Ancestral Dish: Sludge? Stew? Slumgullion!
Posted: November 19, 2009 Filed under: Genealogy | Tags: Recipes 11 Comments »Yes, this workaday classic was going to be October’s Dish of the Month, but October ran away with us. Now here we are in November, when we’re all supposed to be arguing about the best way to roast the turkey.
Well, we can’t have Thanksgiving every day, my dears. On the other hand we could have slumgullion every day, if we dared.
What is slumgullion? If you’re Irish-American and you grew up in the pre-convenience food era, you probably already know.
Call it an everyday supper, if you’re feeling nice. (Which would be more than the Oxford English Dictionary can manage, but more on that later.)
My mother served slumgullion semi-regularly. There it would be in the skillet, a mess of ground beef, macaroni, and tomatoes. It couldn’t aspire to our holy trinity of beef goulash, spaghetti/meatballs and roast chicken. But it was one of those old dependables that my mom reached for (I think) on days when inspiration ran low.
Slumgullion is really just about browning an onion in oil in a skillet, adding a pound of ground beef and browning that with salt and pepper, then draining off the extra fat. Throw in a big can of tomatoes and their juice, plus water and elbow macaroni, and simmer it, covered, until the pasta cooks.
That’s all. It was Hamburger Helper before there was Hamburger Helper.
Kids, don't try slumgullion at home.
I thought everybody had slumgullion. But then my Brownie troop took a field trip to the local gas utility’s office, which had a demo kitchen and gave cooking classes. (Really!)
The test-kitchen lady demonstrated “Skillet Beef and Macaroni.” I knew it was plain old slumgullion, and I told her so.
“Really, dear?” she said, wrinkling her brow. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
To this day, I’m convinced that the test-kitchen lady was a slumgullion girl who wanted to forget where she came from.
Where did slumgullion itself come from? Well, here goes. But hark, there be nastiness ahead.
The OED says the term originally had two meanings: First: “Any cheap, nasty, washy beverage.” Second: A term for various forms of sludge.
At one point, “slumgullion” denoted fish offal of any kind. It also has meant “the watery refuse, mixed with blood and oil, which drains from blubber.” (See? Nasty.)
Later, “slumgullion” was the name for the muddy deposits at a mining sluice. And finally, it came to mean “a kind of watery hash or stew,” which, under the circumstances, is a bit of a relief.
Slumgullion doesn’t get respect, and really doesn’t earn it. Try looking it up on the recipe collection sites. It has no standards, and codifying it in a recipe feels beside the point. I’m sure some folks out there can’t stand the way my mom made it, but that’s OK; I cannot believe what other people put into their slumgullion.
Corn. Celery. Green peppers. Red peppers. Spinach. Parmesan cheese. Cold spaghetti. Ground-up leftover meats of every kind.
In fact, slumgullion seems to have been a leftover dump for many families, which probably accounts for its awful name.
Still, I like to think of slumgullion every now and then, even if I never make it. We live in an age where cooking and menu planning can be so terribly status-conscious. It is hard not to feel a pang of nostalgia for something as completely unpretentious as slumgullion, the stew named after sludge.
Mmmmmmmm.
Hi! This was always called American Chop Suey in Boston
Coming from a town of mostly Irish, and many a relatives with names like Doyle, Dorn, and O’Brian, our Mother (and God Rest Her Soul) made it, Ground Beef and Onion, Tomatoes, but no Macaroni, no it had to be sliced Potatoes. The 3 would be layered into an Pot/Pan starting with some of the Beef on the bottom. Then layers of Potato, Beef and Onion topped with Tomatoe, then Repeat, And repeat until the Pot is pretty much full, Then, top this with Crushed Corn Flakes (for a Crispy topping). One further note, if you use all of the tomatoe liquid it may end up more runny than desired. However, this whole concoction would go into the Oven and bake. If only I knew the time and temp. but what’s a ‘Guy’ to do?
Cooking never entered my life until after college, by then Fast Food was the rage and now, I long for the Old Traditional Dishes my Mother use to make.
If only I’d paid more attention to what was going on in the kitchen…
Whether this is True Slumgullion I do not know, but one name that does fit entirely is
‘Delicious’! Dad and a couple of the brothers covered it on their plates with ketchup.
This to me served only to mask the true flavor. But that’s what personal taste is all about.
They covered many of their foods in ketchup. So why not just drink the stuff on the side?
*I should add that the Tomatoes were (canned stewed) and then sliced into smaller size.
And the reason for the beef on the bottom is so that some of the oil/grease would stop it all from sticking to the pan. And being on of the chief dish washers as a kid, I appreciated that little fact!
I am a 73 year old Okie and my mother cooked this dish pretty much the way you described it. It was easy, cheap and good. I am not sure where she came up with the recipe as she was from a farm family of mixed descent including Cherokee. The only thing I am sure of, it was not a traditional Cherokee dish.
I love all these names- I’m so impressed that I’ve been making this dish for +50 years (have yet to buy one of those horrible things called “hamburger helper”) My husband, who is of East European descent calls this creation “Shemoya” (have no idea how to spell it!) – I know it as Slumgullion, but my version has no tomatoes or macaroni – that’s another dish entirely!. I make it with ground beef, chopped onions & garlic and thicken the whole mess with some kind of sauce – maybe its cream of mushroom soup, or maybe its cornstarch thickened potato water jazzed up with beef stock flavoring. Usually we have this served over mashed potatoes, but it works with rice or pasta too. It is my favorite way to cook ground beef …………..
I grew up on slumgullion. But it was handed down from my Bohemian Great Grandmother. My mothers family was Irish and they never had it. Ours was made very similar to yours and I still make it today. It is a great staple in a hurry. Other than my family I have never heard it called slumgullion. Most people I know call it Goulash . So imagine my surprise when after being married 30 years a Hungarian friend of ours invited us to their camp for a dish of Slumgullion. And it was made just the way I had grown up with. And now I find your website and many others with recipes for it. I agree some of the additions don’t tempt me but I still like the basic form of it. Thanks for sharing.
Juanita my family was of Czech origin and we lived in a Slovenia area of Cleveland, Ohio and my grandma born in 1919 always called it slumguillion..my husband was Irish and never heard of it..later in life I heard it called Marcaroni Creole and after we moved to southeastern Ohio they served it at school and my kids called it Johnny Marzetti perhaps it’s suggested because of the Ohio based Marzetti Company. I always related to a Bohemian origin
I think depending on where you grew up, it’s called something else. I never grew up with this dish, but when I met my husband, his family called it Dog Food.
My grandmother (O’Brien) called it “Chalmayne” and made it similarly (it had to be Creamettes, but cooked separately). My mom pronounced it “CHALL-min” which always sounded like a mispronunciation of “Chow mein.” I never found that name anywhere else. My wife’s mother made it your way, but called it SM&B. We still make it a couple times a month. I thought it would be funny to sell “Slumgullion Helper” and the box would be empty and you’d have to add everything yourself and follow the directions on the back.
LOL, Paul! Or there’d be a note in the box saying “What’d you expect, HELP or something?!”
Brilliant post about a dish I haven’t thought about in years. Sludge. Nice.
Thanks! I guess I should also apologize for making you think about it again, though.