Recently in Beef Category

Alton Brown is kind of annoying. I'm not sure why I feel that way, something about his presentation, at least on the show Good Eats, just rubs me the wrong way. But I was home alone a few weeks ago and flipping channels, and I caught a few minutes of his show on vinegar. I really wasn't planning on watching, but he intrigued me with a salad recipe that involved grilling lettuce with parmesan cheese. I'll definitely be trying that sometime this summer. Since that recipe caught my eye, I decided to keep watching the rest of the show. When he stuck a roast in a marinade for 3 days, and then used one of my favorite cookies ever to make the sauce, I knew we had to try the recipe. So, now I present to you:  Sauerbraten!

Ingredients

• 2 cups water
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 1 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 medium onion
• 1 large carrot
• Salt
• 2 bay leaves
• 6 whole cloves
• 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 3-4 pound roast (bottom round)
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 18 gingersnaps (or about 5 oz)

Directions

Chop the onion and the carrot into medium pieces. In a large saucepan, combine the water, vinegars, onion, carrot, salt, bay leaves, cloves, and mustard seeds. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes and remove from heat.

Next take your roast and pat it dry. Rub it with the oil and salt and pepper it on all sides.

In a skillet (preferably cast iron), cook the roast until browned on all sides.

Here's a little food porn for you.

Isn't that a beautiful roast?

Put the roast in a non-reactive bowl (non-metal).

Now comes the... interesting part of the recipe. It actually says something like "when the marinade has cooled enough not to burn a finger stuck in it..."

Yeah. I'm not sticking my finger in hot liquid to see IF it burns me. So I waited about 20 minutes after removing the marinade from the heat.

Pour the marinade over the roast, cover, and refrigerate for three days. (If the roast isn't totally submerged in the liquid, turn once a day)

...

Wow. Look at that. In the space of an ellipsis and one line feed we've fast forwarded 3 days.

Preheat the oven to 325 and put the roast and all of the marinade in a Dutch oven.

Bake for 4 hours.

Crush the gingersnaps.

Remove the Dutch oven from the... well, from the oven. Keep the roast warm. Strain the marinade and add it to a saucepan. Cook over  medium-high heat and mix in the gingersnaps. Cook until thick, stirring frequently.

Slice (or shred) the roast and top with sauce. Enjoy.

Mmmmm. Burgers and pizza. Are there more perfect foods? Well, the answer to that usually depends on my mood, but tonight, there was nothing better than a burger that tasted like pizza.

We discovered this recipe on Get Your Grill On. If you like to grill, this is a fantastic blog.

Ingredients

• Extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large onion
• Salt and pepper
• 2 Tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 pound ground beef (preferably organic, grass fed beef)
• 1/4 cup pepperoni or salami (about 5 slices salami)
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• 2 slices of bread, or 2 small hamburger rolls
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 slices Provolone or other mild cheese

Directions

Despite all of those ingredients, this is a rather simple recipe. Thinly slice the onions (a mandolin works well here) and throw them in a pan with a glug or two of the olive oil over medium heat. Cook the onions for a few minutes, covered, until they are softened. Remove the cover and cook for another few minutes, stirring occasionally.

While the onions are cooking, chop the salami or pepperoni. Mix the ground beef, chopped salami, oregano, and red pepper flakes. Form into burgers (ours were smaller, almost like sliders).

When the onions have cooked down and softened, add the tomato paste and saute until the paste gives off a sweet aroma. Add the wine and cook until the wine has nearly dissolved.

Meanwhile, heat up the grill and cook the burgers.

When the burgers are almost done, melt some butter and minced garlic in a pan. Brush the bread or rolls with the melted garlic butter and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Turn on the broiler and broil the cheese covered buns for just a minute or so. When the burgers are done, broil the bun, burger, and Provolone cheese all together just until the cheese melts.

Yum! This was fantastic. The burgers were spicy and rich, the onions were sweet, and the buns were toasted garlic goodness. Our only problem was that our burgers were a little too big to be sliders and a little too small to be a burger. Next time we'll alter the size a bit.

I don't know about you, but I always thought Shepherd's Pie was an Irish dish. Turns out, it's actually an English dish that was typically made to use up leftover pieces of meat from a previous meal. We don't often have leftover meat, but you can certainly make Shepherd's Pie with fresh ingredients.

Because I thought the dish was Irish, we made this dish on St. Patrick's Day.

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef (organic, from Skagit River Ranch)
• 3 bacon strips (I was out of bacon, so I omitted this)
• 1 small onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 cup tomato sauce
• 1 can chopped olives (I left these out as well)
• 5 1/2 cups hot mashed potatoes
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 1 tablespoon minced cilantro
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Melted butter

Directions

Cook up a mess of mashed potatoes. The recipe says to make them without butter or milk, but don't worry too much about that. If you have leftover mashed potatoes from last night's dinner, those will work too. Heat them up a bit while you're doing the next few steps.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Cook the beef until all the pink disappears and remove the beef from the pan. If there's a significant amount of fat left in the pan, drain it. When we use grass fed beef from Skagit, there's hardly any fat in the pan.

