Taste is soooooo subjective there's no way to know! Sometimes slow-cookers heat so hot it actually scorches the food and affects the flavor. All that sodium would do me in.....

Yup, I got incredibly thirsty just reading the recipe. No, it does not sound good. It sounds gloppy and salty. But, as GL says above, taste is subjective.

I used to make this, but in a slow cooker, not the oven. Went over really well in our family. Over the years I switched to chopped onion with some garlic powder rather than the soup mix to reduce the salt a bit. It is a bit salty with the Lipton soup mix, something about the soup mix I liked the addition a bit, but DH has to limit his salt.

Waaay too much salt. It's the MSG in the lipton soup mix that makes things taste good. I can't eat MSG, I get a blinding headache, so I watch for it in all forms. Lipton onion soup mix contains not only MSG but also hydrolyzed vegetable protein, which is another word for MSG, and also yeast extract and natural flavors....all of which are terms for MSG.
I love salt....I can eat potato chips like it's my job....but gravy and soup that is too salty makes me gag....literally!

I've made it before. It's pretty good for the amount of work (none lol) if a tad salty.

Regardless of the other ingredients, perhaps the beef she used wasn't very tasty.

ETA: if she thought it was just too salty, I would expect her to say so.

It may be easy, as in set it and forget it, to make with pantry shelf "staples" but sounds like "kitchen sink" way of cooking - throw in anything you have. I would not waste a good piece of meat on processed packaged high-sodium artificial flavor added with loads of weird chemicals in all those ingredients. Just reading the recipe makes me wonder if this is a trick. Do people really make this as I am pretty sure the ginger ale would throw off the flavor of everything else? Even if you added fresh ginger it would not really taste good, it just does not go with beef. I'd just a soon have the browned stew meat cooking away in some stock or broth with onions and fresh mushrooms. Sometimes simple and tasty isn't grabbing prepackaged stuff and takes the same amount of time.

Decades ago a no-peak chicken dish was very popular. Chicken and golden mushroom soup. Not the creamed variety, and no onion soup mix. This sounds waaay too salty and processed. I've never heard of it with beef.

I'm like LindaC, potato chips I absolutely adore, but salty food? I hate it. I don't even salt the water for pasta like everyone advises. I can taste the salt in the pasta.

Thank you Ladies. Out it goes.

lindac, is your snarky remark directed at me? I wouldn't bother to try anything like this recipe, but just because YOU don't like something doesn't mean you have to be snobby about it and snarky to those people who do like it, or think they might like it. IMO, there's too much of that 'superior' attitude around here.

I don't eat canned soup because it does taste like a big ole' bowl of salt to me, so I can't imagine wasting good (and currently expensive) beef by covering it up with that combination.

I do have a couple of beef recipes that call for gingerale or cola, and my grandkids enjoy them very much, . Everyone else eats it and agrees that it's "not that bad" so the gingerale doesn't really put me off. I just really don't think I could toss in canned soup AND dry soup mix AND some soft drink and expect very much except salt and sugar.

Annie

No-peek sounds like a smothered beef recipe by another name and close kin to stove top Stroganoff. There are a number of different ways to approach it. The one that I always used (back when chuck roasts were affordable) was to cut the meat up into good sized chunks (about 1"), dredge in flour seasoned w/ S & P plus garlic, brown the meat in oil, transfer to an ovenproof dish, add beef broth, dried or diced onion, Worchestershire, mushrooms (optional), cover and cook in the oven until the meat was falling apart. Usually served w/ rice.

I never used any ginger or gingerale but would certainly have tried it. The recipe calls for only 1/2 c. gingerale for two pounds of meat so I seriously doubt that the ingred. would be detectable in the finished dish.

Like others have stated, the amt of salt in the recipe is daunting. I love salt but have never, never been a heavy user. Never used Lipton onion soup mix--that is, the entire packet but just the dried onion & a small part of the bullion--in anything. Now, I never use it. (Dehydrated onion & Marmite/ Vegemite work nicely as a substitute.) I can eat only a few--3 or 4--potato chips and that is only after trying to dust of the excess salt.

