Part 2 - Breakfast in the EDF - Creamed Ground Beef

Armed Forces Recipe Service card number L 030 is for Creamed Ground Beef, good old SOS. Back in the day, this was the preferred something-on-toast on my ships, both when I was enlisted and when I held a commission and was responsible for feeding the crew. It is, quite simply, a cream gravy made from a flour-shortening roux, milk, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper. Once made and thickened, it was mixed with cooked ground beef and chopped onion. This was another, give it to the CSSN right out of "A" school recipe.

Oddly enough, today's sailors have grown up on Hardee's Biscuits and Gravy and would likely rather see it on the breakfast line. Yet, no recipe for sausage gravy exists in the AFRS. I've confirmed that with a retired CSCS friend, Tom French, who was, once upon a time, my recordkeeper on the USS Conolly (DD979). It appears that a modification would need to be made to AFRS card N 017, Cream Gravy to perform this culinary miracle.

Now, unless you are a cook in the Armed Services or an officer in charge of the EDF (FSO), you might not know that any recipe can be changed through the simple act of annotating the change on the appropriate card and having the Food Service Officer (FSO) sign it. To be truthful, I have no idea how you, officially, modify today's electronic recipes.

Cream gravy is another flour-shortening roux mixed with milk and thickened. This recipe omits the W-sauce and adds onion, fresh, chopped. The modification would be to take pork sausage and fry it off, add desired spices and mix, drain, and mix with the gravy. Add a biscuit (AFRS D01) and 'voila' – biscuits and gravy - uniform style.

Like the first recipe, Minced Beef, and the third, yet to come, Creamed Chipped Beef (AFRS L052), Creamed Beef is pure comfort food; a stick-to-your-ribs collection of nutrients to keep the soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or Space jockey going through the day.

I've not added this to my recipe database, mostly because I prefer sausage gravy to hamburger gravy. I'm including my wife's recipe for sausage gravy. It has considerably more flavor, using more savory sausage and pepper than the AFRS recipe for cream gravy.

So, grab a tray and some silverware and throw a couple of slices of good old white bread into the conveyor toaster. While they're spinning around the world (I hope you checked the settings), fill your plastic cup with reconstituted orange juice. Grab your toast and have the line server ladle on a cup or so of hot creamed beef atop the toast slices. Because you're young and immortal, grab 3 slices of bacon, dripping with fat, have the cook lay a sunny side up egg atop it all. Add two glasses of milk, or a cup of coffee (don't ask when it was made), and you're ready to start your day.

See you next week for Chipped Beef