What's cooking? part 4

crockpotroast
brussels sprouts

I made a big stock pot of borscht last night and served it with some homemade oaten scones & butter.

Broccoli cheese soup. Second try. Didn't cry over failure this time.

The problem with being a fairly confident, don't need no recipe cook: you fail to follow good advice sometimes.

I made a pork ragu yesterday and simmered it for 4 hours, it's p great but not mind blowing. Alas.

What are some of your favourite recipes for cheap cuts of red meat that don't involve slow-cooking?

by slow-cooking do you mean cooking slowly or using a slow cooker? because i think the only way to cook cheap cuts of red meat is slowly. otherwise you will be chewing slowly. forever.

I dunno if you do a skirt or flank rare and cut thin against the grain you will be OK. What cuts are we talking?

this isn't really fancy but one i like for a beef stir fry that's easy and cheap to put together and tasty, except i would sometimes swap out the soy sauce for something like kecap manis and not put in any sugar, also maybe use ginger & garlic paste instead of the garlic powder and ginger powder, or add a bit of onion powder for flavour. something like schnitzel which should be comparatively cheap works well for this sort of recipe.

xp - I meant cooking slowly (sorry, that wasn't very clear) - I know how to do that to good effect, but I've never tried cooking cheap cuts more quickly. I'm not eating much red meat at the moment and I want to eat more, both for iron reasons and because I really enjoy it. Go-to techniques for cuts like skirt or flank, or for cube steak? Best tenderizing marinades? There's loads on Google, but all a bit overwhelmingly detailed so just wondered whether people had go-to techniques that don't have never-ending tweaks stretching through pages and pages and on into the comments section...

thanks qiqing. I've never tried kecap manis! I want to.

skirt and flank both cook well in a skillet or grill pan after a marinade with some acid. cook to medium tho some say medium-rare and that's fine too.

just do like oil/lime/salt/chili powder and slice for soft tacos.

Hadn't thought about tacos, nice.

Yeah, I should have said that I prefer as close to rare as I can get with these kinds of cuts. cad, how long do you marinade? Or rather, what do you think is the shortest time I can get away with? (I'll forget at first, I'm sure).

i think a lot of recipes suggest 1 hr refrigerated so i (as a madinade-forgetter) would probably attempt 30 mins at room temp.

if you have or can get a foodsaver, you can marinade in 30 min

or less

xposts the garlic powder is good for flavouring the meat without having to do an extended marinade, so i would usually keep that in. also the comments in that recipe have some useful tweaks, even though i just go for what i figure will work without overdoing or losing flavour

kecap manis is your friend if you want something other than soy sauce to give depth of flavour to things like stir fries. it's usually surprisingly affordable too. it makes me think of something like sriracha for making things taste really good without needing many ingredients, like a shortcut to getting bombass flava.

I had to Google foodsavers - wow! No access to one, unfortunately, but I'll see what happens if I do 30 mins at room temp. Good tip on the garlic powder, thanks.

IME skirt>>>>>>>>>flank and takes a marinade fine in 30 min. Season really really well with salt and sear in a hot as shit pan to get a crust on outside but rare on inside, rest with a foil tent for 7 min, the cut 1/4 AGAINST THE GRAIN. A skirt off of a yummy cow (prime if you can get it, a bit aged if possible) is really great and beefy and fab.

I also love skirt in ropa vieja. Cuban (?) dish--I'll look for the recipe from Steve Raichlen's Miami Spice to post

I meant 1/4 inch or less. Or do the boil and shred and stew method as in ropa vieja!

Thanks Q, those are exactly the kinds of things I had in mind!

Broccoli cheese soup. Second try. Didn't cry over failure this time.

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Sunday, December 7, 2014 4:56 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This happened to me last week. I still don't really know what went wrong, and I think I hate broccoli cheese soup now because of this experience.

oh i didn't even think of skirt or flank. depends on what "cheap" means though. i was thinking chuckkkkkk

Not a cut as such, but you can do so many quick, cheap things with minced beef and lamb.

Was it on here somebody mentioned keema recently? 30-45 minutes bish bosh.

Korean-style bulgogi if you can find thinly sliced eye of round or sirloin! Asian grocery stores will have them (generally frozen). I do them with rice in lettuce wraps and that tasty Korean spicy bean paste. And jimc her, of course!

