Simple Salisbury Steak
on Jan 30, 2023, Updated Aug 29, 2024
Salisbury Steak is a perfect weeknight recipe to serve the family. Plate up with mashed potatoes or tasty veggies for the best comfort food!
I’ve always loved this recipe for Simple Salisbury Steak. We’ve made this dish for dinner time-and-time again and loved it every time! Follow along with us to make this solid, standby dinner dish.
Why You’ll Love This Salisbury Steak
- This is a classic comfort food.
- This is a quick and easy meal without a lot of prep work.
- It is simple to modify to meet your picky eaters tastes.
- We love that this recipe is fairly inexpensive to make.
- It’s a reader favorite. Since posted on my blog in 2015, it has been shared over 1.5 million times. The user ratings are REAL and not inflated. Be sure to look at the comments below and you will see additional helpful tips and suggestions.
Easy and delicious ground beef recipes are a must-have in your kitchen’s cookbook! Ground beef almost always seems to be marked-down or on sale at the local grocery and it can serve as the base to a number of delicious recipes. From soups to stews to a classic cheeseburger, there’s always a use for this versatile food! One of the tastiest and easiest recipes you can make with your meat is some Easy Salisbury Steak.
Our Salisbury Steak recipe blows the frozen and TV dinner varieties out of the water! They can’t compare to this easy stovetop version that needs only a little extra time. It’s also the perfect dinner dish for all the picky eaters in your family- we keep things simple but leave plenty of room to add in whatever you’d like! The gravy is easy to make too, using some convenient brown gravy packets. With all this in mind, you’ll love this recipe for Homemade Salisbury Steak!
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Delicious Side Dishes to pair with our Recipe
- With all this gravy, we have to recommend pairing our Simple Salisbury Steak with The Best Mashed Potatoes. These rich, creamy potatoes are perfect for pairing with a delicious, meaty main course like our steaks. Super easy to make too!
- If you’re looking for some tasty, vibrant greens to plate with this dish, try some Garlic Green Beans. This buttery, savory side pairs well with darn-near anything- our Salisbury steaks included! One of our favorite veggie sides right now.
- Need something a little sweeter? Brown Sugar Glazed Carrots are what you need! This easy, 3-ingredient recipe cooks up quickly on the stovetop and is oh-so delicious. Perfect for holiday or anyday dinner!
Salisbury Steak Ingredients
We tried to keep our recipe simple for all the picky eaters you might be cooking for. There’s plenty of substitutes and modifications you can make that we’ll list here as well! We liked the way The Pioneer Woman kept a similar recipe simple, so we took some inspiration from her.
For our ground beef patties, you’ll need…
- Ground Beef – We prefer a lean ground beef for this recipe. It’ll help your patties hold together much better! If you have any dietary concerns, mixing or substituting the beef with ground turkey is fine.
- Bread Crumbs – We usually use breadcrumbs but we’ve seen all sorts of substitutes here! Experiment with rice, stovetop stuffing mix, crackers, or even oats.
- Ketchup
- Mustard – Dijon mustard is an interesting substitute to try here.
- Worcestershire Sauce
- Garlic Powder & Onion Powder
- Salt and Pepper
Our gravy, meanwhile, is going to use…
- Brown Gravy Mix Packets – Alternatively, you could make this recipe with our Easy Brown Gravy!
- Ketchup
- Worcestershire
How to Make Salisbury Steak
We love this Easy Salisbury Steak recipe because it’s so easy to prep and make! To make some for yourself, here’s all you need to do:
- We’ll start this recipe off my mixing up our meat and forming our patties from the mixture.
- Cook in a large skillet over medium heat until browned on both sides.
- Whisk together gravy ingredients until mixed.
- Pour gravy into skillet over patties and cook until thickened.
We’ve also made a video for this recipe, which we’ve pasted just below! Check it out!
Variations for this Salisbury Steak Recipe
- You can top your steaks with all sorts of veggies. Caramelize some onions with your patties or saute some mushrooms to go with them! Some of our crew loves mushroom gravy.
