Recently in Beef Category

Not at all.

80/20 burger grilled over pecan w/pepper jack cheese, grilled buns, and all the fixins. A little worcestershire sauce and some Survival Spice®.

I could've eaten 10 of them. Or so.

By Jove, I think I've done it!

I've tried to cook corned beef a lot of ways over the years, and this was my most successful attempt yet. Traditionally my technique has involved some sort of a braise- immersing the beef at least partially in liquid, all the way to a completely immersed boil. My efforts, although flavorful and tender when sliced thinly, we never as tender as what I was shooting for.

This time I did it differently, and the results were tender beyond words. I started with a really nice Harris Ranch piece I picked up at Sprouts Market. I had been surfing a bit online, looking at lots of techniques, and settled on using my Dutch Oven with the meat on a steaming basket above my liquid, which was a few pints of Guinnes with some additional water. I used the seasonings as is, other than adding some Colman's mustard to the mix.

I cooked the beef in the oven around 325º for the most part for over 4 hours, the lid tightly closed except for about 45 minutes to let the peppercorns and the corned beef brown a bit.

During the last hour I decided to roast an onion, 4 carrots, and a half dozen Yukon Gold potatoes on a sheet pan to give them some color while I cut a small head of cabbage into wedges, keeping the stem intact to help hold them together.

I pulled the beef out, removed the steamer basket, and pulled out whatever bits where in the Guiness, then added more water and mustard, plus a generous squeeze of lemon juice to brighten the liquid up a bit. I added the cabbage to the bottom, along with the carrots and onion. The potatoes went on top of that, and the beef topped it all off. I took the picture at this point, you can see in the corner that the cabbage is still raw.

It boiled until everything was ready, then I sliced the corned beef for service.

I may tweak this a bit next year, but the results were amazing. Really amazing. There's a bonus picture in the extended entry.

Anybody else make some corned beef this year? Slainté!!!

I decided to treat myself to a steak this past weekend, so I picked up a nice 12 oz. all natural ribeye at Sprouts, along with some shallots and crimini mushrooms. After some internal debate on the merits of grilling vs. cast iron frying I opted for the indoor style. I suppose 'the lazys' got hold of me, but I really like the ability cooking in a skillet gives me to make a pan sauce once the steak is cooked.

I seasoned the ribeye generously and let it come to room temperature while I sweated the mushrooms and shallots first, then put them aside and cranked up the heat. There was enough oil left so that I didn't need to add more to get the steak going, so I started getting a nice crust on the beef immediately. Once I flipped it, I moved it to the side, added a few pats of butter and the mushroom/shallot mixture, along with a bit a parsley.

It was medium rare, barely, and delicious. It's been a long time since I haven't been able to finish a steak, but it was so incredibly rich I put some away for later.

I suppose my "Irish Posole" was much closer to a stew than posole, with a tip of the hat to the Southwest. A nice hunk of beef, seasoned with Survival Spice®, then slow cooked in the oven on top of some carrots and onions. After about 90 minutes I added a bit of stock and braised it for another hour or so. I added some hominy and let it go for another hour.

During this time, I roasted some butternut squash, a head of garlic and a few jalapenos. Once the garlic and jalapenos were done, they were chopped and added to the rest of the ingredients, which were removed and chopped as they were tender. The squash was chopped and added to each bowl for service.

This was one of those smashed up techniques that very often result in something that's either really great, really bad, or a really good lesson. This was a pleasant surprise on the up side. I guess having a can of hominy on hand was the impetus for this in the first place- use what you have on hand, and develop the cooking chops to bring it to the table.

Have fun with cooking, and eat your mistakes!!!

(All natural top sirloin and Yukon Gold potato, smothered in a Shiner Bock- balsamic reduction, with red onions and crimini mushrooms)

Well, Julie's out of town again, which means I catch up on eating some foods we generally don't eat together. Steak is one of them, and I really did this one up.

I always prefer to use some good demi-glace or stock in a pan sauce, but lacking that I collected whatever juices I could once I seared the steak while I reduced about half a bottle of Shiner Bock, loosening the fond from my cast iron skillet to get every bit of meaty flavor. I added the juices to the pan along with a glug of decent balsamic vinegar and some dijon mustard, then added my diced red onions and sliced crimini mushrooms. After giving it a saute, I added a generous pat of butter off the heat, then seasoned the sauce to taste.

It's kind of a mess, in terms of plating, but the sauce was so unbelievably good I didn't want to save the leftovers.

Update: I was only able to eat half of that last night, and just had the leftovers. A fall apart sirloin with a sauce packed with flavor. Amazing.

