Others of my age in the US will remember those "where's the beef?" commercials. (Yes, I used to watch television. I remember with amusement how exciting it was when programming began being extended all night instead of ending around midnight. When the baby woke me up at three I could tune in to reruns of Happy Days instead of numbly sitting in the rocking chair unable to hold the baby AND the bottle AND a book.... And it got REALLY exciting when AMC started airing uncut movies without commercial breaks -- there were scenes in some of the classics i'd never seen before.)
Back to "the beef" ... and now i'm talking about cookbooks. Not having a gripe-fest like yesterday, but just wondering where the innovative recipes are for my favorite foodstuff! (Well, recently, lamb is competing hard for favorite -- it's a really close race.) Cookbooks are full of SWEETS! faux-potatoes and bread! snacks! I want MEEEEEAT. ;-)
Cows are BIG. One steer contains a shitload (technical term) of meat, and piecemeal, the two of us probably go through a whole one every year. And a couple of lambs, quite a few chickens and ducks, and maybe a whole pig. I have hundreds of cookbooks, and yet I seem to cook my pot-roast pretty much the same every time.
I made what sounded like "something different" for dinner yesterday, a crockpot recipe for short ribs with oriental spices. Turned out tasting like sauerbraten to me (it contained vinegar). Though well-marbled, the meat was tender but not juicy. Annoying.
What are YOUR favorite ways of cooking and seasoning beef? Much as I enjoy sauerbraten, I do like some variation. ;-)
Honest to God, I don't buy any 'primal' or 'paleo' cookbooks because of the emphasis on recreating old desserts 'safely.' I tell my friends that who ask, too.
ReplyDeleteYou know about Penzey spices, salted or their salt free line? They are GREAT.
Penzey is great -- we're lucky enough to have a store in town. my DIL was so excited to see it....
DeleteI wish I did! I have to order online. :)
DeleteHi Tess
ReplyDelete“MEEEEEAT”
That takes me back to many years ago, when our youngest son Rob, around two years of age, used to run around the house in the morning naked, after his shower or bath. I said to him one day, come on lad get dressed and cover your MEEEEEAT. That phrase stuck in his mind, and became a bit of laugh and private joke.
Around six months later Jan and myself were on a boat trip to the Isle of White. Surrounded by lot’s of people, Rob was playing with a large Gordon the Gopher glove puppet. Without warning his puppet made a lunge at my wedding tackle and at the top of his voice shouted “he’s biting your MEEEEEAT !!!" The whole deck erupted in laughter and we still fall about laughing about it, nigh on twenty years on. Happy days.
Kind regards Eddie
you're a good sport, Eddie -- some of the guys i know would have been embarrassed, to my disappointment. :-)
DeleteSomehow a pressure cooker provides the juiciest meat. I put a small amount of a liquid on a bottom, it could be a wine, or salted water with a tsp of a balsamic vinegar, or just a salted water and 3-4-5-6 whole cloves of garlic. I rub salt and spices (Montreal Stake are good one, but a little bit too spicy for me) on meat, let it rest at a room temperature during half of an hour, brown on all sides, put it in my pressure cooker with a liquid on a bottom, bring to the boiling and cook for approximately 45 minutes, when it is cool to open, turn meat upside down and let it stay. You may thicken the liquid with one tsp of grounded oatmeal or chia seeds or some other thickening agent. Variations - add mushrooms and heavy cream to the liquid and put sauteed onions on the top of your meat before cooking, or spread on the meat ketchup with ground cloves, or add in the liquid more sour-cream and a heavy cream and a nutmeg after cooking, cut meat in slices, mix with the sauce, or add to the sauce veggies of your choice and mush it after cooking.
ReplyDeleteIf your meat is dry but tender, slice it and double-cook it in the reduction of a heavy cream or a wine, add at the end to the wine a butter, to the cream a sliced garlic. If fish is dry, double-cooking it in a heavy cream till partial reduction(add lemon and lemon jest when serving) is the best way to save the meal.
Sign for America Test Kitchen(the best working recipes besides Alton Brown) website and get a free access to their recipes for two weeks , copy all what you like in a special folder in Googledocs.
I own some very good old cookbooks, some recipes there are odd and strange , but I usually rely on my whims and imagination when cooking.
great ideas! you should write a cookbook, Galina!
DeleteMay be,my son tells me the same, but the competition is too big, and I have no means to attract attention in the crowd of cook-book-writers. My cooking solutions also are very simple most of the time. At some point in a past I was thinking to ask Fransizka to join me for some cooking book project , but never managed to gather enough boldness to do it.
DeleteYou are right about the pressure cooker and America's test kitchen and Alton Brown, but who has time for that? I remember my grandmother with a pressure cooker. You simply can't beat it. I wish I could taste the beef she use to cook again. I don't think you can even buy them anymore. I need to try it guess but my grandmother has Alzheimer's and she can't teach me her recipe. I guess maybe I can research on the internet. I'm assuming ill have to buy the cooker off the web. Thanks for the post.
