5 Vintage Ground Beef Dishes We Want To Bring Back In 2026

When you're cooking with meat, it's hard to go wrong with ground beef. The versatility of ground beef allows it to be used in far more dishes than steak, chicken breast, pork chop, or shrimp. Once it's ground up, the texture and the flavor lend themselves to countless applications. It may not be the perfect ingredient, but it's certainly in the running. Ground beef shines in classic comfort foods like hamburgers and shepherd's pie. It's also a core element in meat sauces for spaghetti and, of course, in a good old-fashioned meatloaf. Fortunately, you don't have to look far to find recipes using ground beef and just about any other ingredients you have on hand.

From rice to potatoes to pasta, along with any mix of vegetables, if you have ground beef, you can put a whole meal together. Maybe the fact that it's so popular in America, and there are so many recipes, is also a double-edged sword. It's impossible to remember all the dishes that have come and gone. As trends and tastes change, some of these recipes are forgotten.

Home cooking is trending towards nostalgia and comfort again. People are looking to enjoy the food they eat, whether or not it's necessarily healthy. There's still room for some international flavors, and also dishes that can help stretch a budget Depression-era style. To that end, we've drawn together five ground beef recipes from yesteryear that we think deserve a comeback in 2026.

Straight out of the 1960s comes burger bundles. What look like traditional meatballs and gravy are actually large meatballs that have been formed over stuffing, as in Stove Top, or any other boxed stuffing mix. Ground beef is mixed with milk or evaporated milk and formed into patties. Prepare the stuffing according to the box directions. Drop a blob right in the center of your burger patty, then fold it up to form a large ball.

The sauce is made with condensed soup. Usually, cream of mushroom soup, but any cream soup would probably do. Ketchup and Worcestershire sauce are added to the soup mixture, which is then heated. The sauce is poured over the meatballs in a casserole dish before baking until everything is cooked through. The end result falls somewhere between meatloaf and an inside-out burger. It's filling, it's comforting, and you can play with the soup to have variations. Cheese soup, cream of broccoli, or cream of bacon would make great additions.

It would be easy to dress up the recipe with homemade stuffing instead of a boxed version, though that almost feels like cheating. Likewise, you could make a homemade mushroom gravy from scratch rather than using condensed soup if you're looking for something a little more homey, or if you're trying to cut back on the salt.

To complete the meal, add a side of green beans and, if you're feeling like some more carbs, mashed potatoes. With the gravy tossed in, you have a filling comfort classic in the making.

Chow mein casserole is a type of Minnesota hot dish. Of course, a Minnesota hot dish is just a kind of casserole, but let's not worry about the semantics. There are many kinds of Minnesota hot dishes, including versions made with pasta or tater tots, but this one uses chow mein noodles. It's that specific detail that makes this dish one worthy of a comeback in 2026.

The basic recipe here is fairly simple. You start by sautéing onion, possibly some celery, and ground beef. Some versions of the recipe call for cream of mushroom soup, some for cream of chicken. Some even call for an additional can of tomato soup to switch up the flavor profile. Then you need to add some cooked rice. At this point, you have a simple ground beef and rice hot dish. It becomes a chow mein casserole once a few splashes of soy sauce and crispy chow mein noodles are folded in, adding a subtle Asian twist.

This is another recipe where you can play with some of the flavors to shake it up. You can also easily increase the Asian influence with teriyaki, Korean barbecue, bulgogi, sriracha, and so on. The real draw, however, is the crunchy chow mein noodles. Ground beef casseroles are notoriously one-note in the texture department. Chow mein noodles aren't just crunchy. They are very crunchy. So not only do you get the comfort of a classic casserole, plus an Asian twist, you get a next-level texture experience. It's a triple threat.

Some recipes lean into their sloppy appearance, looking at you, Sloppy Joes and Rochester Garbage Plates. They may not offer the most tempting name, but they still deliver on flavor. Goop is one of those recipes. Some versions of this claim to be from as far back as the Great Depression, while others have been traced to the 1950s. In pre-Internet days, recipes often took circuitous routes to find their way to people. From published cookbooks to church collections, magazines, and local newspapers, recipes were copied, shared, and their origins lost to time. Nevertheless, in one form or another, goop has persevered.

What goes into this casserole is a real dealer's choice. Some versions are made with ground beef and rice, while others use pasta. This seems fitting, as anything named goop doesn't sound very rigid. There are vegetables included in every version of the dish. One recipe combines pasta with rice along with peppers, celery, onion, and mushrooms. Another version uses only mushrooms and onion with tomato paste and ends up very close to a mushroom Bolognese.

The main difference between a sauce and goop is that there is little seasoning used in any goop recipe. Salt and pepper make up most of the seasoning, and some recipes call for bouillon or Worcestershire sauce, but little else. The ability to include almost any starch along with any vegetable from your pantry or fridge makes this dish highly versatile. It earns a spot on the list for nights when there is little time or energy to plan dinner, and you just want to throw some things together.

For some, loose meat sandwiches are ubiquitous and were a staple of growing up. For others, they're a mind-blowing concept that takes a moment to understand. In very simple terms, a loose meat sandwich is like a sloppy joe minus the sloppy. It's seasoned, loose ground beef served on a hamburger bun. Yes, the sandwich can be messy and fall apart easily, but that may be part of the charm.

Loose meat traces its origins to 1924 in Sioux City, Iowa, at a place called Ye Olde Tavern. The owner created a sandwich of seasoned, steamed ground beef on a bun, topped with pickles, onion, and mustard. Two years later, the Maid-Rite sandwich debuted, essentially knocking off the Tavern Sandwich.

In modern recipes, ground beef is browned in a skillet with some onion, with the goal of keeping the meat loose throughout cooking. Some versions will allow the beef mixture to simmer in a broth, which can be seasoned with garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. The Maid Rite version, along with others, opt for a more punchy seasoning that may include vinegar, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce.

In the end, it should not be saucy, but it should be a bit juicy. The meat still needs to be loose and not held together like it is in a sloppy joe. The reason? This was a meal designed to feed a large number of hungry people quickly. You are not wasting time forming patties. You simply cook the meat and assemble the sandwiches quickly and efficiently. It's easy, tasty, and kind of fun. Try our Maid-Rite sandwich recipe and see what you think.

Ground beef is generally not seen on the breakfast plate. For whatever reason, beef has never caught on as much of a breakfast food. Even chicken shows up on breakfast biscuits now and then. But Joe's Special, a San Francisco diner dish from the 1920s, combines ground beef with scrambled eggs and spinach to make what you might call a scramble or frittata. That said, plenty of people eat it for dinner despite being an egg dish. There's never a wrong time for scrambled eggs, is there?

A basic version may include spinach, onion, and garlic with the beef and eggs. Others add mushrooms and Parmesan cheese. You can even find recipes that add peppers, Italian spices, and sausage. The dish is often served with toast or crusty sourdough bread.

If there's a theme to be pulled out here, aside from the presence of ground beef, it's one of versatility. Ground beef pairs with almost anything. In Joe's Special, both the beef and eggs pair well with many other ingredients, allowing for a wide range of variations. Some recipes use nutmeg as a seasoning, while others go for Tabasco or chili flakes. You could just as easily move towards Mexican seasoning, or give it an Asian twist with mirin, light soy sauce, garlic, and scallions.

Joe's Special deserves a comeback for all the previous reasons we've mentioned, and for its uniqueness. When you're tired of pairing ground beef with rice, potatoes, or pasta, it offers something different but still delicious.