Month: March 2019

Categories
Ground Recipes

Firehouse Chili Gumbo

This NYT Cooking recipe works great with Hay Creek Ground Round. Stands up to liberal use of hot sauce. Firehouse Chili Gumbo is good stuff with tortilla chips and shredded cheddar or jack.

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE CHILI:

  • 2 tablespoons neutral oil, like canola or grapeseed
  • 3 pounds lean ground beef, Round or Sirloin
  • 1 tablespoon kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground white pepper
  • 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper, or to taste
  • 2 tablespoons chile powder
  • 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 3 tablespoons steak sauce
  • 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 14.5-ounce cans diced tomatoes

FOR THE GUMBO:

  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 large yellow onion, peeled and diced
  • 2 medium shallots, peeled and diced
  • 1 green bell pepper, diced
  • 1 yellow bell pepper, diced
  • 3 ribs celery, trimmed and diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
  • 2 6-ounce cans tomato paste
  • 2 8-ounce cans tomato sauce
  • 1 to 2 cups tomato juice
  • 1 cup ketchup
  • 1 tablespoon apple-cider vinegar, or to taste
  • 2 tablespoons hot sauce, or to taste

PREPARATION

  1. Make the chili. Heat the oil in a large skillet or heavy-bottomed pot set over medium-high heat. Working in batches, cook the beef, stirring often, until it has begun to brown at the edges. Using a slotted spoon, transfer browned meat to a bowl.
  2. Pour off excess fat, turn heat down to medium and return the browned beef to the skillet or pot. Add salt, peppers, chile powder, turmeric, oregano and cumin, and stir to combine. Add steak sauce, Worcestershire sauce and diced tomatoes, and stir again. Cover the skillet or pot, and cook, stirring a few times, for 15 minutes or so.
  3. Make the gumbo. Place a large pot with a heavy bottom over medium heat, and put the butter and oil into it. When the butter is melted and foaming, sprinkle the flour into the pan, and whisk to combine. Continue whisking until the mixture is golden brown, approximately 15 to 20 minutes. Add the onion, shallots, bell peppers, celery and garlic, and cook, stirring often, until the vegetables have started to soften, approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
  4. Make the chili gumbo. Add the beef mixture to the pot with the vegetables along with the tomato paste, tomato sauce, tomato juice and ketchup, and stir to combine. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 to 45 minutes, then add apple-cider vinegar and hot sauce to taste. Take the pot off the heat, and serve, or allow to cool and refrigerate overnight to allow the flavors to cure. Heat before serving.
Categories
Ground Recipes

Old-Time Diner Style Keto Burgers

finished old -time diner style keto burgers
Done!
shaved suet spread evenly over hay creek ground beef
Shaved suet spread evenly over Hay Creek ground beef
ground beef with suet rolled -up
Ground beef w/suet rolled-up
divide into quarter pound segments
Divide into quarter-pound segments
gently knead segments to mix-in suet and form loose balls
Gently knead segments to mix-in suet and form loose balls
flatten into half-inch thick patties w/potato masher
Flatten into half-inch thick patties w/potato masher
pan fry in medium-hot pan, turning 3-5 times. Don't squash with spatula between turns!
Fry in medium hot pan, turning 3-5 times. Don’t squash with spatula between turns!

This high (20-30%) fat diner style keto burger is absolutely melt-in- your- mouth luscious and a wake-up jolt to the leaner-is-better crowd. Add frozen-shaved grass-fed suet (50 grams per pound of thawed Hay Creek ground beef ) and fry to 130 degree target internal temperature. This takes a good while since all the fat has to begin melting before the temperature will rise. Don’t overcook or you’ll melt out all the fat! Have Brioche buns already toasted and avoid overloading with condiments. A bit of ketchup, mayo, and fried onion maybe. Skip the tomato slice -or any other cold, moist mass-for sure. Eat ’em right away. Don’t let the fat cool and solidify.

Beef suet -with it’s unique flavor and melting point profile- is the only fat that will work for this. No Substitutes!

You could use an auger/plate style meat grinder with 3/16 to 7/32 inch plate openings to regrind the entire rolled-up “log” in photos above. NO “food processor”: it’ll destroy the meat texture and melt the fat.

Do not try this with commercial, wet-aged beef or you’ll have a mess, to say nothing of risk of illness.

No matter your take on the origin of the American burger, this preparation style dates from a time before any consumer had heard of e. coli – much less it’s numbered mutations. No one had heard of an official 160 deg F internal temperature cooking recommendation or had any equipment capable of measuring it in such a thin piece of meat. How did the burger become popular if it was always accompanied by the threat of illness or even death? The answer is most likely the growing dependence on fed antibiotics in the commercial cattle feeding business.