DeleteSteak tartar!
ReplyDeletei still haven't made Dana's recipe for tartare, but it's on my to-do list. i LOVE the stuff!
DeleteI've still yet to try tartar. It just taste to good when it's cooked "Rick Style" as my wife calls it. Ribeye thick cut with excellent marbling. Charcoal grill with too much coals for what your cooking. I use a coleman battery powered air pump, what you use to blow up a camping air mattress to get the coals as hot as they will go, I mean completely on fire. Meat goes on this NASA hot grill for about 90 seconds each side. This renders the meat very juicy, fork tender and a little less than medium rare. Basically as close to tartar while still using flame. You should try it. If you don't have a pump you can use a fan, seriously, fanning the flames is an essential step. It keeps the fire a lot hotter than normal.
DeleteBeef (braising steak) cut into chunks and slowly cooked with shallots, bacon, mushrooms, bay leaves, mixed herbs, seasoning, red wine, your favourite stock - served with some additional vegetables such as mashed swede, whole green beans even the humble cabbage.
ReplyDeleteJust great food waiting to be eaten .........
Superb - and dare I say if it's low carb high fat even the better (sorry couldn't resist)
All the best Jan
sounds delicious, indeed!
DeleteHi Tess,
ReplyDeleteI think there's nothing I like more than just a rare scotch fillet / rib-eye steak. I don't enjoy the braises as much anymore. Hard to tell why.
I've had much the same experience as you when it comes to short ribs. It's quite hard to get them to come out juicy, but very long and slow is still the way to go. The chip spitter had a recipe on his blog recently that looked good, using beer in a braise and then grilling.
The other thing to do with short ribs is marinating for a day or so, and then fast and high. Charcoal bbq is best of course. Kalbi is nice. In some countries they cut the ribs flanken-style, sawn across. That's great for kalbi, although butterflied English-style short ribs are great, too. See here on page 71: http://goo.gl/kvfNEF
i'll have to look that up - thanks, Michael!
DeleteScrambled eggs with ground beef... I am a slothful cook....
ReplyDeletehmmm -- hadn't thought of that.... our local diner makes a dish called chorizo scramble that's delicious. I order it without the tortillas, and they bring me a BIG pile of eggs-and-sausage, with sliced black olives and jalapenos. the refried beans are covered with cheese -- I pick off the melted cheddar which brings along with it a little of the frijoles, but I end up eating very little of it. ;-)
DeleteGround beef is even more versatile than a piece of meat, and could be cooked very quickly. LCarbing is a great time-saver, you don't have to eat often, most meals could be prepared without much labor. If you think about it, most traditional dishes are attempts to stretch scarce meat with carbo fillers and save or add the taste with vegetables, spices and herbs. Staffed cabbage or bell peppers are good examples.
DeleteHey! That sound great! I just had scrambled eggs for dinner. Adding ground beef sounds killer. I hope this doesn't sound too gross but the way I'm gonna cook it is the beef gets cooked first and the eggs go in on high heat lightly beaten. There gonna soak up ALL the fat. I'm not draining any fat. I'll report my findings.
DeleteOh yeah, Tess. If you want juicy meat I'm afraid you gonna have to throw your "crock pot" away. In my opinion, they were invented by people who don't know how to cook, or just wanted to sell an extra appliance that doesn't really work. You must use your oven on beef. Alton Brown is the only cook on tv that knows what he's doing. I would look up his recipe for pot roast if you want some "good eats".
DeleteOven great for the finishing thick stake after browning on a cast iron skillet , but for the meat with a lot of connective tissue nothing beats pressure cooker. Not all meat worth cooking is a prime stake grade. Alton uses chuck roast cut for his pot roast if I remember properly, I prefer something beefy with more connective tissue or lamb shoulder or shanks, but I promise to check that chuck cut out with my method. I was not 100% satisfied with AB's pot roast results, my son reported the same.
DeleteBTW, US has the best vintage cast iron anyone can wish for.
Rick, I saw your message after I posted my comment. I bought my first in US pressure cooker from BJ, second at Sears for about 40 bucks. I had to have it because it is too long to cook a beef tong or a meat jello out of pig feet without it. For some reason meat is super juicy cooked that way. I had to experiment with a chuck roast to be sure it will not be on a dry side, may be I will do it next week. It is also useful for extracting broth from bones. I use mine in garage on a single electrical burner in order not to heat my house at Florida heat. You don't need more time to use a pressure cooker, just the opposite - it saves time and electricity. In order to cool down to open it quickly, I put top of it under the stream of a cold water.