Beef sold as 'stew meat'--who knows what part of the cow it came from? To get a mostly reliably flavorful beef for these types of dishes, I would choose a chuck steak/ roast.

nancyofny-

I'm not a fan of "dump" recipes either, but I can understand the concept since many slow-cooker cookbooks tend to use these kinds of ingredients, and people are often too busy, or lack the knowledge, to build a meal from scratch. It's simple cooking for all kinds of reasons..... Sandra Lee made a living on the Food Network dumping her heart out with Semi-Homemade Recipes. I use some of these recipes at the Food Bank because many people who attend the classes don't have common kitchen essentials like measuring spoons/cups. In many homes the "cook" is a pre-teen/teen, and a simple "dump" recipe can mean the difference between an inexpensive meal at home instead of pizza delivery.

I happen to make several beef recipes with ginger, and my very favorite is Beef with Pea Pods. The small amount of powdered ginger (or gingerroot) adds a little more "heat" than it does a flavor of gingerbread.

-Grainlady

Of course ginger goes with beef.....think of sauerbraten, beef cooked with onions in red wine and vinegar with bayleaf cloves and juniper berries, and the gravy thickened with gingersnaps>
It's not the gingerale that puts me off that recipe....it's the combination of 2 preservative filled, salty, artificial tasting soups mixed with it>
I am so often amazed at what people will eat these days. The last frozen turkey I cooked had a plastic bag of "gravy" inside of it!! EWW! who eats that stuff?

I don't recall any ginger flavor at all. Not sure why ginger ale is called for. But again, it's half a cup. Not enough to make a huge flavor difference. I think the purpose of this recipe is: easiness, unattended cooking, and that fact that it's very cheap to make - but I live in Texas where beef is cheap and plentiful. If I remember correctly I didn't use all of the onion soup packet the second time I made it because of the salt. It's certainly nothing gourmet, but not bad. If it ever gets cold in Houston I may have to make it again!

"EWW! who eats that stuff?" The vast majority of Americans. Take a look around the supermarket. The aisles are filled with that stuff and if people didn't buy it, it wouldn't be there. The more processed and "easy" the more profit for the processed food industry. Most hanging out here probably don't eat that way, but some do and maybe are trying to expand their skills/food horizons. I don't think shaming them is very productive.

It's good that you won't use the whole onion soup packet. I've used some of the dried onions only, sparingly in the past. For the same reason, I don't use the dried dressing pack in the ramen noodles when I make my Asian coleslaw. There are recipes that call for the noodles and the packet but I throw that out.

And I don't use a packet of Italian dressing mix, nor a packet of Ranch Dressing mix, nor a package of Taco seasoning mix.
To answer Olychick's post.....I really don't believe that someone who goes to the trouble of roasting a whole frozen turkey is going to use a plastic bag of gravy they found in the body cavity.
I see fajita kits and pot roast kits and bowls of fruit salad and trays of cut up vegetables and cartons of sour cream onion dip and cartons of strawberry glaze next to the fresh strawberries and premade graham cracker pie crusts as well as jars of Paul Newman's pasta sauces and premade Asian sauces....It all makes life easier for those who don't want to cut up a couple of carrots or onions or to mix some redpepper, cumin and a bit of salt....and those who want to spend money to have simple tasks done for them. But frozen gravy inside the turkey? And 2 kinds of soup and a half cup of soda pop dumped on a piece of meat? Nope that weird for weird's sake.

What people are trying to tell you is that no matter what your beliefs are, by being mean you're just driving away the very people who could learn something good from you if you were nice to them. You haven't driven me away with your eeews because I am a good cook and confident in what I know, while being very open to learning new things and being willing to admit when I'm wrong. Still, there have been plenty of times when I thought to post something and then thought, no, Linda will just get raspy about it and be awful and I don't need that coming at me today. If I were an inexperienced cook, or a newbie just coming in for some advice, I'd probably never come back.

Ci_lantro was especially helpful by providing an easy sounding preparation for a similar kind of dish.

