steak steak steak

Name that tune:

steak steak steak

steak steak steak

steak for dinner

steak for DINner

I have pictures!

Last week I made a stir-fry with some round steak and many many veggies. I marinated the steak for few hours. I thought it was pretty good. But then a couple days later Phil brought home steak taco leftovers from El Burrito and I was reminded just how flavorful the meat itself can be. I think I should cut it into smaller bits, or ideally thin strips, but that was tricky. I think I need more knife skills.

These pictures are from a Sunday night dinner - fajitas at Andrea and Jason's, featuring mitchmeat and chicken. Feel free to tell us how you made it so so tasty.

Sorry Neal, you are sideways.

Extreme chewing!

adding new meaning to the term "mystery meat"

Since our posts with Mitch's meats have become less frequent and I am in a procrastinating mood (really not uncommon for me -- empathize with C and J who have to put up with all my random interest emails) I found something cool to show you.

Check out one of the July 18 posts on this website>
http://www.perfectduluthday.com/

The answer is in the comments.

Chipotle Steak Fajitas with Tomatillo Salsa

Chris made some fabulous steak fajitas tonight.

Why is he not blogging them himself you ask? Why indeed. I don't exactly know, but I do know that I couldn't let these fajitas go unheralded on the internets. They were spicy and complex without more than a sprinkle of lettuce, lime and a fresh tomatillo salsa to complement their flavor. These were made with a round steak and came out nicely cooked - not too tough (though, with round steak we couldn't do them medium rare, which might be nice if we were using a different cut), and it soaked up the marinade beautifully. The chipotle and (our own garden fresh!) cilantro were a fresh and spicy flavor for the meat. I am transposing the recipe for Chris but note that although it was inspired from an episode of "Top Chef Masters" where they made tongue tacos, the recipe is all his. He is getting really good - good thing I married that dude!!


Chipotle Steak Fajitas with Tomatillo-Pepper Salsa
Marinade for the steak
1 tsp olive oil
1 chipotle pepper, chopped (from a can)
handful of cilantro
3/4 tsp Adobo seasoning
salt/pepper to taste

Cut up one round steak into cubes/strips and toss all marinade ingredients together with the raw steak in a plastic baggie or glass bowl. Refrigerate for a few hours. After the steak has marinated (we did 2 hrs), heat a skillet with 1 tsp oil and saute 1/2 an onion until soft. Add the steak and cook to desired doneness.

Tomatillo-Pepper Salsa
4 Tomatillos
3 Thai Dragon Chilis (or any spicy chili pepper - we just happened to buy a Thai Dragon Chili plant last week at the farmer's market .. they're suuuuuper spicy, so 3 teeny peppers is plenty of heat)
1 Orange Bell Pepper, seeded
1 tomato
juice of 1/4 of a juicy lime
handful of cilantro
salt to taste

Put all ingredients in a food processor and chop until desired chunky-ness. Chris pureed them to a pretty smooth sauce.

Serve fajitas with corn tortillas (heat them in the microwave for about 15 seconds .. not 2 minutes like Chris accidentally did :-), chopped lettuce, lime wedges and the tomatillo salsa. Yummmmmmy!

(Thirds:)

et cetera

We haven't made any mitchmeaty meals lately, but I thought I'd share these tidbits:

#1 I love graphs! We are all clearly in the ideal place on this graph this summer.

 from seriouseats.com

#2  Phil inquired about the haggis at the Seward Coop meat counter, and the very nice butcher wrapped up a free sample for him!  Apparently Seward is one of the 2 places in the US (or was it North America??) that makes haggis.  We have enjoyed haggis in the past at Andrea and Greg's Robbie Burns parties.  Or, at least I enjoyed it the last time... the first time I was too intimidated by the looking-like-a-gigantic-grey-slug thing to try it.  Those were large haggises (haggi?) with a diameter larger than a grapefruit.  The Seward haggis was more like a big long bratwurst. 

Here's the haggis, sliced and cooked up with egg.

After the dinner, Phil sang a song that went "Haggis/Egg/Drunken goat cheese/These are the foods of liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife" and commented, "I'm so glad I'm not a vegan." Amen. 

Where did I go wrong?

Yesterday it was chilly here in the house but I was reluctant to turn on the furnace. So I thought I'd both warm up the house a bit and cook dinner by using a technique I found on the internet for cooking a roast from a frozen state. I put one of Mitch's chuck roasts, a chunked up onion, potatoes and carrots, as well as a can of diced tomatoes and some water in a dutch oven pot. My internet source said that it would take four hours of cooking in the oven at 250 degrees for this mixture to produce a tasty roast. After three hours at 250 degrees I checked the pot and found that things were moving slowly toward the goal but maybe not as fast as I thought they should. I turned up the oven temp to 325. Left it all in there for two more hours. It's smelling very good at this point but I was kind of disappointed in the results. Potatoes done, carrots still kind of firm, meat done but didn't fall apart in as tender a state as I'd hoped it would. To be honest, my roast cooking experience is not deep so perhaps my expectations were not appropriate for this cut of meat or maybe this technique is not optimal. Any wisdom out there for me?

