Actually, American Chop Suey is nothing like Chinese Chop Suey, which is what your recipe is. American Chop Suey is a New England dish with ground beef, spaghetti sauce or tomato sauce, chopped onions/celery and usually elbow macaroni. It's usually served with a kitchen (chopped) salad and a couple of slices of white bread and butter.

Thanks for reminding me, I'll have to make it, it's a great comfort food for me.

momj47 is absolutely correct. I tried recipe after recipe until I found the perfect concoction that I remember from my childhood growing up in Maine. Marjorie Standish in her Downeast Cooking (1969) has it to perfection. I will happily type up the recipe if you are interested........ ground beef, tomato soup (undiluted) a bit of onion and elbows and it is done!

Alexa

Ashley loves chop suey, I've always made it with round steak because I grow my own beef and round is something I don't use much of. I saute the onions and celery in the pressure cooker, add the beef and some broth. Cook 20 minutes so beef is tender. Remove the lid, add a can of chop suey vegeetables and the soy sauce. Ashley likes me to stir in some cornstarch slurry to make it a bit thicker, I've never added molasses but it's a good idea.

Served over rice, with those crunchy chow mein noodles.

Gloria, yours sounds a lot like mine, but mine is in the pressure cooker!

And that "American Chop Suey"? That's strictly regional, here if you mix burger, tomatoes, onions, macaroni, you get goulash. The concoction Gloria described is American Chop Suey here.

Annie

Rusty -
The first time I made this - I added the celery in the first step but everything turned to mush. I don't mind the garlic and onions disintegrating because they still add flavor to the broth. I only use a little soy sauce in the first step and the chicken or beef base takes the place of salt so use as you would use salt.

I think it is the bead molasses that add the sweetness that the grandkids love! It is a different kind of chop suey and you won't find it anywhere except at home. My brother eats out a lot - but, has never come across a chop suey like mom used to make!!

Generally, use twice as much soy to bead molasses.

The crew (nine of us) will be here for supper tomorrow. I think I'll get a head start and cook the pork steaks today.

Rusty - where do you think our mothers got this recipe? Good Housekeeping or Betty Crocker? I'll have to look up some old cookbooks.
If you come across a recipe - let me know.

I'm thrilled you remember 'chop suey' like this.

-gloria

Found this in mother's old cookbook and remembeered eating it in the 60's I made it and it sure is a blast from the past, tastes just like I remember it!

ATOMIC CHOP SUEY

1 Pound Ground Beef
1 Medium Onion, finely minced
2 Cloves Garlic, minced
1 Can Cream of Celery Soup
1 Can Cream of Chicken Soup
1 Cup Boiling Water
3 Cans Mixed Oriental Vegetables, drained
� Cup Soy Sauce
Salt and Pepper to taste
Cooked White Rice

In a large skillet, brown the Hamburger, add Onions and Garlic, cook until Onion is translucent. Add the Soups and the Water, stir to create sauce. Add Soy Sauce. Stir in Vegetables and reheat slowly, you don�t want to over cook the Vegetables. Taste to correct seasonings. Serve with White Rice and additional Soy Sauce. Garnish with Chow Mein Noodles.

Soy Sauce should say 1/4 cup, not the symbol that comes up.

Steve

That American Chop Suey with tomato sauce? I am unfamiliar with that version. But it sounds like the recipe that was on the box of Creamettes cut spaghetti or maybe it was on the tomato soup can. You browned the beef and onions, add a can of tomato soup, the macaroni and some water. I think it was called hamburger tomato hotdish here in Minnesota.

The chop suey I am familiar with is in a brown sauce that is similar to chow mein sauce.

Now I'm dreaming of chow mein from the Nankin restaurant. It was a must visit destination for people who travelled to Minneapolis. It opened in 1919 and closed in 1999. Every once in a while there will be an article or blurb in the newspaper about it. The most recent was July 2010. Apparently there is another restaurant that has now duplicated the Nankin's famous chicken subgum chow mein. The restaurant sold postcards and souveniers. The place was so nostalgic that it has it's own Facebook page.

