SLUMGULLION


This is one of the recipes that my husband requested that I get from his Mother when we first got married all those years ago. It's one of his favorites and the last time I planned to make it, it occured to me that the all day simmering of the sauce could take place in the crock pot. I tried it, and I was right!

Ingredients:
generous one pound ground beef
large onion, chopped big
as many cloves of garlic as you like, quartered or so...biggish chunks (I used 8 or so last time)
a big can of tomato juice
a big can of crushed tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
about a tablespoon of chili powder
2 pounds of sturdy macaroni of some sort (Mom always used elbows, I like something bigger, I forget the name of the one I used in the photo, shells are also good)

How to:
Brown the meat, throwing in the onion and garlic when it's about half browned.
Throw this in the crock pot, then stir in everything else but the pasta.
Cook on low all day. It should cook down about 1/3 or so.
When it's nearly time to eat, cook the pasta al dente. Don't let it get too soft.
Stir the pasta into the sauce.
Dig in!

We like lots of pasta, and we like it the next day for lunch, so I always make a lot. If you want to use 1 pound of pasta, I'd use a bit less meat, and cook on high for a while so that the sauce cooks down more.

(If you don't have a crockpot, you can cook it the old fashioned way, simmering the sauce on the stove for several hours. The long slow cooking of the sauce makes a difference, don't try to hurry it....)

6 comments:

Bonnie said...

oh hooray ! it's here !! i'm going to put this on my menu for next week !!! i can't wait ! i love slumgullion !! and even better that it's a crock pot recipe !!! thanks Mom !!

Maeve's Momma said...

It's kind of like goulash. Where does the name come from?

Kath said...

Bon, you are so welcome...can't believe I had never given you this recipe...

M. M., that is a question we have asked ourselves for nearly 40 years! Research all leads back to a German root, which makes sense as hubby's Mom's Mom was German. The name came, but thankfully the recipe evolved in her family into something lovely, because some of the old recipes bearing that name and some of the etymological suppositions are less than pleasant!

Bonnie said...

Mom ... I'm going to make this on Tuesday ... how big is a 'big can' of tomato juice ?

Kath said...

So I don't have a big can of any sort of juice handy, but there is a bottle of cranberry juice in the fridge, it's about the same and it's 64 ounces. That is about 2 liters...(yes, that juicy)

Kath said...

Big cans of veggies are about 30 ounces. If you have 2 or 3 regular cans of whole or diced tomatoes, that would be fine too. Whole tomatoes I squish up as I put them in, the size of the chunks depends on your tolerance of your family.