Chow Time

I don't know about doctoring up Dinty Moore, if you are going to go through all that work why not start from scratch?

Good point but I think time is the big factor.  Stews are usually made with the less desirable cuts of meat and simmered for many hours on a low heat.  I've never made stew myself but I recall there was an additional step of browning the meat first in a hot skillet but my memory may be faulty.  Seeing a big pot of stew simmering on the stove was always a welcome sight in the winter time and one of the few times I ever saw a bay leaf being used.

There are a number of canned beef stew comparisons online and the winner is usually Dinty Moore but it's often described only as acceptable and not good or excellent.  I thought there would be a lot of recipes for Dinty Moore variations but I was wrong; very slim pickings.  There was one recipe that may interest Uncle Ken, though.  You bake the Dinty Moore with cornbread batter on top, and it sounds good.

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SpaghettiOs (no hyphen) is a trademark of Campbell's but I think it was originally made by Franco-American.  There are imitation products, one made by Chef Boyardee, but they are called "spaghetti rings."  SpaghettiOs are usually the highest rated version of that type of canned pasta product, which isn't saying much for the other competitors.

Useless trivia:  Chef Boyardee was a real guy whose real name was Ettore Boiardi.  He changed the spelling of the name so Americans would know how to easily pronounce it.

I wonder why so much canned food has a weird taste or texture; everything tastes a little off.  Freeze-drying might deliver a better product but could be too expensive which is why you seldom see such foods in supermarkets.  The military is the biggest customer of freeze-dried food with their MREs (Meals, Ready to Eat) and every nation has its own version.  YouTube has plenty of reviews and I should check them out.  Are Japanese MREs tastier then their Chinese counterparts?   And is there a military version of Dinty Moore Stew that blows the canned version out of the water?  A good use for our tax dollars, I think.