Better Homes and Gardens Meat Cook Book

by Better Homes and Gardens

The Better Homes and Gardens Meat Cook Book (Second Edition) is organized into four distinct Meat Makes the Meal, Meals Made with Ease, Sandwiches and Salads, and Fun with Action-Meals. If meat jargon has you befuddled, check the Meat Makes the Meal section for an answer. It is essential to be able to identify, buy, and store various meat cuts. Included are charts and tips that will help. Scan the pages for meat recipes of all kinds to star in the meal, from large roasts, to ground meats and variety meats. Also look here for fish and seafood recipes, poultry and game recipes, and of course, how to make gravy and season meat. Want to carve like an expert? Just follow the step-by-step drawings and directions included. When demands on time outside the home are great, a meal that requires little preparation time is a real boon to busy homemakers. The Meals Made with Ease section features sausages, frankfurters, and canned meats, as well as leftover and "planned-over" meats. Some of the recipes have short cooking and preparation times. Others which need longer cooking are built around shopping shortcuts and a minimum of pot watching in the kitchen. Make meat salads and sandwiches the focal point of the meal with the Salads and Sandwiches section. Hot or cold sandwiches are perfect for luncheons or family suppers. When a lighter meal is the order of the day, plan the menu around a hearty salad. No matter whether it's made with meat, seafood, or poultry, it's a team that is hard to beat when served with freshly baked rolls or muffins hot from the oven and a dessert. Be inventive when planning a party and let everyone join in the food preparation with the Food Fun with Action-Meals section. Try a clambake on the beach or stay right in the backyard for a barbecue or chuck wagon dinner. Move indoors, if desired, to serve an appetizer buffet or Hawaiian luau. From simple homespun meals to lavish party fare, the Better Homes and Gardens Meat Cook Book has recipes to fit.

Genres: Cookbooks, Reference

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Better Homes and Gardens is the fourth best selling magazine in the United States. Better Homes and Gardens focuses on interests regarding homes, cooking, gardening, crafts, healthy living, decorating, and entertaining. The magazine is published 12 times per year by the Meredith Corporation. It was founded in 1922 by Edwin Meredith, who had previously been the United States Secretary of Agriculture under Woodrow Wilson.

Better Homes and Gardens is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines.

Reviews

[Jerry]

I didn’t know how different this was from the 1969 when I picked it up. It was another book from the bag of books for a quarter sale and I figured if I didn’t pick it up it was going to be trashed. This is the kind of stores most people don’t even realize is still in business because it looks abandoned from the outside (and pretty much from the inside, too) which is probably why they’re going out of business.

There are, however, several differences. My favorite recipe from the 1969 book, Perfect Fried Chicken, isn’t in this. And the series of “Action Meals” such as a clambake, barbecue, fish fry, luau, and so on, were also not here. This book focuses more on kinds of dishes, starting with the ingredient (beef, pork, lamb, veal, variety meats, ground meat, frankfurters, and so on) and continuing with kinds of dishes (appetizers, casseroles, salads, sandwiches).

It covers many of the same recipes, but with a slightly different focus and organization. The black and white photos are similar in quality but definitely have more of a sense of being vintage about them; the color photos, on the other hand, have that weird sense of almost being a colorized drawing. I don’t see any photos here that were reused in 1969.

Something I assumed was a relic of older recipes turns out not to be so. This 1965 book contains the same orange chicken, called Sunday-best Chicken Orange here and Orange-Sauced Chicken in the 1969 version. The 1969 edition does not list salt, pepper, or fat in the ingredients, but calls them out in the instructions. The Sunday-best Chicken lists all three of those ingredients in the ingredients list.

I have no sense of how or even if Better Homes & Gardens divided their books into series, or if they just haphazardly came out with new editions of each individual book. I know that I’m mixing several different styles in my collection, and end up mostly just keeping the first book I find that I like, since I’ve become used to where recipes are in it. That’s probably what I’ll do in this case as well, although reading through for this review it does seem like it’s at least as useful and fun as the one I already have.

Even if it doesn’t show you how to host a luau.

[Jerry]

I happened to be at a junk store that was doing a “bag of books for a buck” and found a whole bunch of Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks that I otherwise wouldn’t have taken a chance on. This was one, and I’m glad I did. The first recipe I made was an amazing “Perfect Fried Chicken” that involved frying it in fat in a Dutch oven for about an hour. I’ll be making this one again tomorrow.

Which reminds me, I need to take some chicken out of the freezer.

Normally, when I make a recipe I like to make enough for two or three days, because I also enjoy leftovers. Magically, there were no leftovers of this chicken, although it serendipitously turned out that I didn’t need much food the next day anyhow.

This is more than a cook book about how to make meat; it is about the meat lifestyle, what it calls “Action-meals”. So that the “American-style luau” includes notes on “setting the scene” as well as recipes that go along with the roast pork loin. One of them was “Honey-baked Bananas”. It’s bananas baked after brushing with butter, lemon juice, and honey, and it was very good. It also makes for a good breakfast the next day.

Yesterday I made “Polynesian Beef Roast”, a chuck roast marinated in pineapple juice, soy sauce, and ginger, then baked on the stovetop in a Dutch oven with onions, celery, carrots, spinach, and mushrooms. This was also very good and in fact I’m snacking on it now.

I’ve seen this book several times, and no longer remember why I considered it not worth picking up; I’m glad I finally did.

I also have bookmarked (pork) Ribs with Onion Sauce, Orange-sauced Chicken, Franks and Cabbage, and Texas-style Beans—another recipe in a section on the meat lifestyle, this time the “Chuck wagon full of western favorites” that features a Ranch Round Steak that looks to be a nice variation on chicken-fried steak with gravy.

Meat here includes beef, pork, lamb, fish, shellfish, and poultry. Action-meals are a clambake, barbeque, fish fry, chuck wagon, luau, and an evening buffet.

[David Ward]

Better Homes and Gardens Meat Cook Book by Better Homes and Gardens (Meredith Press 1965) (641.66). This cookbook is guaranteed to bring out the carnivore in the reader, though it is now somewhat dated. My rating: 7/10, finished 1984.

[Terri]

My mother kept this on her shelf for years and uses it often. I've looked for years and finally found a copy at a thrift store. We (Mom and I) use it as a reference as well as a cookbook. My younger son loves the bar-b-qued spare ribs and he doesn't like meat.

[Heather Fineisen]

My mother received an earlier edition when she got married. And this book has the best recipe for lasagna and meatballs, ever. Really.