Thrifty Tips From Wartime: Making Meat Stretch
With recipes!
I’m starting a new series: Thrifty Tips From Wartime! My goal with this series is to condense down the hundreds of tips offered in WWII-era cookbooks for us to use today. Many of these tips are baked into our American food culture already, so they might not seem all that new. But it’s worth pointing out that these ideas are tested and timeless and will still help us save money on our grocery bills.
In this post, I’m going to focus on ways we can stretch our meat in recipes. I’ll probably have more than one post on this topic, because there are a lot of great sources that talk about this. Feel free to put your own ideas for meat stretching in the comments so we can learn from each other! (I realize this won’t be helpful for vegetarians, but there’s some great information I’ve found in wartime cookbooks for protein meat replacements. If you’re interested in this, let me know!)
This post’s tips come from this WWII Westinghouse cookbook from January 1943. In this issue, they explain that the government was asking Americans to set aside 2 days from the week (one of which was Friday) to be meatless days. This didn’t mean they had to live off just vegetables, fruits, and grains. There were plenty of protein-rich options they encouraged people to try like dairy products (cottage cheese being a popular one), beans, nuts, and grains.
Save Everything
“Don’t waste a scrap. Save every little piece of meat, every spoonful of gravy. It’s surprising what you can do to make these leftovers into delicious dishes.”
If we personally examine how much food is wasted or gets thrown away in our households, imagine what meals could be made with that food! This basic tip is practical and aimed at saving food waste that could otherwise be going in our bellies.
This recipe for Meat Pie with Biscuit Topping is the perfect way to use up any random meat scraps you have in your fridge. Use your favorite biscuit recipe for the top, but I’m a fan of the wartime version from the Health for Victory books: 2 cups flour, 1 tsp. salt, 4 tsp. baking powder, 1/4 cup butter, and 3/4 c. milk. Mix together. Knead until it comes together (maximum of 10 strokes). Roll out, cut biscuits and place on parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake at 450°F for 10-12 minutes. Makes about 18 small biscuits. If using for the casserole below, bake until filling is bubbly and the biscuits are golden brown on top.
Using Cooked Meat
“Combine leftover cooked meats with spaghetti, or noodles, or rice, and make them up into curries, casseroles, creamed leftover dishes. Dress them up with green peppers, tomatoes, vegetables of various kinds.”
This tip highlights a pretty common trait of American cooking that’s been around a long time — making meat stretch by adding grains or a starch. Casseroles are the most popular by far, but I love their suggestion of curries, creamed dishes, or by adding lots of veggies. Creamed Spinach was a surprisingly delicious ration recipe I tried a couple years ago. It didn’t have any meat in it, but adding chicken and some other veggies would be amazing.
Scalloped Ham and Potatoes is a great example of using a starch to extend a meat. It also uses a cream sauce. Feel free to add 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese to the white sauce in the recipe, or sprinkle cheese on top 10 minutes before the end of baking. The dairy adds extra protein too.
Using Raw Meat
“Cereals are particularly good combined with uncooked meat to make it go further. Oatmeal, corn meal, wheat germ, cooked rice, for instance. Bread crumbs and dried beans, too. Especially when you’re making a meat loaf or meat patties. To be sure, you don’t get as much ‘first-class protein’ from these extenders as you do from the meat itself. But they do contain fair amounts of ‘second-class’ protein, and, used this way, with meat, do very well by your diet.”
Potatoburgers is one of my favorite wartime recipes! The ground beef flavors the potato and it makes for a very hearty, filling burger. You don’t even need french fries as a side. Simple, easy and delicious. And the ground beef is stretched nicely with the added potato. A recipe that wins all around!
What are your favorite ways of stretching meat in your menus?
This quote took me back to my childhood as my Mom did this. She will be 100 in 3 months and she had 8 children. Living through the Depression and WW2 informed her habits.
“Don’t waste a scrap. Save every little piece of meat, every spoonful of gravy. It’s surprising what you can do to make these leftovers into delicious dishes.”
I make "leftover soup" in my household. Grateful to have a spouse who will eat leftovers!
These are good tips. Those potatoburgers look pretty good! When you make them, what type of potato do you use? And do you par-cook the potatoes first?
One way that I think more contemporary people have of making meat stretch that probably fewer people would have been able to do in the 40's is freezing it. I know the freezer space in my current fridge is more generous even then my grandparents' was in the 80's, which was probably more spacious than their own parents' during WWII. I am grateful for the ability to buy meat on sale and save it almost indefinitely for later. And, since there are only 2 of us, I can use just a portion of a package at a time and freeze the rest.