Every once in a while I come across a recipe that sounds pretty good but also uses dried onion soup mix. Since my husband is on a low sodium diet, I use a substitute that is similar to what ci-lantro posted. I use either regular dried onions or the toasted dried onions that Penzey's and the Spice House sell. Depending on whether or not I think an extra boost of beef flavor is needed, I'll add a packet of Herb-Ox unsalted beef broth granules or a teaspoon of Minor's low sodium beef base (similar to Better than Bouillon but truly low sodium). Or sometimes a scant teaspoon of low sodium miso. As weird as it may sound, every once in a while I get a hankering for the old fashioned onion soup/sour cream dip, and using these substitutes satisfies me but doesn't throw my husband's low sodium diet out the window.

I don't use any of those things either, LindaC, but it's mostly because I'm cheap, although I dislike most of them too. They are expensive and I can make most of that stuff, or a reasonable substitute, myself. The one glaring exception I've found is the green bean casserole. I can't stand the stuff, but both of my girls love it. I've now tried 6 separate recipes and none pass muster (I think a couple were worse than the original, in fact). It has to be the canned soup stuff and the fried onions. (sigh) And so, I've given up on it and now serve green beans sautéed with bacon and almonds. Not anything even similar, but everyone likes it.

I never hesitate to post because I think I'm going to get someone else all cranky, as LindaC will tell you. She has her own, very strong, opinions. I have my own. As I've often said, taste is not objective, it's subjective, so while I'm shaking my head and thinking I can't be related to them, both my daughters are scarfing up green bean casserole.

I am guilty of assuming that because people come to a Cooking Forum they either like to cook, want to cook, or are learning to cook and in all instances want to expand their horizons. I found the Cooking Forum by accident over a decade ago and I can't even explain how it has changed my cooking and my attitudes about food and the preparation of it. So, when people want a recipe for something that requires no chopping and no actual cooking, just a mix and a couple of cans, I'm somewhat taken aback. In those cases, I try to just scroll past, unless an opinion was specifically requested, such as was in this thread by the OP, who asked if it was worth making.

Annie

I'm with ya, Annie....as you know.
And Pillog, if you scroll back you will see that the OP said her sister or friend or someone tried the recipe and didn't think it tasted good and wondered if it was her sisters opinion and was the recipe worth making. Overwhelmingly, the responders have said don't waste good meat on nasty, salty fake ingredients.
Real food is always better than canned or dried carp.
Case in point, some 6 years ago when I signed on to help with a fundraising meal for about 300, the menu was sloppy Joes and chicken and gravy sandwiches. I was given the assignment of the chicken sandwiches ( remember this is a fundraiser). Previously the sandwiches were made with food service sized cans of chicken and canned cream of chicken soup. Somewhere along the way someone saw how expensive that canned chicken was and started roasting whole turkeys and adding canned soup. When I began I saved the bones and skin from the turkey boiled it up for an hour, dumped all into a colander and thickened the result with a bit of flour.
We ran out the 2nd year because suddenly the chicken became better than the sloppy joes, and people remembered from the previous year...AND we saved about $100 for our charity.
My assumption was that this is a cooking forum, about recipes and cooking techniques, not about personal relationships or who may get offended by....whatever. If you want someone to say "Oh that sounds sooo yummy" to whatever you post....well perhaps a cooking forum is not the best place for that scenario. Most people who post here are cooks....that is they use real ingredients and don't look kindly on packets and cans...they are not going to like that sort of dish.

We probably all come here for different reasons. I love the pictures and always get good ideas when I can't decide what to cook. I'm a good cook, but I don't always feel like cooking from scratch or have the time to do it. When I feel like cooking something with beef and mushrooms - and have the time to do it - I'll make Julia's Beef Bourguignon. But on the days I don't have the time or inclination I'd make something like this recipe. We still have to eat if I'm busy or lazy lol So, in my opinion, to answer the OP's question: yes it's worth making occasionally.

Linda, I was trying to explain why two other posters took exception. I agree that the original recipe sounds very salty, etc. Many people said it without being mean and accusatory.

This recipe got great reviews on this board in the past. I tried it and was seriously underwhelmed; it was edible but that's about it. As I recall, we didn't even finish it. And the recipe was thrown out that night.