This is a great beer, and it added a wonderful dimension to the pan sauce I put together last night.

I was determined to keep this as simple as possible, in terms of flavors, so I decided to create an utterly simple pan sauce. Fortunately, I still had some of the "semi-glace" that I try to keep on hand, and that's really all you need, but rather than crust my top sirloin with crushed black peppercorns, ala au poivre, I figured that I could just deglaze the pan with some butter, a few cubes of semi-glace, and some crushed peppercorns.

The steak was simple, too, I used some amazing Hawaiian sea salt on the steak before pan frying it in our Tibvrtini Novello organic olive oil, and some butter. Pulled it once it was medium rare, and let it rest on a plate.

Happily, as it turns out, I didn't have enough sauce to deglaze the size of the pan I used, so I needed to add some more liquid. I was planning on drinking the Ommegang Abbey Dubbel anyway, so I splashed a bit of it in the skillet, swirled to deglaze the fond, and reduced it until it was nappé.

Serving it with the rigatoni and cheese seemed like an unlikely match, but it was great, and the sauce worked really well with the pasta, too.

This was almost unbearably good, and pretty simple to put together. Here's another picture of the finished dish:

(Photo: Paul Brown, of his Grilled Tri Tip)

The aptly named Paul "Chile" Brown has entered a chile cookoff:

Well I am waiting for my trial batch to finish. I made over a gallon of chili. I am going to use Survival Spice... I will spike it with a little salt. I hope you do not mind.

I don't mind at all! I spent a lot of time developing Survival Spice™ to be great all by itself, or as a base for whatever fresh flavors you'd like to add- lemon/orange zest, toasted cumin seeds, etc. I put as little kosher salt in the blend as I could, and people on reduced sodium diets have thanked me for that. Also, I think it's a ripoff that most blends have so much salt in them, I'd much prefer that you added extra salt 'to taste' as Paul does.

Sorry to hear about your partner flaking out, Chile. I'd have been proud to be your sous chef.

(Photo: Paul "Chile" Brown)

Paul "Chile" Brown is excited about a new dish:

Man I am alive!!!!!!!!!!!!! Zukerman potatoes and Three Twisted Sister's Bacon from Chandler. Going to fire up the smoker with some beef ribs and beef loin. I got some applewood chunks off of E-bay. The kroppkakor is a Swedish Potato and Bacon Dumpling. I have a new book called "A World of Dumplings "

The book looks interesting, making dumplings is something I've had decent success with, but I've never really taken the time to really make the effort to perfect my technique.

Here's Paul's finished dish, sadly he didn't invite me over... I got a lot of good emails, y'all have been cooking up a storm!!!

Looks like Paul's found himself a new BBQ toy to play with:

I saw it and said what the heck. I am always interested in new Barbeque products. The website http://lokkii.com/ says it is organic.(Whoopdiedoo). I think Mesquite charcoal is the same. I ordered a six pack. The shipping ended up the same as the product.

I had a Corned Beef Brisket and some Beef Ribs. I rubbed them with Survival Spice™ and started cooking it with one brick. I wanted to cook low and slow. When you first light these suckers it smells like pine. Maybe that is there secret ingredient. Once it is lit the smell goes away. I had to light a second log after an hour. They claim it will cook for two hours. I had it in a Weber Kettle.

What do I think?. Can you trust a product from China? Do you want to pay shipping? I give it a thumbs down.!! I would only recommend it you were backpacking because of the convience. It had a Pine smell when you lit it. I do not trust that this was an organic lighting system. There was some chemicals. The only plus I found was convience.

Now to the Highlights of the Dinner. Corned Beef and Beef Ribs rubbed with Survival Spice. Creamed Corn with Bacon (A&B Market,Bend Or,) Tomatoe with Pt.Reyes Blue Cheese, and a whole lot of Lovvin!!!!! Peace, Paul.

I wonder if that smell was resins they probably add as a binder, to keep it from falling apart during shippping. Interesting idea, if wonder if they're selling a lot of them? It is a great idea for campers, and people using public grills that don't want to haul around a bag of charcoal. Chile said that they're about 4 1/2" across.

Man, those ribs look good enough to eat!!! Ribs + Survival Spice® = good times.

Paul sent some pictures of his St. Patty's Day corned beef that he rubbed with Survival Spice™, which I've never tried, I'm ashamed to say!

He also made some amazing looking jalapeño cheese corn bread. I wonder if he used any of the Novello version of the Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgine di Oliva I see there?

Okay, Chile, give it up. How about a few recipes?