New Recipe Challenge, Day 2: No-Peek Beef Tips

This is a recipe I've seen shared on Pinterest a lot lately and figured I'd give it a shot.  Seemed like it would nice comfort food and fairly cheap as well.

Now, before we get any farther (further?) into the recipe and the how-to portion of our evening, please note that this dish takes 3 hours to cook!  Three hours, people!  Plan ahead for this one.

This is a super easy recipe with only 4 ingredients (well, 5 if you count water)!

You will need:

• One package of stew meat or your favorite cut of beef cut into bite size chunks.  I used stew meat because its cheap.
• One packet brown gravy mix.
• One can condensed cream of mushroom soup.
• One envelope onion soup mix.
• One cup of water.  (Note:  The recipe from Pinterest says you can also use 1 cup of ginger ale or other clear cola, but I didn't have any and quite frankly that sounded weird.  So I used water.)

What to do:

1.  Heat your oven to 300°.  I adamantly refuse to use the term "pre-heat".  Line your baking dish with tin foil to make clean up easier.  Of course, you can skip that and let your dish go commando.  Just don't come bitching to me when you're stuck scrubbing the dish, you rebel.

2.  Place you meat in your dish and sprinkle with the onion soup mix.

3.  Mix the cream of mushroom soup, brown gravy mix, and water in a bowl.  Add some ground pepper while you're at it.

4.  Pour that over the meat and mix well to coat.

5.  Tightly cover the dish with tin foil.

6.  Put it in the oven and walk away.  Come back in 3 hours.  Resist the temptation to look under the foil.  

7.  After taking it out of the oven, remove the foil VERY carefully to avoid steam burns.  Serve over egg noodles, rice, or mashed potatoes.  I served it with egg noodles and broccoli.

Yeah, it really was that easy!

The verdict:  Salty.  Very, very salty.  Damn salty.  And I mention it was salty?  It was also very good and had a nice flavor once you got past the salt.  I'm sure it's the combination of brown gravy and onion soup mix that's the culprit; I would suggest trying to find low or no salt versions of one of those ingredients.  It's also possible that if you used ginger ale or clear soda in place of the water, the sugar would cut the saltiness a bit.  If you try it, let me know!  Additionally, the meat started to dry out and got a little tough as it cooled down, but that could be the cheap ass meat I bought.

Eleanor's opinion:  She ate the broccoli.  With some prompting, she ate the noodles, some of which even had (gasp!) gravy on them.  She refused to try the meat.

Cost breakdown:

Stew meat - $5.48

Can of Cream of Mushroom Soup - $0.75 (on sale)

Brown Gravy Mix - $0.50

Lipton Onion Soup Mix - $1.50 (I'm guessing.  I forget how much I paid for it.)

Total, not including noodles or broccoli:  $8.23.  Cost per person (not counting Eleanor since she didn't eat it):  $4.12.  Not too shabby, eh?

So, give this a try if you need something easy.  Just be warned about the salt level - it's a bitch.

Join me tomorrow night for day #3 of the challenge - Crock Pot Cube Steak, which I have a feeling is going to be very similar to what we had tonight.