As Bambi was advised by Thumper, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything."

I had to scroll up to find something 'snarky'. I just don't see it. I'm more uneasy by those that feel offended and lash out. (i've been called more snarky names on this forum than the past 25 year as a nyc labor union leader, lol)

-and ignored it

Being educated in a field is not snobby. It is a powerful interest to teach and try and make those not paying attention or very busy...to see a better way to time manage and use those often expensive ingredients a bit better.

This is a cooking forum. Dump-n-run cooking can be good with fresh ingredients. Those of us that do cook without processed food would be thrilled to take that recipe and make it very simple and much better tasting...and probably much cheaper cost-wise. (ingredients left over for another meal even !)...i have no idea what those ingredients cost. Just don't like it wasted.

I have to do that at our vacation home with many visitors and using a wood fired cookstove i have to pay attention. Use that residual heat after the morning breakfast to roast/brown the moose meat with coarse chopped veggies...dump fresh veggies in the crock pot, then the roasted...set on high, then med, and off to a hike or boating/fishing. Once back home add the fresher herbs and diced potatoes/and other roots (already prepped)...another hour or two and i have supper. Re-stock the stove of wood for the evening heat and maybe a loaf of bread or two and a dessert rustic pie or an app of a boating catch...

Sometimes that crockpot is very handy.

Wow, i hit an odd channel by mistake just now and an old black and white JuliaChild episode is on...making Quiche Loraine...fantastic.

I use to watch this when i was is kid.

We need to remember that not everyone is so interested in food as some of us have always been.

(i just dislike a commercial processed product and recipe that is made to sell the packaged product full of salt and 'enhancers' for nothing other than money).

She is hilarious. Beating her chilled dough with a giant rolling pin. (and making a mess)

Thanks Sleeven...If we become a community of not saying any thing but "nice" we become a community of robots.
And.....who is ever as wonderful as Julia!?

Being polite isn't the same thing as being robotic. You can say, "I wouldn't like to eat that" instead of "EWW!" and convey the same meaning without bullying someone who actually would eat it. I've never even heard of the product in question, I agree that it doesn't sound appetizing, but insulting people's tastes and dismissing them comes off as unpleasant at best, and bullying at worst. Yes, it's a "cooking" forum, but must it be exclusively for people who already are great cooks? Why is it so wrong to be welcoming to those who aren't? If they were made to feel welcome, they might stick around and learn how to cook better. I know quite a few great cooks who won't come near this forum because of the bullying. It was a lot better for awhile, but they didn't come back. Meeting someone at their level of knowledge and expertise, and providing ideas and information to help them improve on their own level is kind and helpful. Insulting them because they don't fit your own idea of what's what is not.

Plllog, I think you've expressed very well what I feel about this. There is a way to explain WHY something seems unappetizing, or not a potentially successful recipe or concept without acting/writing as if one is the sole arbiter of great cuisine, methods, skills, taste, then insulting any number of people who may have come here for help. Obviously, as with most things in life, "cooking" is open to many interpretations. And no single person's view of cooking is the correct one.

These types of recipes are not my cup of tea but they're edible and many people actually enjoy them. It's natural for me to cringe and gasp for water when reading about relatively undiluted condensed soup PLUS a packet of soup mix, but a little research and math usually shows the sodium to be not as bad as it first appears.

830*2.5+610*4=4515mg sodium from the two major offenders. Now let's assume 2 pounds of meat makes 6 servings, and you've got about 750mg per serving. Read any chain restaurant nutrition charts lately? This is solidly low sodium in comparison. Stretch that sauce to 3 pounds of meat as suggested in the OP, and call each pound of meat 4 servings - which I don't but that's neither here nor there - and now you're at 385mg. Almost low enough to legally slap a Heart Healthy stamp on it.

FOAS--Were you using the figures for the lower sodium versions of COM & French Onion Lipton Soup?

**Edited to delete Bad Information. I made some fundamental errors which are cited in subsequent two posts.

I made the same mistake at first with the can of soup. C-o-M has 870, but the recipe calls for C-o-CHICKEN-M which has 830. Minor point. :)

The big difference in our calculations is with the onion soup though. The nutrition labels I read (yes, plural, because I was unclear) said 8 servings per container so the question is, is a "container" one packet, or the box which contains two packets?

