A Recipe from Ground Beef Cookbook (1967)

About the Recipe

It’s another Husband’s Choice! When this fun little cookbook arrived in the mail, my husband immediately grabbed it and started paging through. He’s a sucker for cranberry sauce. Not the good cranberry sauce made from scratch. Nope, my husband likes the kind in a can. The kind that this recipe seemed to be crying out for.

The end result? Holy wow was this delicious. Instead of cooking in a ketchup or bbq sauce mix, this loaf cooks in the cranberry sauce. It was juicy and the perfect combination of salty and sweet.

My only note: Don’t use a loaf pan. Use something a little bit bigger so that your pan doesn’t overflow like mine did. There’s some value to having the sauce squished against the loaf. That said, I’ll use a bigger pan next time to avoid the overflow.

Also (don’t tell my husband…) I’ll probably use the homemade stuff next time.

My husband is super supportive of my weird recipe habit. Every now and again, I let him pick the recipe out of a vintage book. Find more of his picks on the Husband’s Choice page.

About the book

Oh my goodness, this booklet is so darn cute. There are little handmade dolls on the front cover. Illustrations of the dolls take you on your ground beef culinary journey throughout the book. It feels like such a snapshot of its time. Enjoy!

The Recipe!

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef
1 cup cooked rice
1/2 cup tomato juice
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 1/2 t salt
2 cups whole cranberry sauce
1/3 cup sugar
1 T lemon juice

Directions:

Combine beef, rice, tomato juice, egg, onion and salt. Shape into loaf; put into pan. Mix remaining ingredients; pour over loaf. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Yield 6-8 servings