See. Food. New. Burg.

Dear friends,

As some of you know, the cocksuckers over at Knorr have discontinued their Newburg sauce mix, thereby proving the existence of evil forces. Oh sure, I poked around the Internet looking for a replacement but none was to be found.

This situation had me stewing through long nights, thinking: It cannot be. It cannot be. Eventually, however, I threw off the sweaty sheets, swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat upright, blinking back my denial. The convenient Newburg sauce mix was gone and it was not coming back. If I was going to serve Newburg sauce, I was going to have to make Newburg sauce with a pan and separate ingredients.

It took some doing, but I finally found a recipe that doesn't include any candy-ass items that are normally associated with a real Newburg. There's no goddamn shallots, for instance. There's no clarified butter or egg yolks. Everything here is regular Cleveland-style shit you can understand.

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Melt a half stick of butter and mix in about 4 T flour until you've got a paste (Yes--in a sauce pan on the stove. Where the hell else would you do this?) Don't ask me how high the heat should be. I've got an old gas stove and I eyeball the flame, but don't burn this (although it's probably all right if you burn it a little).

Pour in about a cup and a half of milk real slow, stirring the whole time. You probably ought to be using a whisk for this, which is more of an upgrade than I normally like to recommend, but there you go. Bring this just to a boil then turn the heat down. Should thicken up real nice for you.

Add two squarshy shots of ketchup, a shot of Worcestershire, a shake of paprika, some salt and about a shot of sherry. I use the shitty screw-top sherry you buy from the bottom shelf of the booze section at the discount grocer for about five bucks and that you have for your entire life. No, this is not right. Yes, I wish it was different, but there are some things you just can't wash off no matter how hard you scrub. Kiss my ass.

This slop is your sauce. Taste it and add a little more sherry or other stuff if you want. Add more milk if it's too thick, genius.

If the sherry admission and putting ketchup into "Newburg" sauce isn't bad enough, the following disclosure will do me in for good.


No flaked white fish. No shelled crab legs. No fresh anything. I'm not proud of it and I can't deny it, but I use chopped up fake lobster in my Newburg recipe. It's all cooked and everything. There's no trick. You just buy it on sale, freeze it until you're ready to use it, thaw the package in hot water, chop it into flakes, toss it into the cheap sherry ketchup sauce, heat it through and you're done.

I suppose you could have this over noodles or rice, but I use toast. My kid likes to spoon this over a thick slice of homemade bread. She thinks this dish is pure genius and will eat it morning, noon, and night until it is gone.

You go on and judge me if you want, but I know there's a contingent of readers out there who are reading this, eyes shifting to and fro as they try to remember where they put their 10-year-old bottle of $5 sherry.

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