Recently in Crockpot Category

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.

Pulled Pork is one of those dishes that I never thought I could replicate well. I'm not sure why I held this belief. After all, it should just be pork and spices, right? I think it was more the fact that I've had good Pulled Pork at restaurants and I was worried that if I tried it at home, it would end up being a miserable failure. When we saw this recipe from Skagit River Ranch, however, we decided to give it a try.

First the Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons canola oil
• 4 lbs of boneless pork shoulder
• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 3/4 cup cider vinegar
• 3/4 cup catsup
• 1/3 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
• 1/4 cup light molasses
• 2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• salt and pepper

So how did we do on our goal to use local ingredients? Not very well, I'm afraid. We used olive oil from Napa and the cider vinegar, catsup, brown sugar, molasses, red pepper flakes, Worcestershire sauce, dry mustard, salt, and pepper were all purchased from the local grocery store. At least the catsup was organic. The yellow onion came from the Ballard Farmer's Market and the pork shoulder was from Skagit River Ranch. Well, I guess 2 out of 12 isn't as bad as 0 out of 12.

Now the process:

Cut the pork into several equal pieces. We had to use two pieces of pork shoulder in order to get 4 pounds, so I took the larger piece and cut it in half first. Head the oil over medium high heat. Brown the pork on all sides, about 10-12 minutes. Transfer the pork to the slow cooker.

Pour off all but 1 tablespoon of fat from the frying pan. Note: We had to skip this step. There was almost no fat in the frying pan. Oh how we love Skagit's meat. Return the pan to medium-high heat and add the onion. Saute for about 5 minutes until the onions are golden in color. Add the vinegar and use it to deglaze the pan, scraping up any browned bits of meat. Add the catsup, brown sugar, molasses, red pepper flakes, Worcestershire sauce, dry mustard, and some salt and pepper. Cook until the mixture begins to bubble, stirring occasionally.

Pour the sauce over the pork, cover, and cook on high 4-5 hours or on low for 8-10 hours.

When the slow cooker is done, transfer the pork to a dish and shred the pork using a pair of forks. Discard any large pieces of fat. Skim off any excess fat from the sauce (we had none). Return the pork to the sauce and stir.

We decided that next time we made this, we would add some bourbon to the sauce as well. The recipe encourages you to serve this over rolls, but we usually just pick up a loaf of bread from Tall Grass Bakery and have that on the side. The pork is also excellent cold, on a salad the next day.