Dice the bacon strips, chop the onion, and mince the garlic. In the same pan as the beef, cook these, along with the oregano until the bacon is crisp. We omitted the bacon because (gasp!) we didn't have any! Add the tomato sauce, olives (if you're using them) and cilantro as well as the precooked beef. Simmer for 10 minutes.

If you haven't already, use this time to mash the cooked potatoes.

Butter or grease a 9 inch pie plate. Line the bottom and sides with mashed potatoes. Fill the pie with the beef mixture.

Now spread more mashed potatoes over the top of the pie. This can be a little tricky, and it's best to use a greased spoon or spatula to help you along.

Bake the pie for 20 minutes.

Brush the top with melted butter and bake for an additional 10 minutes.

This makes between 6 and 8 servings.

I liked it, but I did feel that it was a bit bland. I think it could have been even better with the bacon and with adding some sour cream or horseradish to the mashed potatoes. Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top of the mashed potatoes would have also added a nice touch.

Skagit River Ranch has more than excellent beef, pork, chicken, and eggs. They also have a wide variety of recipes using their products. Tonight's recipe: beef stew with bacon. Mmmmm. Bacon. Everything is better with bacon. (NOTE: as a general rule, I'll * the ingredients that are either local or organic.)

First, the ingredients:

• 4 oz thick cut bacon *
• 3 tablespoons flour
• Salt and pepper
• 3 pounds of boneless beef chuck or beef stew chunks *
• 3/4 pound cremini mushrooms *
• 1/2 pound baby carrots *
• 1/2 pound frozen pearl onions
• 3 cloves chopped garlic *
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 1 cup beef broth *
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste *
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary *

So how'd we do on the local/organic purchasing this week? Very well. We bought a pound of bacon from Skagit on Saturday. Unfortunately, we ended up burning most of it, so the bacon we actually used for this was bacon from the local butcher's shop. The beef was from Skagit, and the garlic and carrots were from the local farmer's market. We picked up organic cremini mushrooms and tomato paste at our local supermarket. The rosemary came from our own garden.

The onions... well, a word about the onions. The recipe calls for a bag of frozen pearl onions. I just don't like frozen pearl onions. When they cook, they end up a soggy mess. Instead, we used cocktail onions in vermouth. These onions cook up crunchy, with just a bit of tang.

So now... onto the cooking!

J actually made this while I was at work, so I'll turn it over to him.

Ok, J here.

The recipe itself is pretty easy.  Chop up the bacon, cook it until it's crisp, something I've started to fail at recently.  Oh, no, it isn't what you think.  If it was that, I'd just cook it longer thus making it crispy.  No, I've been discovering how to make charcoal (albeit bacon scented) in the cast iron pan.  I was a bit worried that it was too burnt.  But, well, it was going to end up in a stew, I figured it might be ok.  We'll ask P what she thought after this.

Once the bacon is all crispified, remove most of the drippings, leaving a tablespoon or so in the pan.  Obviously, you'll wait for it to cool a bit.

While that's combining, take the flour, some salt and some pepper and mix it in a bag.  Then, throw the beef in and shake to coat.  Or, at least, that's what the recipe says.  3 pounds of beef is alot when put in a bag.  So, I actually recommend doubling the amount of flour and splitting it over three bags and splitting the beef up.  Half of the beef for ours wasn't coated in flour, or even touched by it. 

Pop the frying pan back up the medium high and brown the beef in shifts. 

Well, unless you have a gigantic pan, in which case, you can put it all in the single pan.  But, barring that, brown beef, put in slow cooker, brown beef, put in slow cooker, lather, rinse, repeat.

It'll probably take 5 minutes a side, and you only need to flip them once.  Remember, you aren't cooking the beef, you're just browning it.

Once all the beef is in the cooker, throw the mushrooms, carrots, onions and garlic on top.

Back to the frying pan, pour in the wine, beef broth and tomato paste, mix, boil, deglaze, scrape crunchy bits into the sauce and then pour over the stuff in the crockpot.

And, if you're like me, you can throw in a splash of bourbon at this point too.

Cook on high for 4-5, or low for 8-9 (hours, natch, it is called a slow cooker for a reason).

When it is done, pull off the top, mix in the bacon (remember the bacon?) and rosemary and cook on high for 10-20 minutes and serve it up, fresh and hot, with a nice piece of bread.

Or, if you're like us, end up with tons of plans and throw it in the fridge for a couple days and reheat a couple servings when you're finally ready to eat.

All this said, if this is the last stew of the season (and the weather is looking nicer day by day), it was an excellent choice.

So, I'll had this back over for P to give her opinion on how it was, but me, I liked it.  P?

Meyephonshrumf mrnosh ruwosh. Oh, sorry everyone. My mouth was full of yummy stew. I've liked this recipe both times we've made it. I think it could have used a few sprinkles of salt, but then again, I like salt on a lot of things. Once the beef has cooked for 8-9 hours it practically falls apart at the mere sight of a fork.

I wasn't a fan of the bacon, but it wasn't due to its bad charcoal imitation. I can really tell a difference between Skagit's bacon and the bacon from our local butcher shop. They are both good, but Skagit's bacon just seems more flavorful. I think next time we make this dish, I also want to double the carrots. Though it's likely that'll be sometime next winter.