsp of butter

For the mushroom gravy (which won’t really be a gravy, more a sauce)

• 1/2 tsp of butter
• 55g of mushrooms, sliced (about 5-6 button mushrooms)
• 1 spring onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tsp of lemon thyme leaves (the supermarket had annoyingly sold out of ordinary thyme)
• 1/2 tbs of plain flour (all purpose)
• 1/2 a cup of beef stock
• salt and pepper to taste

I basically followed the instructions as given but where it says to form the meat mixture into a nice patty, just skip that step and chuck it all in the skillet.  Brown the mince.  this took about 8 minutes which is a bit longer than the original recipe suggests. But my stove only does medium-low and medium-high.  I went with medium-low and that as a perhaps a bit low and slow.

No changes to the gravy recipe but I found when I chucked the mince back in at the end it did soak up quite a bit of the gravy and it was more like a sauce than a separate gravy.

Preparation time is about 10 minutes and cook time was 20-25 minutes – depending on how quickly your mince browns.  The recipe has about 335 calories.