Post script: the house temperature went up one degree in the five hours the oven was on.

Saints Tailgate

Here was the first big meal I made with the hamburger - 4 pounds of beef made into 16 patties, combined with brats, hot dogs, corn, beans, and plenty of beer, was just enough to feed our group of 19 at the Saints game memorial day weekend.

Grilling was a blast and the game was awesome, from what I remember. There's been many more afternoons grilling since this, and will surely be many more to come this summer!

Home of the Beef!!

Wow this blog is amazing! Or crazy...I'm not sure yet...I think I'm still a bit disturbed by the title :)

Anyways, we randomly took some pictures of the cows this Easter, and looking back I think the one in the picture looking at the camera with the white face is "Number 16" though it could have been her sister. The other picture is of a bunch of the cows hanging out by our ponds in May.

But thank you to everyone - I'm so glad it all worked out and everyone likes the beef!! Its super tasty so far, and its going faster from my freezer than I ever thought it would, so thinking will have to do this again next fall!

I'll try to add some meals up here, and for sure will get pics next weekend when I plan to grill the tongue with some friends!

Cheers!

The Meat Man Speaks

A couple of months ago my friend Mitch sent around an e-mail to his friends asking if they were interested in pooling together to buy some beef. Mitch grew up near Green Bay, and his folks were thinking about slaughtering one of their cows. Mitch's folks have had our cow since it was a calf. It was pasture fed. No rgbh, hormones, steroids, etc. In the past, they had just sold whatever left over meat to their local butcher, but this time around they decided to see if they could find buyers themselves. The extra money earned is going into their son's college fund.

Photo of Mitch & folks creepily stolen from Facebook. Sorry Mitch.

After considering the local/organic bent of many of my friends and petitioning for interest, I told Mitch we would be in. He explained we would be buying about a quarter of the cow and would receive over 100 lbs of beef. Over the next couple months he and I traded e-mails and phone calls about exactly how much beef we would be getting and when it would arrive. As the days and conversations passed, I learned our cut of the cow would be around 140 lbs hanging weight with the cost at $2.50 per hanging weight lb.

For us to actually get the cow Mitch's folks had to drive down from Green Bay with the back of their truck packed full of frozen meat. This trip was delayed once or twice, but an estimated weekend arrival was set. Mitch emailed me about it on the preceding Monday, however due to my internet system being down I didn't hear of the arrival until that Wednesday. Mitch's folks were only able to find one additional buyer, so they slaughtered one of their smaller cows to be split in three. Or rather, cut into many parts and then split into three.

Thus began a frantic search on my part for people who had expressed prior interest or were new to the arrangement but still wanted some beef. Thankfully within a couple days I arranged 9 partners in cow to help get most of this beef off my hands and share the $415 or so bill. Our meat eaters are Stu, Mo, Katie & Chris, Amanda & Neal, Kari & Martin, Andrew & Julie, Rynda & John, Andrea Eves & Jason, and Phil & Cate.

When I picked up the meat Mitch's parents mentioned they may do this again in the fall. I told them right on the spot we would definitely be interested, just based on the excitement I felt from all of you. I also know that a few more folks were interested in getting in on the action, but due to my last minute arrangements were unable to. (I know Julia and Rachel are in this crowd)

So keep on posting, keep on eating beef, and hopefully we'll get to do this again soon!


P.S. Miss Piggy is very pleased that Mitch's surgical knives are only used on cows...

Meal #4 Burgermania

We had a little grillout in our little yard last night.  Mo made grilled shrimp cocktail inspired by smitten kitchen.  

Shrimp handoff - Phil! Use the tongs!

Mo triumphs over shrimp.

We also had many many burgers... but we'll have to see if Martin and Kari will post some photos of those.  Phil made the patties inspired by Jason's version last weekend, adding fresh onion and garlic.  He also made the guacamole, which I enjoyed on 3 million chips and my burger.  Kari brought cute mini-flans (flanitos?) made in muffin cups.  It was a great chill summer night... I love everyone's excitement for trying new things! 

It's definitely grilling season around here -  I wonder what we'd be doing with all this meat if we'd bought it in the winter....

(more) memorial meat

We tapped into our supply for a Sunday night dinner - bbq style!

Steaks were salt and peppa'd, and burgers were mixed with some soy, a tough of cayenne (and some other seasoning, Jason to insert later), and also, salt and peppa.


Mitch meat (also pictured: hot dogs)






Steaks on a grill. (Much more tasty than snakes on a plane).