My last taste of their pork chop suey was the day before they closed. (sigh)

Same in the South, as Annie said:

"And that 'American Chop Suey'? That's strictly regional, here if you mix burger, tomatoes, onions, macaroni, you get goulash. The concoction Gloria described is American Chop Suey here."

This was my mother's recipe from that era. Then subsequent recipes from cookbooks from that era. -Grainlady

Ground Beef Chop Suey

2 c. celery, thin slices
1/2 c. onion, sliced
1 lb. ground beef
1 T. fat or oil
2 T. cornstarch
1-1/2 c. water (or water from sprouts)
1 beef bouillon cube
1/4 c. soy sauce
1 16-oz. can bean sprouts
Chow Mein Noodles

Cook celery, onion and ground beef in hot fat in large frypan about 5 minutes until meat begins to brown.

Blend cornstarch with water and stir into beef mixture. Add bouillon cube and soy sauce.

Cook stirring constantly, until sauce is thickened and clear. Do not boil. Stir in bean sprouts. Cook, uncovered about 3 minutes.

Serve on rice or Chow Mein Noodles.
------------------------------------------

Chicken Chow Mein
(Betty Crocker NEW Picture Cook Book - 1961)

1/4 c. vegetable oil
1 t. salt
1/4 t. pepper
2 c. sliced Chinese cabbage
3 c. thinly sliced celery
1 can (1-lb.) bean sprouts, drained
1 can (4-oz.) water chestnuts, sliced
2 t. sugar
2 c. chicken broth or water
2-1/2 T. cornstarch
1/4 c. cold water
1/4 c. soy sauce
2 cups sliced cooked chicken, cut in slivers
chow mein noodles

Heat oil, salt and pepper in deep skillet. Add cabbage, celery, bean sprouts, water chestnuts and sugar. Stir in chicken broth; cook about 10-minutes. Blend cornstarch, water and soy sauce. Add to the vegetable mixture and stir until mixture thickens. Add chicken. Heat thorough. Serve over hot chow mein noodles. Serves 4-6 servings. For Chicken Chop Suey serve on cooked white rice.
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Chow Mein
(source: More Heart of the Home Recipes - Favorites from Capper's Weekly)

1-pound veal, pork, chicken or beef, chopped or ground
1/2 c. fat
2 c. water
2 c. diced celery
1/2 c. onion, chopped
2 T cornstarch
1 c. bean sprouts
2 T. soy sauce

Fry meat for 5 minutes in hot fat in electric frypan or skilled. (If using pork or ground beef, fry in own fat.) Add water and let simmer. Add celery and onion and cook for 10-minutes. Dissolve cornstarch in small amount of water and add to mixture. Add bean sprouts, soy sauce, and simmer until flavors are blended and ingredients tender, but ont over done. Serve over Chinese noodles or boiled rice. Makes four large servings or six average servings.

Recipe sent in by:
Mrs. L. D. Stoltenberg
Naper, Nebraska
Capper's Weekly Leaflet, 1961

American chop suey, American goulash ( as differing from Hungarian goulash) and Johnny Marzotti are pretty much all the same...macaroni, ground beef, onions, tomatoes in some form and often cheese....either cooked stove top or baked.
Chop Suey as made by Americans is something different.
My mother made it with thinly sliced raw pork...or leftover chicken...in which case it was called "chicken chop suey". In 1944 you didn't go get "Chinese takeout"...you went and picked up some "chicken chop suey" and listened once again to the tale about the time my grandmother's friend found the cooked cockroach in her chop suey. So mostly my mother cooked her own.
She sauteed the thin slices of pork in some sort of grease....since it was before you could easily get vegetable oil and during the war or soon after, it was probably bacon fat....(ugh)...later Crisco.
The meat and lots of celery and onion were sauteed together until the meat was done, then about a cup of water with 2 teaspoons of cornstarch mixed in was added to the pan and a crumbled chicken Herb-ox boullion cube added and a few drops of Kitchen Bouquet. A can of bean sprouts was opened drained and rinsed and added and the whole was served over white rice....with soy sauce on the side....
And if things were flush, there would be a packet of Chow Mein noodles for the top.
It was very inportant to cut the celery on the bias so the slices would look a little more authentic.
No wonder I never liked the stuff!

Tomato-based "American Chop Suey"...

