I’ve said it many times before in the past, but I want to reiterate — this blog is about more than just recipes. I want to share my stories of cooking and food, and sometimes that means failure (or, in this case, near failure).
The story begins with my craving for cream chipped beef, one of my favorites. It’s quick, it’s simple, it doesn’t use a lot of ingredients. What more could you ask for? Well, the problem with a simple recipe is that even if a single element is not there, the whole thing falls apart. Unfortunately, we were already invested and hungry when we began so we had to make it work.
We didn’t have the milk. One of the most important parts.
Well, we scrounged about the kitchen, looking for anything we could to replace it. We managed to find about half the amount of milk we needed in powder form. Trying to be optimistic, we used it, but it totally didn’t work. All we got was a strong flour taste. Gross.
We were prepared to give up, but I did keep trying. We added more butter, but that didnt seem to help. Then I got creative. My cooking logic told me we needed some form of dairy to replce the milk flavor, so I dumped in some Parmesan. This improved it slightly, but it wasn’t enough. I threw caution to the wind and threw in some dollops of sour cream. The all or nothing technique worked, much to my surprise. Of course, it didn’t taste exactly the same, but with the addition of the beef and copious amounts of salt and pepper it was good enough.
So with perseverance, I managed to make the most of a bad situation.
English Major Eats 