Beef Stuffing Bake

The hay is up. Twelve hundred bales in the barn by Thursday afternoon and the swather parked in the equipment shed and the rake hung on the wall and the baler greased and put away. The first cutting is the easy one in a wet year — three to four weeks until the second cutting, which will be smaller, then a third in late August or early September if the weather holds. The economics of haying are merciless. The labor is real. But I have hay in the barn that did not require a check to anyone else, and that is its own kind of profit.

Patrick walked into the hay barn Thursday evening. He had to use his cane on the gravel and Mom went with him and I watched from the loft door as he stood in the doorway looking at the stack. Twelve hundred bales is not a fortune but it is enough — it is the winter feed for two hundred head if we manage right. He looked at it for a long time. Then he turned and walked back to the porch with Mom and I came down the ladder and went out to the corral to brush a horse because watching my father look at hay he did not put up was not a thing I had words for.

Cole came down for two days from Bozeman. He brought Tara and they helped with the last of the bales and Tara surprised everyone — five-foot-two and looking like a librarian, threw bales for three hours like a woman who had spent a summer in college on a hay crew, which apparently she had. Cole and I had not known. She said you do not advertise that kind of thing. She said you save it for the right Tuesday. She is the right woman for Cole. I have known this for a year. She made it official Tuesday by stacking a wagon better than I do.

I cooked steaks for them Tuesday night. Ribeyes, two pounds each, dry-aged in the shop fridge for three weeks. The aging makes the meat dark and concentrated and the fat a little funky in the way real beef is supposed to be funky and the price comes down to free if you raise your own and butcher your own and own the fridge. I cooked them over hardwood coals in the firepit, no fancy technique, just hot fire and a heavy grate and butter and salt and a sprig of rosemary on each one for the last minute. Tara said it was the best steak she had eaten and that she had eaten in expensive places and meant it. Cole said it was the best steak he had eaten and it was also free which made it taste better and I told him every steak I had eaten in my life had been free in the sense that came home from this ranch, and he said yes, exactly, that was his point. Tara laughed. We ate corn from Mom's garden — the first corn of the season, sweet enough you could eat it raw. I did not eat raw. I grilled it. Charred kernels, butter, salt. A meal made from this place, eaten on this place, by people who belong to this place. I do not say it like that. I think it like that.

Thursday night I could not sleep. The hay being in is a relief and a relief sometimes makes the body remember things it has held off remembering. I went out at one in the morning and built a small fire in the firepit and watched it and thought about Sangin. Not in a panic. Not in a flashback. Just thinking. Derek liked steak. Derek would have eaten the ribeye and would have made some terrible joke and would have been alive. He is not. I am. The fire burned down to coals. I added one log. I sat there until three. The eastern sky started to pink up and I went inside and slept until six and got up and went to work and that was Friday.

Sarah from the press emailed Saturday. The book is going to a small second printing. Two thousand more copies. She said it the way you mention something modest that is also, in our small world, real news. I said congratulations to her. I said thanks. I went out to the corral and cleaned tack for an hour and did not know what else to do with the information. A second printing is a thing some people would want celebrated. I do not know how to celebrate it. I cleaned tack. The tack was clean. The book will be reprinted. The hay is in the barn. I am thirty in November. The fire helps.

The ribeyes were the celebration meal — the fire and the coals and Tara saying it was the best steak she’d eaten and Cole saying it tasted better because it was free. But the days after the hay goes in, when the adrenaline settles and the body starts to remember what it spent, you want something that doesn’t require a firepit or a three-week aged cut. You want something warm and full and put together from what’s already in the house. This beef stuffing bake is what I make when the work is done and the quiet sets in — everything in one pan, nothing wasted, the kind of meal that doesn’t ask anything of you except to sit down and eat it.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 40 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs ground beef (80/20)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (10.5 oz) cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup beef broth
1 cup frozen green beans, thawed
1 cup frozen corn, thawed
1 box (6 oz) seasoned stuffing mix
1 1/4 cups water
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
Brown the beef. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook ground beef, onion, and garlic, breaking meat up as it cooks, until no pink remains, about 8–10 minutes. Drain excess fat.
Season and combine. Stir salt, pepper, and thyme into the beef mixture. Add cream of mushroom soup and beef broth and stir until evenly combined. Fold in green beans and corn.
Transfer to dish. Spread beef mixture evenly into the prepared baking dish.
Make the stuffing topping. In a medium bowl, combine stuffing mix, water, and butter pieces. Stir until the butter melts and the stuffing is evenly moistened, about 2 minutes. Spread stuffing over the beef layer in an even layer.
Bake. Bake uncovered for 30–35 minutes, until the stuffing top is golden and the edges are bubbling. Let rest 5 minutes before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Beef Stuffing Bake — When the Hay Is In and the Fire Burns Down