Chipped beef on toast

Chipped beef is thinly sliced or pressed salted and dried beef. Some makers smoke the dried beef for more flavor. The modern product consists of small, thin, flexible leaves of partially dried beef

Beef

Beef is the culinary name for meat from bovines, especially domestic cattle. Beef can be harvested from cows, bulls, heifers or steers. It is one of the principal meats used in the cuisine of the Middle East , Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Europe and the United States, and is also important in...

, generally sold compressed together in jars or flat in plastic packets. The processed meat producer Hormel

Hormel

Hormel Foods Corporation is a food company based in southeastern Minnesota , perhaps best known as the producer of Spam luncheon meat. The company was founded as George A. Hormel & Company in Austin, Minnesota, U.S., by George A. Hormel in 1891. The company changed its name to Hormel Foods...

once described it as "an air-dried product that is similar to bresaola

Bresaola

Bresaola or brisaola is air-dried, salted beef that has been aged two or three months until it becomes hard and turns a dark red, almost purple colour. It is made from top round, and is lean and tender, with a sweet, musty smell...

, but not as tasty."

Availability

Chipped beef is served in many diners and restaurants in the United States as a breakfast item. Creamed chipped beef is standard fare on many such diner menus, especially in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, but has become harder to find in chain restaurants that serve breakfast; among the restaurants still offering chipped beef on toast are Golden Corral

Golden Corral

Golden Corral is an American family-style restaurant chain that features a large buffet and grill offering numerous hot and cold items, a carving station and their Brass Bell Bakery...

and Silver Diner

Silver Diner

Silver Diner is about good, fresh food, Healthy and Hearty, the choice is yours. To deliver the best products, Chef Ype Von Hengst buys fresh and local whenever possible. Silver Diner has partnered with award winning local farms that support sustainable agriculture...

. IHOP no longer offers this on their menus, having substituted sausage gravy, and the same is true for Cracker Barrel

Cracker Barrel

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. is an American chain of combined restaurant and gift stores with a Southern country theme. The company was founded by Dan Evins in 1969 and its first store was located in Lebanon, Tennessee, where the company is now headquartered...

restaurants. It is also available from companies such as Stouffer's

Stouffer's

Stouffer's is a brand of frozen prepared foods available in the United States and Canada. Stouffer's is known for such popular fare as meatloaf, salisbury steak, lasagna, macaroni and cheese, and ravioli. It also produces a line of reduced-fat products under the banner Lean...

in a frozen form which can be put on top of separately-prepared toast; It is typically quite salty, for instance, Stouffer's creamed chipped beef contains 590mg sodium per 5.5 ounces (155.9 g) serving. The mixture was also, at one point, available from both Freezer Queen

Freezer Queen

Freezer Queen was for decades a U.S. food packaging company. It was a pioneer of the TV dinner industry beginning in 1958. For many years it was an important employer in Buffalo, New York. It was founded by Paul Snyder and at one point had more than a thousand employees...

and Banquet as "hot sandwich toppers"; as of late 2007, Freezer Queen no longer makes this product, and the Banquet variety is rarely found. Finally, both the Esskay Meat Company of Baltimore and Knauss Dried Beef Company make a refrigerated version of creamed chipped beef which can be easily microwaved. The meat itself is also available for purchase under the Knauss, Carson's and Alderfer Brand names.

U.S. military cuisine

Chipped beef on toast (or creamed chipped beef on toast) is a culinary dish

Dish (food)

A dish in gastronomy is a specific food preparation, a "distinct article or variety of food", with cooking finished, and ready to eat, or be served.A "dish" may be served on dishware, or may be eaten out of hand; but breads are generally not called "dishes"....

comprising a white sauce and rehydrated slivers of dried beef, served on toasted bread. Hormel recommends flavoring the dish with Worcestershire sauce

Worcestershire sauce

Worcestershire sauce , or Worcester sauce is a fermented liquid condiment; primarily used to flavour meat or fish dishes.First made at 60 Broad Street, Worcester, England, by two dispensing chemists, John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins, the Lea & Perrins brand was commercialised in 1837 and...

and dried parsley. In military slang

Military slang

Military slang is an array of colloquial terminology used commonly by military personnel, including slang which is unique to or originates with the armed forces. It often takes the form of abbreviations/acronyms or derivations of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, or otherwise incorporates aspects of...

it is commonly referred to by the dysphemism

Dysphemism

In language, dysphemism, malphemism, and cacophemism refer to the usage of an intentionally harsh, rather than polite, word or expression; roughly the opposite of euphemism...

