Cube Steak and Gravy, Camp Version
Freeze-dried beef, onion soup mix, and gravy in one pot over potato flakes.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 131
- protein
- 38 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 2 min
- cook
- 12 min
- total time
- 14 min
- water
- 600 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Winter / snow
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Freeze-dried cooked beef | 2 oz | strips or crumbles; jerky works if you chop it small |
|---|---|---|
| Brown gravy mix | 2 tbsp | |
| Onion soup mix | 1 tbsp | Lipton style, half a packet |
| Dried sliced mushrooms | 1/4 cup | |
| Dried minced onion | 1 tbsp | |
| Powdered milk or cream soup base | 2 tbsp | stands in for the cream of mushroom can |
| Worcestershire powder | 1 tsp | or a few drops of the liquid in a dropper bottle |
| Black pepper | 1/4 tsp | |
| Instant mashed potato flakes | 3/4 cup | |
| Olive oil or butter powder | 1 tbsp |
Method
- Bring 350 ml of water to a boil. Dump in the beef, mushrooms, and minced onion.
- Simmer five minutes on the lowest flame you can hold, stirring so nothing welds to the bottom. The meat and mushrooms need the time; the rest does not.
- Kill the heat. Stir in the gravy mix, onion soup mix, milk powder, Worcestershire, and pepper. Lid on, five minutes off the stove.
- Boil the remaining 250 ml in the same pot after you scrape the gravy into your bowl, or use a second cup. Stir potato flakes into that water until stiff.
- Pour the gravy over the potatoes. Add the oil last.
The original spends eight hours in a slow cooker turning a cheap cut fork-tender. Nothing on a stove can do that, so this recipe drops the raw steak entirely and uses freeze-dried cooked beef, which is already tender and only needs to rehydrate. The canned cream of mushroom soup becomes milk powder plus dried mushrooms, and the sliced onion becomes dried minced onion. What survives the translation is the part that carried the dish anyway: onion soup mix and brown gravy mix, both of which are already dehydrated salt-and-savory concentrate designed to make thin liquid taste like it simmered.
Order matters. Gravy mix thrown in at the start scorches on a thin titanium pot bottom, and milk powder added to boiling water clumps. Rehydrate the solids first, then take the pot off the flame before the powders go in. The potatoes are a separate step because gravy-thickened water will not hydrate flakes evenly, and you end up with dry pockets.
Packing
Two bags: beef, mushrooms, and onion in one, all the powders in another. Potato flakes in a third so you can hold them back if you want it as a stew instead. Oil rides in a dropper bottle.
Variations
- Skip the potatoes and stir the gravy into instant rice or crushed egg noodles.
- A packet of shelf-stable beef base sharpens it if your gravy mix is weak.
- Half a bouillon cube in the potato water is worth the ten seconds.
https://mealswithmaria.site/slow-cooker-cube-steak