Steak grillin', burger flippin extraordinare - Jason.





Chomp chomp chomp.

More BBQ'ing!

Okay this may be a little redundant since we fired up the grill for the last meat experience but the sun was just so shiny and grilled meat tastes so good! This took place on Memorial Day and we invited a couple of friends to join us in eating hamburgers and one freaking gigantic sirloin steak. We didn't do anything particularly special to the meat, just a little salt and pepper and maybe a dash of Old Bay. Still mighty tasty.

Here are some of the pics:

It's as big as my head!!!

You may think, oh the beef is not that big, look at it next to the strawberry. But you would be mistaken friend because that strawberry was on steroids.

Sam's double decker steak sandwich. Mmmmm...

wok smoker

So, I think we all have grills, but this NYT Magazine video on smoking ribs in a wok on the stovetop is still worth watching. 

like a bat outta hell...

today's menu: meatloaf! (+cauliflower potatoes, spinach salad)

I followed my favorite lunch recipe: Walk/run around the Mississippi for a couple hours, return home, receive plate of freshly-made food from boyfriend, do dishes, enter food coma, repeat.

I know Jason threw some barley in there, along with the ground beef (thank you Cow!). Here's the loaf evolution (as I witnessed it).

Pre-loafed meat with stuff in it.




The fully formed loaf. (Appetizing!...?)





A little prettier this way.





Myumyumyum!





This was my first venture (we're not counting the steak-taco regression. it happened at the may day parade. what happens at may day...) into red meat after a good 15 years of vegiedom.... dun dun dun....




Not bad! My exit from vegetarianism finalized with a big bite of moocow meat. Thanks for such a conscionable beginning!

Blog request

Hey Phil! Or maybe Mitch!

I think we could use an introduction to the cow blog. You know, something that talks about what kind of cow it is, where the farm is, etc. Does the cow have a name? These are things I'd like to know.

What The Shish?

Last Sunday I biked my way over to the BF's house with my rib eye steak in tow. Sam, Erick, and I were planning on doing some work on Sam's now gutted kitchen but the day was too nice and our hangovers were too present so instead we opted for playing catch and having shish kabobs. The kitchen is still no where near done, but I think we made the right choice.

(I cubed the meat and sprinkled it with a little salt, pepper, cayenne, and good Old Bay)

After deciding on the kabobs though a comedy of errors ensued that included many extra trips to Trader Joe's, gas stations and, unfortunately, target to get extra items like the veggies, appropriate lighter fluid (Erick tried to use the stuff we were supposed to use on the hard wood floors to get the black tar goo off - probably not a great idea), and those little wooden kabob sticks.

(A little toxic fumes never hurt anyone, right?)

Why is lighting a grill so hard? I think we need more practice. But finally it was hot enough to start grilling! It only took an extra 2, 3 hours. I figure it built up our appetites so no harm done.

(Just looking at this pic again is making me salivate.)

The whole thing turned out fantastic, if I do say so myself. The meat was juicy and oh so tasty. Everything had the perfect amount of seasoning on it with just the right spicy bite. I'd want to eat like this everyday if it wasn't such a time consuming event to make it happen!

(Erick and Sam, sated and happy.)

MMM mm ground beef!

After quite a long hiatus, I'm back into red baby! This whole cow slaughter was a deal too good to pass up! Unfortunately I have no pictures of the first of my meals made from Mitch's meat. I made delicious hamburgers seasoned with cumin, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Cooked them on a natural wood charcoal grill and soaked it in nothing but the finest beer (PBR of course!). Deeeelicious! Thanks Mitch!

New heights of lameness

OK, in the interest of supporting my daughter's meat blog (hey, I cooked meatless meals for years for her and Julia), here are my photographic accounts of what I've done with the meat we've used so far.

1 pound of ground beef: Browned the meat. Ah, nice and lean. Threw in a jar of pasta sauce. Cooked some fun-shaped pasta and served the meated sauce on top of it.

1 package of liver and 1 rump roast: I'm not a fan of eating liver so I gave it to my mother and her companion (and the person who does most of the cooking in their household). I gave them a roast too because I am a nice daughter.

See the balance here -- nice mother, nice daughter. 

Meals #2 and #3 Steak Tacos and Steak Huevos

Phil made steak tacos with some of the round steak.  Next time we'd cook the steak for less time, starting the onions and peppers first.  

The next day, he whipped up pre-Art-a-Whirl brunch for 8 including apple-cardamom pancakes and huevos rancheros-type-thing with the leftover steak and veggies.

Seriously, someone else should post on here so we can enjoy some better photos of mitchmeat.

Meal #1 Improv Pasta Sauce

(camera phone = TERRIBLE photo)

We browned up a pound of hamburger with onion, green pepper etc.   We were hungry and didn't let the tomatoes simmer down for too long, but it was still tasty.