"Shit On a Shingle" (SOS)—or more politely, "Stew On a Shingle" or "Same Old Stuff". Chipped beef is also often served on English muffins, biscuits, home fries

Home fries

Home fries, house fries, or cottage fries are a type of basic potato dish made by pan or skillet frying diced, chunked, wedged or sliced potatoes that have been par-cooked by boiling, baking, steaming, or microwaving....

, rice

Rice

Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...

, and in casserole

Casserole

A casserole, from the French for "saucepan", is a large, deep dish used both in the oven and as a serving vessel. The word casserole is also used for the food cooked and served in such a vessel, with the cookware itself called a casserole dish or casserole pan...

s.

Wentworth and Flexner cite no origin, but note that "shingle" for slice of toast has had "some use since 1935" in the U.S. Army, mostly in the expression "shit on a shingle," and that the latter had "wide World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

Army use."

In the United States, chipped beef on toast was emblematic of the military experience, much as yellow pea soup

Pea soup

Pea soup or split pea soup is soup made, typically, from dried peas. It is, with variations, a part of the cuisine of many cultures. It is greyish-green or yellow in color depending on the regional variety of peas used; all are cultivars of Pisum sativum.Pea soup has been eaten since antiquity; it...

is in Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

or Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

. "Chipped beef on toast (S.O.S.)" is, in fact, the title of a book of military humor. In his World War II book Band of Brothers Stephen E. Ambrose evokes the military basics:
In a 2004 story, Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk

Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist. He is best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter...

talks about deprecated language in "the new and politically corrected Navy" where he says that in official theory, but not in practice:

U.S. popular culture

In The Bob Newhart Show
The Bob Newhart Show
The Bob Newhart Show is an American situation comedy produced by MTM Enterprises, which aired 142 original episodes on CBS from September 16, , to April 1, . Comedian Bob Newhart portrayed a psychologist having to deal with his patients and fellow office workers...

episode entitled "Emily Hits the Ceiling," Mrs. Hartley and her friends plan to establish a summer camp for children; high on the list of planning priorities is establishing nicknames for the staff — the swim coach will be "Flipper," the nurse will be "Band-Aid." When colleague Craig reveals "Shingle" as the would-be camp cook's nickname, Emily says she does not get it. "We plan to go through a lot of chipped beef," he says. She says she still does not get it. "You have to have been in the Army," says Bob.

The Golden Girls episode "Bed Time Story" also referred to chipped beef. It was not liked when Rose cooked it. Dorothy voluteered to try it and the lights went out due to a power outage from a storm. Dorothy pretended as though she had eaten the chipped beef and the episode ends with Sophia adding spices and eating what Dorothy dumped off her plate into Sophia's purse.

In The Honeymooners
The Honeymooners
The Honeymooners is an American situation comedy television show, based on a recurring 1951–'55 sketch of the same name. It originally aired on the DuMont network's Cavalcade of Stars and subsequently on the CBS network's The Jackie Gleason Show hosted by Jackie Gleason, and filmed before a live...

episode "Hello Mom" Ralph asks Alice "What's for dinner?" and when she exclaims "Creamed chipped beef." Ralph asks "Creamed chipped beef again?" to which she responds "I got the recipe from a movie magazine, it's Ricardo Cortez' favorite." Ralph finishes with "Well when Ricardo gets here, I hope he enjoys it."

In the film Peggy Sue Got Married
Peggy Sue Got Married
Peggy Sue Got Married is a 1986 American comedy-drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Kathleen Turner as a woman on the verge of a divorce, who finds herself transported back to the days of her senior year in high school...

, Peggy's sister, Nancy, asks "What's for dinner?", to which her mother replies, "Creamed chipped beef on toast with rutabagas; your father's favorite."

Availability

Chipped Beef on Toast

U.S. military cuisine

U.S. popular culture

See also