Bullock's Heart.—This is an inexpensive portion of the beef, but a very tasty one when properly cooked. It should always be served on very hot dishes, both plates and platter. If you elect to roast your heart, put in a basin of warm water and let soak for an hour to draw out the blood. Wipe dry, brush with oil or butter and tie or skewer in shape. Put in well-greased bag and roast about two hours. Serve with a border of carrots sliced and fried.
Stewed Bullock's Heart.—Soak in a basin of warm water for an hour, then drain and wipe dry. Cut in halves, rub each side with flour and put in a frying pan with a little hot butter. As soon as browned, transfer to a buttered bag, adding four or five onions sliced and browned lightly in the same butter, together with a sprig of thyme and salt and pepper to season. Add a half cupful of water and cook slowly about three hours.
Filet of Beef.—Cut from the end of a tenderloin of beef, slices about 5/8 of an inch thick. Flatten down to about 3/8 of an inch and trim round. Salt lightly on both sides, dust with pepper, and lay in a little hot melted butter, flavored with a tiny scraping of garlic for an hour, turning three or four times in the meantime. Take out, put in a well-buttered bag, seal and cook twenty-five minutes. Serve on small pieces of toast that have been spread with butter and browned in a bag, pouring over them the juice of the meat that will have collected in the bag.
Hamburg Steak.—Hamburg steak, which is too often a delusion and a snare as furnished by the inexperienced cook, can be so manipulated in paper bag cookery as to emerge a very delectable and decorative dish. In the first place never telephone for hamburg steak nor buy that already chopped and mounded ostentatiously on a platter with a garnish of parsley. Naturally the butcher works up his trimmings and inferior cuts into this comparatively inexpensive and much patronized form. Having purchased your cut of round steak in the slice, its lack of natural fat must be made up by the addition of a little beef suet (preferably from the kidney). A piece of suet the size of a butter nut may be allowed to each pound of lean meat. Next, if possible, get the butcher to chop it by hand rather than by the easier-to-him method of running it through the meat grinder. Now having your good meat at home it may be prepared in any one of a half dozen ways. For the Hamburg steaks, press lightly together into cakes about the size of a chop. If onion is desired a little onion juice may be added with discretion, but for most tastes boiled onions served separately, to accompany the steak, will be found preferable, or a few rings of raw onion added to a lettuce salad. The closely packed Hamburg steak is bound to be tough and dry. Better add a beaten egg to hold the chopped meat together than press the small and delicate particles of meat compactly.
Season lightly, brush over with oil or melted butter and lay in buttered bag. Seal and roast for half an hour. Take up on a hot platter, season, add a little melted butter mixed with finely chopped parsley and serve hot with baked or mashed potatoes. A tomato sauce may go with the steaks or a brown gravy made from beef stock. A pleasant change in the appearance of Hamburg steak can be effected by shaping it to look like lamb chops. When these are bag broiled with a bit of macaroni in each end to simulate the chop bone they can be arranged to stand on a bed of parsley stacked against a pretty bowl containing tomato sauce or stewed tomato, a spoonful of which is to be served with each portion. The bed on which the chops are to rest may be mashed potato or peas, if preferred to the parsley.
Pot Roast.—While this does not eliminate washing the pot, the juices and flavor of the beef are so conserved that instead of the usual dry pot-roast it is moist and tender and so well worth the trouble.
Peel and slice a good sized onion and brown in a round bottomed iron pot with a piece of beef suet. Wash a four or five pound piece of bottom round, place in the pot without any water and brown quickly on all sides, turning it without piercing with a fork. When very brown add a small cup of water, push it back and let simmer for one hour, turning frequently. Season and cook for ten minutes longer, then place it in a well-greased bag, seal and put in a hot oven on a broiler, adding about a cupful of the liquid in which it was cooking, before sealing. Reduce the heat of the oven after ten minutes and cook an hour and a half to two hours according to size. Potatoes may be peeled and browned in the gravy left in the pot. When done, the liquid in the bag should be added to that in the pot and thickened for gravy, first skimming off the fat if too rich.
Rib Roast of Beef.—Grease the roast lightly with drippings or vegetable oil, season with pepper, but not with salt, dust lightly with flour and place in well-greased bag, seal, and place in a hot oven, at the end of fifteen minutes, reduce the heat one-half and continue cooking for half an hour longer in case of a three pound roast or for a seven pound one, a little over an hour.
Roast Round of Beef in Paper Bag.—Get three or four pounds of beef from top round, asking the butcher for a high chunky piece—not a slab—from the tenderest, juiciest part. Have him tie it up securely and add a piece of suet. Well grease the bag inside. Season and flour the meat, place a small piece of suet on top, insert in bag, fasten with paper clips, and put on a broiler in a hot oven, reducing the heat after about five minutes. Allow fifteen minutes for each pound. It will be a rich brown on the outside but rare and juicy. With an exceptionally sharp carving knife the meat should be cut in very thin, appetizingly rare and tender slices.