Dr. Martin's Mix



picture of Dr. Martin's Mix

This is one of the immortal, beloved recipes from the original, groundbreaking I Hate to Cook Book (1960) by Ruth Eleanor "Peg" Bracken (1918 - 2007), author of breezy, culturally subversive books starting with the aforementioned volume that asked "Suppose a cookbook emphasised ease of preparation?", and broke all sales records when it turned out the answer was "Heck, yes." Being a counterculture figure before it was cool to be one, she lived in what was later the hippie haven of Bolinas, California.

Her most-famous book, the one cited, almost didn't get published, because six publishing firms' acquisition editors summarily turned down any attempt to make cooking easy, on grounds that "women regard cooking as sacred" and would never buy it. The seventh was a female editor at Harcourt Brace, who joyfully picked it up, and it then sold three million copies in the 1960s alone, and keeps on going.

Yields:

4-5 servings

Time Required:

Ingredients:

Preparation:

Crumble pork sausage (hamburger will do, but pork is better) into a skillet, and brown it. Pour off a little of the fat. Then add other ingredients.

Cover, and simmer at the lowest possible heat for an hour.

Cook's Notes:

As with every other Peg Bracken recipe I've tried, Dr. Martin's Mix is not only a crowd-pleaser as written, but also is incredibly tolerant of substitutions and modifications: Don't have bell peppers or celery? No problem; put in a little more of something else. Add some chiles, some chopped carrots, green beans, whatever? Fine. Have only ground turkey? Still works great. Have only yellow or white onions and not scallions? No sweat. Does leaving in all of the fat hurt it? Not at all. (I prefer that, personally.) Is subbing-in bone broth for the bouillon OK? Even if it's beef, not chicken? And that weird rice mix you got as a gift? Sure thing; all fine.

Double it, quadruple it; it remains fantastic. Thank you, Peg. You were a champ.

For the bouillon, I normally use Summit Hill Foods's "Better Than Bouillon Base" paste, dissolved in hot tap water. It's fairly high quality, available in large 8 oz. jars, and (the main point) a heck of a lot better than any bouillon cubes. Flavours offered include roasted chicken, roasted beef, turkey, ham, and vegetable.

About the term "pork sausage": 64 years later, I'm not completely sure what the term meant in 1960, but ground pork suits perfectly. Also, just in case you hadn't realized this, grinding de-boned meat in your food processor, just before use, is the intelligent alternative to buying store-packaged ground meat: Your ground meat can be of higher quality, have far-lower chance of contamination, be fresher, and almost certainly be cheaper. Peg didn't have a food processor back in 1960, but they really can make life better, when you remember their ability to do so.

With fond regret, I omitted Peg Bracken's, brief, witty comments accompanying this recipe as originally published, to avoid even de-minimus copyright violation. So: Buy the book, folks. It's endlessly useful, and amusing.

Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/dr-martins-mix.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on Mar. 20, 2024. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!

(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2024 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. The image file (photograph) was taken on March 20, 2024, also by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work (including the image file). This work is published from: United States of America.)