How to Make Truly Decadent Hamburger Helper

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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9 Responses

  1. George Turner says:

    I have a couple boxes of Hamburger Helper beef Stroganoff, along with Kraft’s fancy beef Stroganoff which comes with a prepared sauce packet. I bought fresh cut mushrooms for them because, as I understand it, the dish is supposed to be a beef and mushrooms in a cream sauce.

    I came close to buying bison the other day. If I make another trip I still might because although it’s going to be a few dollars more, I can use the deprivation story for a lifetime.

    I also have a lot of Indian and Thai simmer-sauces and canned chicken, which makes a quick and tasty topping for rice. However, two of my favorite dishes (that I should cook more often) are Jamaican curry and chicken paprikash.

    For Jamaican curry you cut up potatoes, carrots, peppers, onions, and whatever other vegetables you have, add Jamaican curry powder (from the store’s Caribbean products shelf), and wham – tasty flavor.

    Chicken paprikash is a Hungarian chicken recipe, usually made with whole chicken thighs (which are dirt cheap).
    In a hot pan, brown the thighs and then set them aside. Brown lots of sliced onions in the same pan, then add the thighs back, add some chicken stock and paprika, and boil for 20 or 30 minutes. At the end stir in sour cream, and serve with egg noodles (German Spaetzle is common, but any noodles will do).

    I’ve made it countless times, and I realized that as a shortcut, the chicken stock and noodles can be replaced by a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. The simplest process reduces to:

    1) Brown chicken thighs (or breasts) and a whole sweet onion (sliced to make long shreds) in a hot pan, in a tablespoon or two of butter.

    2) Add water and a can of Campbell’s chicken soup, and then add 1 or 1 1/2 table spoons of paprika.

    3) boil 20 or 30 minutes until chicken is cooked through.

    4) Stir in a half cup of sour cream and heat for an additional minute to compensate for the temperature drop from the cold.

    5) serve.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to George Turner says:

      Bison ain’t bad. You will say “To think I hesitated…”

      And, for me, that’s the closest to ground beef that the store had. (Well, they also had waygu ground beef but… well, okay, I bought some but not for Hamburger Helper. That stuff went into my spaghetti sauce.)Report

  2. I have mixed feelings about your specific recipe (I prefer yellow onions over red, and it’s hard for me to cook with wine because we don’t drink wine and so we usually end up with a half a bottle in the fridge forever). But, this looks great!

    However……..I have one meal a week (Friday!) when I eat stuff that has too much sodium/added sugar/saturated fats, and I’m not too eager to “spend” that meal on hamburger helper. So tonight, I’m having a frozen pizza, some other junk food, and beer.

    (I’ll also put a plug in for just following the recipe on the box. For someone, like me, who likes all the sodium, etc., it tastes great regular and is a bit easier to make.)Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Gabriel Conroy says:

      One of the main takeaways I hope everybody has from this is something like “he didn’t follow the recipe… but used it as inspiration… hey… *I* could do that!”

      And maybe they use yellow onions instead of red and use a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup instead of cream and water instead of wine. The main goal I had for these posts is to get people to say “Hey… *I* could do that!”

      Because, seriously, it’s easy. Easy to the point where it’s even easy if you gussy it up.Report

  3. PROFESSOR ESPERANTO says:

    aw man, you ruined it with dairy 🙁 🙁 🙁Report

  4. Great piece! I love it!Report