- There are plenty of other additives you can add to the gravy as well! Try substituting one of your gravy packets out for your favorite soup mixes- maybe use our Copycat Lipton Onion Soup Mix Recipe?
FAQs about Salisbury Steaks
There are many different reasons for steak patties not holding together or staying shaped perfectly. One reason would be the fat content of the ground beef used in the recipe. If you’re remaking this recipe and have noticed your patties tend to fall apart fairly easy, you might want to crack an egg into your meat mixture.
Note that one pound of ground beef will make about 4 hamburger patties.
Hamburger steak usually only contains salt and pepper, whereas Salisbury steak adds fillers.
The main difference is in the way it is shaped and cooked. Salisbury steak is formed into patties and cooked in a skillet. Meatloaf is formed into a loaf in a loaf pan and baked.
Tips for Making the Salisbury Steak
- Use your hands – This is as easy as dropping all of our patty ingredients into a mixing bowl and mixing it all together with our hands. Don’t even try to stir with a spoon!
- Don’t worry about the shape – If they are oval patties or round, they taste the same.
- You can make the patties ahead – Form patties and place in an airtight container and place in freezer.
- Cook on both sides until all the pink is gone – if you want to be extra safe, probe your patties with a food thermometer to check for doneness at around 160 degrees.
- Garnish with freshly chopped parsley for a finished look.
Other Delicious Ground Beef Recipes
- For another tasty ground beef recipe, try our Classic Meatloaf. Meatloaf is a timeless and juicy dish packed with flavor! This recipe with a tangy ketchup glaze makes an easy and simple dinner.
- Homemade Hamburger Helper Beef Noodle is so much better than store-bought. This ground beef recipe can be made with a few simple ingredients and a few minutes time.
- Hamburger Soup is another great comfort food. It’s hearty with vegetables, potato, and ground beef. A perfect weeknight meal. Make this delicious beef dish tonight!
Did you make this recipe? If so, be sure to rate with a star rating and drop a comment below.
Simple Salisbury Steak
Ingredients
Patties
- 1 lb Lean Ground Beef
- 1/3 cup Bread Crumbs
- 2 tsp Ketchup
- 1 tsp Mustard
- 1 tsp Worcestershire
- 1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1/2 tsp Onion Powder
- Salt and Pepper, to taste
Gravy
- 2 packets Brown Gravy Mix
- 2 cup hot Water
- 1 tsp Ketchup
- 1/2 tsp Worcestershire
Instructions
- Combine all pattie ingredients in a large bowl and massage with your hands until ingredients are incorporated.
- Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
- Cook patties on both sides until no longer pink.
- Lower temperature to low.
- Whisk together gravy mix and water until well blended.
- Whisk in ketchup and Worcestershire and pour over patties in skillet.
- Allow to simmer until gravy warms and thickens.
This was so easy and so delicious! My hubby had all three burgers!!
Delicious! The patties were perfect. Only change was using 1 pkg of brown gravy and 1 pkg of onion gravy mix. My husband said it was perfect, like The Grand Luxembourg in Chicago.
My son and his wife are working hard & going to school PLUS they have a baby. I’m going to make this for their Monday night dinner with enough for two nights. Leave it as a tasty dinner surprise at their house. Thanks for this wonderful recipe.
OMG! I made this last night for my family and it was soooooooo GOOD! my husband is the pickiest eater and usually refuses to try new things, I’ve been on a Pinterest kick as of late and told him to pick out something he’d be willing to try and he selected this recipe. I made it just
Like the recipe calls for except I doubled the recipe, added 2 eggs and added mushrooms and onions to the frying pan right before I put the gravy in. My husband and 10 year old son devoured their dinner in record time and were so full afterwards it made me smile! Thank you so much for sharing! This will definitely make an appearance on my dinner table again in the near future! And it was quick to make too!