Source: The American Century Cookbook (The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century) by Jean Anderson

...Of course "real" chop suey is American, too, a 19th century creation, it's said, of the Chinese who cooked for men laying track for the Pacific Railroad.

This altogether different, 20th century chop suey enjoyed a certain faddishness in the teens and '20s. This recipe is reprinted from the "Larkin Housewives' Cook Book (1915):

Cook one-half package of Larkin Short-Cut Macaroni in boiling salted water for twenty minutes. While this is cooking put two onions and one-half pound of round steak through a Larkin Food-Chopper. Brown in a hot pan with a piece of butter or beef drippings. Drain water from macaroni, add one can of Larkin Tomatoes, season with Larkin Salt and Pepper, then add stead and onions and cook slowly for 30-minutes. Serve piping hot.

-Grainlady

lindac -
LOL about that celery! That's the one thing I didn't like in the chop suey.
Thank goodness she cut them large enough (and on the bias) so that I could push them to the side of my plate.

After looking at all the recipes posted above - no one has mentioned bead molasses except rusty. This is the 'secret ingredient' to the flavor I remember from childhood. Not regular molasses, although that might not be bad. It should be "Chinese Bead Molasses" sold in a small jar in the oriental food section of any supermarket.

My DIL called to remind me that the kids will be looking for the baby corn in the chop suey. I forgot all about adding that. I don't think it was in my mom's recipe but I must've added it one time and that's what the kids remember. Time to get some baby corn.

'bye

I remember the hamburger/tomato/macaroni concoction as "ghoulash" also.

Here is my grandmother's recipe and what I knew as chop suey as a kid. I remember making this decades ago when my kids were little!

Mock Chop Suey

1/2 lb rice
1/2 c chopped celery
1/4 c chopped onion
2 cans mushrooms & juice
1 c tomato juice
1 lb hamburger

Cook rice, add onion, celery, mushrooms & tomato juice. Fry hamburger and add to casserole. Bake at 350F for 45 minutes or until celery is tender.

Linda

Back in the 50's, my mom used to make what she called Chow Mein. She saute diagonally sliced celery and slivered onions in oil, then added cut up leftover roast pork and pork gravy, a can of La Choy or Chun King vegetables and sauce (they cam in two separate cans taped together, along with a small can of fried noodles). Then she'd add soy sauce, heat it up, and serve over cooked rice. For some strange reason, she always sprinkled the top with a chopped hard boiled egg before adding the fried noodles.

She never made it with raw meat, always leftover cooked pork, and I don't know if she added molasses or not. Although I liked it when I was a child, I have never tried to duplicate it and she never had a recipe for it in her files.

Yes, Gloria, bead molasses IS the 'secret ingredient'.

Your comment about the source for the recipe got me to thinking.
To the best of my knowledge,
my mother hardly ever used a cookbook for her main dishes.
But I do have one of the only 2 cookbooks she owned.
It is the "Chicago Evening American Cookbook".
Can't find a date in it.

It does have a recipe for "Chop Suey"
(no 'American' in the recipe title)
Ingredients called for:
1 lb round steak
1 stalk celery
3 large green peppers
3 to 4 onions
1 can tomatoes.

It says to serve with rice or mashed potatoes.

My mother never made anyting even similar to that.

So much of her cooking depended strictly on what we had.
So I do now wonder about the chop suey,
We certainly didn't raise water chestnuts or bamboo shoots.
Celery, either for that matter.
Her chop suey recipe had to have been a carry over,
From a time before we moved from a big city to a farm.

We didn't call her dish "American" Chop Suey,
Just plain "Chop Suey".

The dishes mentioned here calling for tomatoes are what we used to know
(and still know) as "Goulash".
Basically different variations of ground beef, onion, garlic, tomatoes and elbo macaroni.
Seasonings and other ingredients added, (or not)
depending on what was on hand, or what sounded good.

And now I'm hungry for some of my Mother's Chop Suey. .

Rusty

I've never heard of bead molasses. How is it different from regular molasses?