Ha - I just answered my own question definitively. While typing, I suddenly wondered if perhaps I have any soup mix in the pantry. Yep! Beefy Onion, close enough. Best by Oct 31, 2012. Brought out my scale and in the packet one packet weighs 34.76 grams, so the 8 gram serving size must be one fourth of the packet, not one eighth.

Ah, yes I see my mistake. There are 4 servings per packet so the total sodium for the Onion Soup mix would be one-half of 4880 or whatever the value is for the particular brand or onion soup version you're using. And now I see that the Cream of Chicken soup has significantly less sodium than the COM.

So, indeed you are correct, the sodium content is not as awful as it would seem, at first glance.

And now I see that the Cream of Chicken soup has significantly less sodium than the COM.

Almost. :) Yes, CoC has significantly less than CoM, but the recipe calls for Cream of Chicken-Mushroom which is only slightly less.

Regardless, to my point, even with your original calcs the sodium level is reasonable compared to what a lot of restaurants are serving. Anything under 1000 is low, 1500-2000 seems about average. I admit I like the popular Fiesta-Lime Chicken at Applebees. 3420mg.

So...it's not as high in sodium as chain/fast food restaurant food....but would you eat it? Really?
Many years ago there was a "recipe" making the rounds that was a chuck roast weighing about 2 or more pounds, with a packet of onion soup mix poured on top, wrapped in heavy duty foil and put into the oven for 4 hours at 250. Of course I tried it. It was so salty I had to wash the "gravy" off before I could use the leftovers for sandwiches. I haven't bought a packet of soup mix since.

Are you sure the soup is only the major offender? Canned mushrooms, according to Green Giant, have 432 mg per serving, or another 1700 mg of salt.

That would be why I seldom eat out, that all tastes like a big bunch of salt and grease to me. And just because it's in restaurant food, doesn't mean that the food is good, or healthy, that's one of the current "hot topic issues", how bad restaurant food is for you while not tasting particularly good. I do live in a place where there are not many restaurants available, other than the ever present chains like Applebee's and fast food places, so if I lived somewhere there were REAL restaurants less than 50 miles away, I might eat out more often. But I doubt it, LOL.

With my blood pressure meds, my blood pressure is fine, but I'm 60 years old. Daily consumption is "suggested" to be limited to 1500 mg, lower if I can stand it (which I usually can't, because I like salt, heck, I seldom come in under 2,000 and usually don't pay attention at all). So that 750 mg is half of my daily suggested allowance, and that's just in one dish. Add 432 for the canned mushrooms (which I understand are optional, but I'd have to put SOMETHING in there. If I have some vegetables with it, maybe mashed potatoes with a bit of butter or a slice of bread, well I've pretty much consumed my daily amount of sodium and we haven't talked about breakfast or lunch or any kind of a snack. If I want a handful of chips or a couple of crackers with peanut butter at lunch, well, I'm not doing the math, LOL.

I don't salt pasta water or my potatoes when cooking them, and I try to limit unnecessary salt, but it's difficult to limit when everything has it in there. That's not my issue with this, though. I just don't like canned soup, it has no flavor other than the salt and some metallic overtones, salt is the dominant flavor note to me. Plus it's expensive, here a can of soup will run you over $1 and the soup mix is more than that. And a single bottle of gingerale is going to be $1.69 plus 10 cents deposit. That's $6 or $7 for "flavoring ingredients", more than that for the beef. So, if I'm going to put that money into a dish that cost me $25 or more, it's worth the extra 10 minutes to chop some vegetables, find some herbs or broth, something to make it taste good and be healthier and not so hopelessly assault a perfectly innocent cut of beef. (grin)

I plead guilty to an occasional chili dog at A&W, I make Velveeta Shells and Cheese for the grandkids and sometimes I have Raisin Bran for supper, which is full of sugar. But I'm not going to do it on a regular basis, or as a regular occurrence, just like I'm not going to eat out regularly. It's just not healthy and to me, it doesn't taste good.