I am currently making this recipe but am substituting a few things. I use a package of stove top chicken flavored stuffing mix instead of bread crumbs. I also use 1 cup barbecue sauce in this besides mustard. And I add 2 tsp of poultry seasoning. Serve with homemade mashed potatoes and green beans. :) :) I also add in an egg sometimes 2 depending on how much meat I use. Today I will probably use 2.
I’ve not tried this recipe yet, but I intend to try it very soon. I was just thinking this might be really good served on a bed of rice as well as mashed potato. I’ll probably make a bit of each as some members of my family would rather have mash potatoes, but I love rice and this just sounds like a great pairing.
Thanks for NO rice recipe!
I drained the grease before adding the gravy, it turned out much better! Also, I didn’t think about adding an egg to the mixture, but I did however add a tad more breadcrumbs because the raw meat mixture was a little wet. I also added a tsp of original Mrs dash seasoning, used garlic and herb bread crumbs, and used one regular brown gravy mix and one reduced sodium gravy mix to cut back on the salt, and was still plenty salty! And I heated the pan to a higher heat initially to sear the patties so they would hold together better, and they held together just fine :) thanks a bunch! Def a keeper!
This sounds very much like a recipe I used to make years back when I had time and energy to cook from scratch for the family. The kids are long gone now, we have been married for 40 years, and I am disabled now and unable to spend much energy or time in the kitchen cooking meals for the two of us. I do a lot of slow cooker stuff though, and wanted to mention that there is a great “Happy Medium” between all the work of making homemade mashed potatoes and the “boxy” flavor of instant. Ore Ida (I think) makes wonderful frozen mashed potatoes!
There’s nothing in the bright red, microwavable bag but pure, simple potatoes, already peeled, cleaned of “spots” and cut up in small chunks. I pop the whole thing in the microwave, back of the bag up, for 10 minutes, while I’m tending to other parts of the meal, and when done, cut the bag open and dump the contents into the mixing bowl of my “baby Hobart” KitchenAid stand mixer with the paddle on it.
I cook with real food. So real chunks of salted butter are in the bottom of the bowl when I dump the potatoes in on them (you can use whatever you normally do, but if you’re going to the trouble from the beginning, you might as well make them good!) and they start melting, while I heat up a half cup of milk in the microwave (if yours has a “Beveridge” warming key on it, that’s perfect) to add to the potatoes while mixing them with the butter, salt and pepper. Hot milk seems to keep the potatoes from getting gooey like they sometimes do when you add in cold milk, and keeps the potatoes from cooling off too! While the mixer is tending to the potatoes, running on about “2” or “3” then I can be finishing up whatever else I was doing, like finishing up cooking the entrée and veggies, making a salad, or checking on a few biscuits in the oven!
Also coming frozen in a bag, so I can only make 3 or 4 biscuits at a time if I wish. They always come out wonderful, no mess and no work! Just take them out of the bag frozen, put into a small cake pan and baked! Few to no leftovers to get “spotty” waiting for someone to come back and finish them, you can always have fresh.
I have had to learn to make a lot of adjustments and concessions since I have become disabled, and my cooking has been a big one. Veggies in a microwaveable bag is another one! Now this recipe I could mix up in the mixer, with the dough hook, since a bad right shoulder won’t let me do it by hand, like I used to. If you still do, set the bowl down in the sink when you do. It gives you a more ergonomic “angle of attack” to do the mixing, and anything that spills out over the side of the bowl in the way of liquids or dry ingredients can be washed right down the garbage disposal. Or, it you put a dish towel under the bowl to keep it from sliding around you can gather up everything dry that spills over (if any) and shake it out over the trash can.
Thanks for the great reminder of simple heartwarming comfort food! Bon appetit!
Thank you for the tips. I also always mix in the sink (making sure the sink is clean and the soap won’t get into the bowl).
Did anyone need instructions for mashed potatoes?