Um that should say "kimchee," not jimc

made lamb saag for the first time this weekend and it was fucking great. usually when i cook something well the first time out it somehow gets progressively worse on every subsequent occasion, so i'm kinda apprehensive about attempt #2 already.

I get fed up with minced beef fast for some reason, but minced lamb I should have more of for sure. Or maybe I just haven't been adventurous enough with the minced beef. Bulgogi is a great idea!

did those ottolenghi meatballs in tahini sauce the other day (with kosheri), not quite as good a job as last time but def a good use of mince

saw ropa vieja mentioned upthread, what a great dish! i'll make it with rice and black beans on the side with some fried plantains. i like this recipe: http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Cuban-Style-Ropa-Vieja

ok I make an exception re: the beef for meatballs, and I love tahini.

Going to a Christmas potluck tomorrow night... decided to make a mushroom crepe cake.

Also, I had an epiphany about tasting for seasonings. I have a bit of an asbestos tongue and realized that I need to let whatever it is cool down before I taste it. I kept oversalting stuff and wondering why it didn't taste so salty on the stove... turns out it was way too hot for me to get an accurate read.

http://i.imgur.com/XDy65Ec.jpg

Finally made bread entirely w/ my Kitchenaid doing the kneading instead of the no knead method.
500g King Arthur organic bread flour
350g Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro
15g salt
12g instant yeast

Kneaded for 5 min on the 4 power setting, proofed, divided in half, etc.
Baked in a Dutch Oven @ 430F because my oven can't hold higher than that.

I would have liked bigger holes/crumb, but it's delicious, with just a hint of sweetness.

looks good!

If my bf could get that bread result he'd be so happy. I think he's confused about what kind of yeast he has, activated or un-, and the proofing/rising isn't happening right. My mom is going to give him lessons.

this bread enthusiasm is like oxygen, as I drown in a sea of home brew ipa

IO, maybe introduce him to a no knead method? No real proofing stage needed and almost any yeast will work because of the long ferment. I've enjoyed all my no kneads, I'm trying to do kneaded bread now because I'm impatient.

I follow this master recipe, for the most part:
http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/2010/02/09/back-to-basics-tips-and-techniques-to-create-a-great-loaf-in-5-minutes-a-day

He's been doing no-knead for a while but he got a KitchenAid stand mixer and wanted to start using it, so experimented w kneading methods but hasn't figured them out yet!

Ah, right on. I'd been nervous about doing it right, too. I have the 6 quart w/ spiral dough hook so ~5 mins seems to be recommended, the smaller ones ~8 mins at medium speed.

I used Fleishmann's instant active yeast. Proofing was two hours in an oiled metal bowl on top of my stove because my duplex was ~65F last night - turning the oven on to 125ish warned the stovetop enough to let it rise.

got a new 10" cast iron recently and haven't used it a lot except for pan roasting brussels sprouts so i can finish them with a dash of this lovely yuzu soy sauce i picked up in japantown and the wee-est dash of fish sauce. it my new fave vegetable side dish

i love americans' enthusiastic love of sprouts! here they are often, at best, something to be tolerated

You're not over-cooking them enough. They're not done until they're crunchy, imo.

I love a fairy cabbage, me. Don't even mind them soggy.

got some asafoetida delivered through the post - it arrived badly-packed and stank up the entire house for a day. never cooked with it before so i hope the end result is worth it!

XXP oh we over-cook them. in boiling water. it's an abomination. we've seen people on tv sautee them with bacon or almonds or whatevr but that's not TRADITIONAL

asafoetida does add a nice layer of complexity to curries that i couldn't get any other way. i bought mine in a little plastic jar, and i i keep that plastic jar inside another tightly closed glass jar. doesn't stink things up at all, though you can still smell it in the spice cabinet

IME doing something other than boiling the hell out of fairy cabbage (I am going to call brussels sprouts fairy cabbage from now on, thanks Madchen) is a fairly recent development in US cooking, at least in my family. Really any vegetable. My family was shocked SHOCKED when as an adult I started eating asparagus and collard greens and sprouts. It was only because I discovered I could prepare them in a way other than boiling them unto sulphur-y mush.

I had an uneasy peace with broccoli and then I got pregnant and barfed once shortly after eating broccoli and now it can fuck right off.

I have grown sprouts this year and am having some of them tonight in the sprout/feta/walnut pasta dish that has been on the board before.