And that was the question of the OP. What did I think of the recipe and what would the flavor be? And that's what I answered. A little more diplomatically maybe, but no less definitive. I wouldn't make it and I wouldn't encourage anyone else to.

Annie

Would I cook it? No. Would I eat it? Yes, if served to me. My MIL is a pretty good cook but doesn't hesitate to throw something like this together. I spot it right away and don't particularly care for it, but more often than not it goes over well with the rest of the family. I think for some people it reminds them of the comfort food they grew up on when convenience food was a wonder and before we became food snobs, so it tastes good to them.

Annie - I don't know what a 4oz jar of mushrooms is, and it was an optional ingredient so I left it out.

Annie, I don't think anyone objected to your answers. I have to remind myself to use salt because a lot of foods taste naturally salty to me. When I'm cooking for the elders, I have to balance enough salt so their worn out taste buds are happy (they don't eat enough when the food seems bland, so I salt with more verve than usual), but not enough to put them over "go easy on the salt". Luckily, they're not restricted, beyond things like salted pretzels and fast food (the latter of which they wouldn't want to eat anyway). It's interesting about the perception of chain restaurants as salt palaces, however, because I find some of them tolerable on that level. Not that the food is great, but I have some friends who for convivial occasions only want to eat at those places.

In California, at least, there's some basic nutrition info on the menus, and the salt isn't nearly as bad as in a lot of fine dining restaurants where they believe in "layers of flavor" or "every component must be seasoned [i.e., salted]." Every now and then I eat something out that's really delicious and I realize that, while it doesn't taste salty, it is a heavier hand on the seasoning that is the thing that makes it so. That's rare. Often, I'm presented with food that's otherwise well prepared, but overwhelmingly salty. The food at the chain chain restaurants my friends take me to may not be wonderful, but they really don't overdo the saltiness. Hm.... They're the kind of places where seniors make up much of the early rush. Maybe that's why?

BTW, I do make the brisket with coke recipe because it's universally loved, and who am I to object (it's one of the recipes that came up when packaged foods first started having rabbinical checkmarks that they were kosher--especially at Passover when everything has to be new and more kosher than kosher, have premixed, certified for Passover, sauces and seasonings can be a massive help). It's a whole brisket (or about 10 lbs.), a 12 oz. can of coke, a bottle of Heinz Chili Sauce (i.e., fancy ketchup) and a packet of Knorr onion or leek soup mix. It doesn't necessarily all get used. Enough to cover. There's plenty of salt! It doesn't make the meat salty tasting, although it does a good job breaking down the connective tissue. I've made a GF version which calls for soup base (Better than Bouillon, which has been recommended in this forum), but that's way, way saltier, and I had to rewrite the recipe to use my own concentrate! Which didn't have enough salt, and the brisket was fine on the cook but underseasoned.

I think that might be part of the reason why soup mix became so popular in the first place -- because it's more aggressive on the salt than many people would have the courage to do. I remember a couple of decades ago reading that the secret to every Italian (in Italy) mamma's cooking was bouillon cubes. The piece was kind of alluding to the food shortages following WWII as an origin for this. All I could think is the secret is not "soup"! It's salt and MSG! (My mother's "secret" is good homemade chicken stock which has no seasoning in it.)

FOAS, I could only find that Green Giant has a 6 ounce jar of mushrooms, and each ounce is one serving. Each serving has 432 mg of salt according to their website. I know it's an optional ingredient, which I did note, but it's the only thing in the entire dish that even seems remotely like vegetables or texture, other than the beef, so I'd have to leave it in there.

And you are right, it may remind people of what they are accustomed to from their childhood. I know I'm from a whole different generation than many here, and grew up on a farm, so produced more real food and didn't grow up with processed anything. My girls didn't either, though Ashley used to eat CofM soup out of the can straight. Until she had a stroke at age 27, even though she weighs a bit less than 100 pounds and goes to the gym almost daily. And so, I still don't recommend it as something on a regular basis, which I also noted. It's a splurge food, if you like that kind of thing, like my chili dogs or the kids' Velveeta shells.

Annie