Shari D., your situation sounds almost identical to my own. Not being able to cook the way I used to is one of the greatest frustrations in adjusting to being disabled. However, I do have one bit of advice I would like to share with you. I, too, have bad shoulders. I got them replaced with artificial joints. They are not as good as when I was twenty years old, but there is less pain, and I have more and better use than before the surgery. I also have one artificial knee, and that too is a surgery I highly recommend in terms of results. I probably will need the other knee and both hips replaced in the near future — I have a particularly aggressive form of arthritis that is destroying all my joints. Even my back is held together with rods and screws. Recipes like this one for the Salisbury Steak are wonderful for me, because they are a happy medium of “made-from-scratch” and “take some help from mixes”. Sometimes the mixes are just as good as scratch (or even better . . . sssh!). I am so grateful to Jen for sharing her recipes honestly, including the occasional shortcuts.
Why couldn’t you just mix it in the sink for that matter?. I have never done it before, but your post gave me an idea. I am an older single gal, why not just sterilize one of my stainless sinks and mix the meat in that with my hands and then just ajax the sink when done? Talk about easy. I also live on a boat and pulling out my kitchen aide mixer is too much trouble. I am going to try the in the sink method using the sink as my bowl tonight. Thanks for the idea.
Love your post and the cooking hints – I’ve been married 40 years too – and I’m disabled also so I know what you mean about not enough energy to stand and cook for a long period!
Hi, I made this tonight for dinner and my entire family devoured it (even my picky 8 and 5 year olds)! I did sub in ground turkey for the beef as my husband is watching his cholesterol and it was delicious. I really needed new weeknight recipes and this one will be made a lot…thank you so much for the recipe!!
Could I use oats in place of bread crumbs?
I always use raw oats instead of breadcrumbs. Healthy way of stretching your meat further and making it more filling. As it cooks it absorbs the flavour of the hamburger and has a similar consistency to ground beef.
WOW!!! My mom used oats in her meatloaves, back in the day! (I think she got the recipe from my aunt.)
I agree… it gave them a richer, denser consistency than bread, while still breaking up the ‘meat log’ effect.
I’d forgotten that, ’til I read your post. Thank You, for jogging my memory!
Is the ratio/measurement for oats the same as for breadcrumbs???
Thanks so much for joining us at Delicious Dishes! We love your Simple Salisbury Steak recipe and hope you’ll join us again this week!
Made this for dinner last night and it was a hit. Both my husband and 2 year old daughter loved it! Will be making this again in the future.
I love Salisbury steak- what a perfect weeknight recipe!
I made the Simple Salisbury Steak for dinner last night. It was so moist and delicious. My family loved it! This recipe will definitely be part of my meal rotation.
I don’t see ‘egg’ listed in the Salisbury Steak recipe.
My mom did do egg in meatloaf and also in mashed potatoes!
I still like mashed with the egg – makes a nice color, aside from adding more protein.
When making meatloaf, I also add an egg.
Wondered how adding an egg to the beef would hold up if I grill it? Can it be grilled? Suppose some trial and error are in the foreseen future for me, ’cause I can’t wait to make this!
I Lou, I think the egg will be o.k. in the meat. Many years ago I would broil what were like small meatloaves (6 to a pound of ground beef) and added one egg into the mix which has some small broken bits of bread in it, onion and green pepper, and and of course seasonings. The egg provided a bit of moisture, and the whole thing was delicious.
Walked right into ‘snarky’ comment – glad to know it was’t because of me!
I’m a solo older gal who mostly eats out – but there are those taste buds getting in the way.
My diet is supposed to be based on good ole gout – and it’s not easy to do, whether out or in.
I love gravy and sauces, meat, and shellfish. No-No foods.
Arthritis doctor said I could eat everything – ‘just in moderation’ – and I’m hoping to try this salisbury steak.
I made this last night and we DEVOURED IT. ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS AND easy. Adding this to the weekly menu! Kept recipe as is….yum!
Thank you for this recipe! I made it tonight and all 3 of my boys LOVED it! It’s rare to find something they all like that is easy to fix.
I made this tonight and it turned out great! I did have to kick the gravy up on high to start; something to do with the oil in the pan I think. But, good recipe! Thanks for sharing :)