I haven’t really been feeling the cooking urge lately. I’m just too busy outside making space for and planting food to be bothered to make very much of it. That will change, though; we have a couple of potlucks coming up, and I’m teaching a class on meat-curing on Saturday, and as the garden gets up to full speed there will be much that needs freezing or otherwise eating. But for now, I’m getting busy with the shovel and such, and then looking around sort of bewildered when I come in at the end of the day, as if dinner is something that I haven’t really considered at all. Because I haven’t.
Category: Beef
The stock I used to make the pink soup (from the last post) was a mixture of roasted and stewed chicken bones plus raw T-bones and trimmings from two local, grass-fed steaks. Sometimes a big, juicy steak-on-a-plate is just what you need, while other times something a bit more refined is called for. In the latter case, I like to trim the meat off the bone, and then trim away anything that does not make…
What do you do when “burgers” is the request for dinner and there’s no ground beef in the house? Visit the chest freezer, for starters, to grab a bag of local, grass-fed stew beef. Then, because it’s so lean, a goodly portion of homemade prosciutto fat, and because a custom grind clamors to be bespoke, a handful of herbs (lime thyme, chives, oregano) and a clove of garlic. The result (plus a pinch of salt…
When at the butcher’s the other day, I also stocked up on some things for pantry and freezer. First off, a big bag of beef knuckles for stock (which have now, along with a bit of lamb stew meat, been transformed from nearly 3 gallons of stock into about 1 cup of utterly sublime demi-glace) and some marrow bones because the kid adores marrow bones. When I mentioned that, the guy who served me asked…
Beef stew was never something I liked much growing up. Nor was pot roast. We didn’t have them all that often, though my Grandmother–a superb cook–liked to make pot roast. Boiled beef just always tasted like boiled beef and not much else, except for soft hunks of carrot and potato. Since returning to carnivory about 6 years ago, I’ve learned a great deal about how meat flavors can be intensified and how stews can be…
A pretty standard burger, though with minced homemade prosciutto and fresh herbs added in. On top, a sautéed mixture of maitake mushrooms and mustard greens. I didn’t make the bun, or the ketchup. I’m sick, so that’s all you get for today, you slavering jackals.
Sometimes everything is in place for a wonderful meal to happen, and yet it does not happen. I defrosted some local, grass-fed ribeyes and assembled the supporting cast. Leftover pressure-cooked beef stew with sweet potatoes from last week (the meat had just about all been eaten, so it was mostly a silky, beefy orange goop) was already halfway to being a nice purée, so I finished the job, adding a bit of pork stock to…
Pursuant to the grueling research that attends yet another article, I’ve gotten hip to numerous first-rate local sources for the very best meat one could hope to eat. Or, in the case of people with actual hearts and souls, the only sort of meat one would agree to eat: from animals raised humanely and fed things like grass and/or kitchen scraps and which live the best possible life evolution and domestication have combined to construct…
A while back, I crafted an obscenely fabulous burger. But since it had been a while since I wrought such decadence, I felt something similar was in order. To begin with, I had come home with local beef and lamb, and couldn’t decide which I wanted to eat. So I ground some together, adding in a nice fatty heel of duck prosciutto for good measure since the beef was very lean after I trimmed it. I seasoned the grind with garlic, herbs, and finely minced scallions.
So the other night I had a hankering for a nice lemony, olivey tagine. We got some chicken thighs, and everything was going as planned when I got it into my head– based on the squishiness of the ground in certain places– that a trip to the garden might be a good idea. And so it was. The beds are mostly thawed, and we got a ton of carrots and parsnips out in no time,…