It's amazing what Amazon sells...... I had never heard of bead Molasses either, but a google search turned up several sources

Here is a link that might be useful: bead molasses

caliloo - That is exactly the bead molasses that I use. No need to get it from Amazon because most grocery stores have the same thing.
You would only use a couple Tblsp. at a time.

rusty - You are so right! My mom just called it 'Chop Suey' - not American Chop Suey. I think I added American because that's how my brother referred to it.

I googled 'recipes that use bead molasses' and Cooks.com has several
recipes for chop suey that sound like what I remember.

Some of the kids just came over - so I've got to go. This is a 'remember the good 'ol' days' type of recipe.

Thanks to all for your input.

- gloria

angelaid - I really don't know the difference between bead and regular molasses. Perhaps it's in the technique or way it is made -- or in the type of sugar used.

Maybe someone else can answer that question.

Sorry I couldn't help.

-gloria

The main ingredient in American style Chop Suey is Bead Molasses but instead of thickening with cornstarch try breaking up Ginger Snap cookies to the sauce adding a subtle flavor that also thickens the sauce.

I went to the Asian Market in Ann Arbor and bought bead molasses. I opened the jar and tasted it. It tastes just like.......dark molasses, LOL.

I opened my jar of Brer Rabbit and tasted it. It tasted like the bead molasses but it was thicker.

So, the only difference I can tell in the two, side by side, on my finger with no other flavors to interfere, is texture!

Annie

One of my favorite dishes growing up. We always used regular old molasses. Made it with pork steak and called it 'Chow Mein'. Chop Suey was something similar with the distinction of being served over rice in my family. We always ate it with the fried noodles.

I'm sure that I've seen Bead Molasses in Big Lots. Almost all grocery stores stock it in the Asian food section. But since we always used molasses, I've never had reason to buy it but have been curious about the difference. Thank you, Annie, for doing that taste test!

Our recipe for ACS is the same as Alexa's and it is really, really good (and so simple it's embarassing, lol).

It's interesting to look at all the food misnomers out there and thinking about how it probably got started. I'd bet someone started calling a macaroni hotdish chop suey because they didn't like "Chinese food" but wanted to participate in the fad and they'd eat that. Goulash is a wonderful stew but also implies a mushy slop so I can see how that was assigned to it too. Fer cryin out loud, when I went to school they called sloppy joes "BBQ Beef on a Bun"! Pitmasters would choke on that one!

I've given up and figure if ya can't beat, em join em. I now call fresh fried Walleye "Lutefisk". I'm going to get people used to it and wait for my Texas cousin to come up for a Lutefisk dinner in the church basement! hehehe

Cynic, you are just bad. ROFL In a good way, of course. (grin)

Like you, when I was in school a sloppy joe was called a "BBQ" or a "BBQ sandwich".

Annie

To me - another big misnomer is - "pigs-in-a-blanket". That was and still is "cabbage rolls" to me. My kids, however, are confused when I say I'm making pigs-in-a-blanket. They think it is the small hot dog wrapped in a bun.

"They think it is the small hot dog wrapped in a bun."

That's what I always thought it was.
Never heard of stuffed cabbage called that.

Annie1992, thanks for the 'taste test' of the molasses.

I had no idea what the difference was.
I just know my Mother used Bead molasses in her 'Chop Suey'.
So I did, too.
No one here carries it anymore,
But now, thanks to you,
I know I can use just plain ol' molasses.

Learn something new every day!

Rusty

Rusty -
It's an interpretation for the ethnic term for Hungarian, Polish, Lithuanian, etc. cabbage rolls - golumbki ( I think, etc. etc. ). I don't know their particular names but, collectively any of those cabbage rolls was referred to as 'pigs-a-blanket'. Maybe my mother started it since no one else heard of cabbage rolls as 'pigs-in-a-blanket' except a few people around here.

Gardengal, my Grandmother also called cabbage rolls "pigs in blankets". The sausages wrapped in pastry were called sausage rolls, which was fitting, I guess.

Now my church sells "pigs in a blanket" and they are sausage (pig) wrapped in dough (blanket). That makes sense too.

Rusty, you are welcome. I love molasses, so it wasn't a hardship to taste them. However, since that Asian market is 4 hours away and I haven't found bead molases anywhere else, I was glad it tasted just like molasses.

So, it appears that ci lantro has been doing it right all along!

Annie