Deletethe crockpot replicates the long, slow cooking that used to be done over a small fire in a kettle -- as Galina says, it "melts" the connective tissues and makes for luscious, juicy meat. the problem was the recipe and the cut it called for.
Deleteground beef is pretty much a piece of cake -- you brown it, then add flavorings, fillers and fatty sauce. good steaks are a "duh" dish -- you just cook 'em rare. chuck is good when cooked properly, but i'm looking for innovative treatment! the biggest challenge is the round/rump -- it's too lean and tough to treat like a steak, so I usually cook till barely done, cool slice thinly, then make a gravy of the juice and put it all back in the oven for an hour or two to make it tender ... but i'd like some new flavors here, too!
shanks scream OSSO BUCCO. :-) flank WANTS to become fajitas. tail becomes the best stock/soup you can ask for.
but every stew seems to taste the same to me -- most call for the same tired vegetables. ...perhaps I need an Argentinian cookbook? dios sabe, they eat their share of beef!
I believe a lot of different flavors could be added after your beef is done. When veggies are cooked as long as the beef, the result is almost the same each time. That is why I like to finish meat with reduced vine or cream and add herbs and garlic right after cooking is done. Also, most of the time tomatoes are used as sour agent. Changing it for sour cherries, plums or apples could create the difference.
DeleteRoast beef is tough to get just right. Using ABs recipe is a good start. I think increasing the cooking temp he uses slightly and cutting an hour off the time and cooking the meat directly on the bottom of the pan fixes most of the problems. I'm a southern cook and I would never add any of the liquids he uses. He is from Atlanta, but that's north Georgia. They forgot how to be southern down there after the war. The reason I never tried a pressure cooker is that i assumed it was an all day affair. So if you had say a three pound chuck roast, how long would you cook it? Thanks for any help.
ReplyDelete"roast beef" is too nebulous -- what CUT are you using? rump roast and rib-eye roast require two entirely different techniques. chuck roast, again, is a whole different collection of muscles and other tissues, and needs to be braised, not "roasted." :-)
DeleteI will experiment and report back. My guess cooking 3 lbs of chuck will take about 1 hour.
DeleteI do not agree with Alton all the time too, when he was making sauerkraut (my national food) with too long fermenting time and adding unnecessary caraway seeds, I was fuming. His hollandise sauce is perfect, but what that dash of cayenne is doing there?
Ha, so it's not just me that takes food very seriously! I was asking earlier if you used aluminum or stainless steel pressure cooker, Galina. I am thinking of buying one now. I thought it would take three hours or something. Thanks for the info!
DeleteOh your right. I always use chuck. I don't know why. What's your favorite?
DeleteOh, and do you use aluminum or stainless steel?
ReplyDeletefor what pan?
DeleteFor a pressure cooker.
DeleteMy pressure cooker is aluminum, I would prefer stainless still (and skip an electrical model) like the one my mom has,even though it is more expensive even in Russia - $100, but I grabbed what was already on shelves here.
DeleteI take food seriously, even got entangled in discussions on chowhound.com about which spatula is better or about cast iron. I know it is silly, but I can't help myself sometimes.
Blog seems to be very interesting. I am a student of a chef education and getting help from different social media’s like as T.V shows, magazines and internet. I read your blog and like it very much and gaining the knowledge from it. Thanks for share and keep it up.
ReplyDeleteHow To Become A Chef
I just cooked the chuck roast in a pressure cooker. My piece of meat was 1.7 lbs, flat in a shape - 3 - 2.5" thick. I made narrow cuts with a sharp knife all over the surface and inserted into the cuts thin slices of a garlic and sage leaves from my garden (rosemary could be used), let the meat to sit for a while on a counter-top while I sauteed one big onion. I quickly salted the meat and browned it on all sides without adding fat on the skillet - the meat was fatty enough. I put the meat into the pressure-cooker, added less than one inch of a diet tonic (the remnants of it turned too flat, and I had an epiphany to use it for my cooking in order to avoid waist), splash of a vinegar and splash of a soy sauce. I put sauteed onion on the top of the meat, dropped several whole garlic cloves into a liquid, cooked for 30 minutes after the pressure cooker reached the proper pressure. I put the pressure-cooker into an empty sink under weak stream of a cold water in order to drop the pressure in the vessel quickly and tried the meat - it was very juicy, but slightly on a chewy side. Then I cooked for another 15 minutes , opened it after the sink treatment and tried the meat again. It was softer but dryer at the same time, the beef could be very easily shredded. I transferred the roast into another container(ceramic casserole dish with a lid), carefully trying not to disturb the layer of a sauteed onion which turned into a creamy light brown delicious substance. I cut the meat right inside the storage vessel with scissors across fibers in order for cooking juices to penetrate meat better. I guess, meat could be transferred, but cooking juices modified with the addition of whatever you like. Probably, next time I would opt for slightly chewier texture.
ReplyDelete