chipped beef

Modern chipped beef product, showing coiled packing

Individual sliver of chipped beef

Chipped beef is a dried, smoked, and salted meat product. The modern product consists of small, thin, flexible leaves of partially dried beef, generally sold compressed together in jars or flat in plastic packets. Hormel describes it as "an air-dried product that is similar to bresaola, but not as tasty."^[1]

Chipped beef is served in many diners and restaurants as a breakfast item. Creamed chipped beef is standard fare on many 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, and Silver Diner. IHOP no longer offers this on their menus, having substituted sausage gravy, and the same is true for Cracker Barrel restaurants. It is also available from companies such as Stouffer's in a frozen form which can be put on top of separately-prepared toast; it is considerably salty in taste.^{[citation needed]} The mixture was also, at one point, available from both Freezer Queen and Banquet as "hot sandwich toppers"; as of Fall 2007, Freezer Queen doesn't make this product anymore, and the Banquet variety is rarely found. Finally, Knauss Dried Beef Company makes 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.

Chipped beef on toast

Creamed chipped beef on toast

Chipped beef on toast (or creamed chipped beef on toast) is a foodstuff comprising a creamy roux sauce and rehydrated slivers of dried beef, served on toasted bread. Hormel recommends flavoring the dish with Worcestershire sauce and dried parsley. In military slang it is commonly referred to by the dysphemism "Shit On a Shingle" (SOS) - or more politely, "Stew On a Shingle". Chipped beef is also often served on English muffins, biscuits, homefries, and in casseroles.

Wentworth and Flexner cite no origin, but note that "shingle" for slice of toast has had "some use since c1935" in the U. S. Army, mostly in the expression "shit on a shingle," and that the latter had "wide World War II Army use."^[2]

In the United States, chipped beef on toast was emblematic of the military experience, much as yellow pea soup is in Finland or Sweden. "Chipped beef on toast (S. O. S.)" is, in fact, the title of a book of military humor.^[3] In his World War II book Band of Brothers Stephen E. Ambrose evokes the military basics:

In a 2004 story, Chuck Palahniuk talks about deprecated language in "the new and politically corrected Navy" where he says that in official theory, but not in practice,

See also

• Biscuits and gravy
• Chipped beef on toast, a historical 1910 Army recipe for preparing "enough for 60 men"

References