Sam The Cooking Guy’s American Chop Suey

When I was a little boy, my grandmother used to make “American Chop Suey”, which was basically ground beef, tomato sauce, and pasta. Maybe some chopped onion, but definitely no herbs or spices or anything else. Sometimes the pasta was spaghetti, broken into small pieces, sometimes it was macaroni. Seems like the name “American Chop Suey” is a New England thing, because other people I know in other parts of the country call this same dish “Goulash” or even just “Macaroni and Beef”.

Sam The Cooking Guy, one of the cooking channels I regularly watch on YouTube, recently made his own improved version which he called “Homemade Hamburger Helper”, so I gave it a try and absolutely loved it. The significant change is the addition of Italian sausage meat along with the ground beef. Sam being Sam, though, he also adds onion, garlic, cheese, and a diced poblano pepper, which brought a good bit of peppery heat. Definitely not the bland dish Grammy used to make for me. Sam’s recipe would easily feed 8-10 people, so I cut it in half and ate oe half of that the first night and the other half as a leftover the next night.