The USDA inspected processor I use handles only small- farm grown beef and has NEVER had a recall. Seems to me that the rewards outweigh the risks of “under-cooking”small farm, small processor beef: particularly so if grass-fed.. I never cook Hay Creek ground beef burgers to 160 deg F, just to the point the “squish” disappears at around 130 deg F. You judge for yourself.

Categories
Recipes Steaks

Beef Stroganoff via Time Machine

beef stroganoff via time machine
Craig Claiborne’s 1963 Beef Stroganoff w/parsley buttered egg noodles

Set the time machine for 1963 to enjoy among other things- beef stroganoff via time machine- pop the hatch and emerge into a weird parallel world where everyone smokes constantly, fear of meat, dairy, and dietary fat is unheard-of and “fat kids” are an anomaly still worthy of ridicule by peers. Anxiety over Soviet missiles and MAD could only be relieved by smoking, drinking, the antics of “Rocky and Bullwinkle” and escape into the romanticized past of Camelot. ” Dr. Strangelove ” wouldn’t be seen till ’64. Something evil (besides Boris and Natasha) stalks this confounded scene: causing a dramatic rise in coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality in relatively rich, western nations. The evil needed identification and eradication. All was about to be turned upside-down. This classic Stroganoff recipe provides instant transport back to the 60’s.

Ancel Keys (U of M) had already set the course by then with his graphic association of CHD death rate vs percent of dietary calories from fat for 6 countries. Everyone thought he was onto something and researchers piled-onto the “diet-heart idea”. More cool-headed skeptics found that Keys had cherry-picked the 6 countries from a total of 22 for which data was available. Had he included all 22 the correlation for sugar consumption versus CHD deaths would have been higher than that for total fat.

The zeal of funding institutions and researchers soon took on a religious crusade quality of certitude in direction and outcomes. No one questioning the “diet -heart idea” could get funding or an audience. Investigators manipulated data in ways to present the accepted outcome. Framington (MA) study analysts at year 30 could only find positive news in overall death rates of men (CHD death rates in women had never been shown to be influenced by blood cholesterol level) in the lowest cohort of blood cholesterol being a half-percent less per year than those in the highest. They failed to point out that deaths in question were not even CHD specific OR recognize that for men beyond age 47 survival rate was indifferent of cholesterol level! See “The Cholesterol Myths”.

So how did we get to today? How did all that momentum and low fat/high carbohydrate diet endorsements get reversed so that it’s now OK again to eat butter, bacon and beef? Reality intervened is what happened. Maverick cardiologist Dr Atkins started recommending the opposite; a high protein/low carb diet that had outstanding success in reversing the CHD symptoms of his patients. Packaged food companies eagerly switched over to cheap refined carbohydrates and sugar in place of expensive fats and -as a result-by the mid 80’s adolescent type 2 diabetes was becoming a problem. Endocrinology- the study of the body’s hormone reactions- came to better understand the roles of insulin and glycogen and the group of symptoms leading up to insulin resistance. Gary Taubes summed it all up in 2002. Since then diet-related autoimmune disorders and the huge role of gut microbes have begun to be understood.

Beware of vegan groups recovering the fallen, soiled banners of this era’s misguided protagonists, laundering them and representing them as underappreciated heroes. They were merely the wrong-headed opportunists of their time. Their endorsement by association lends no legitimacy to the vegan cause.

This is a wonderful, classic recipe. Be sure to cut steak to specified size while partially frozen. It’s impossible when completely thawed. The piece size is critical for chew-able texture as there isn’t much cooking time to help tenderize. Spring for fresh Italian parsley and the wide “nested” type egg noodles like Sams Choice Italia Pappardelle. Try a bit of fresh-grated nutmeg on a portion for that distinctive flavor.

INGREDIENTS

  • ½ cup flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 pounds beef round steak or boneless sirloin steak trimmed of all exterior fat and cut into 2-by-1/8 inch strips (like for stir fry).
  • ½ cup (one stick) butter
  • ½ cup finely chopped onion
  • ½ pound mushrooms, thinly sliced
  • 2 cups beef or chicken stock, ideally homemade
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 3 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 3 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

PREPARATION

  1. Combine the flour, salt and pepper. Dredge the meat in the mixture.
  2. Brown the meat in one-quarter cup of the butter in a saucepan. Remove meat from the pan and set aside.
  3. Add the onion to the pan and sauté until transparent. Add the mushrooms and remaining butter and sauté 3 to 5 minutes longer.
  4. Add the beef stock or bouillon and bring to a boil. The preparation, to this point, may be done ahead.
  5. Add the meat to the sauce and cook until meat is tender but not overcooked, 3 to 10 minutes, stirring often.
  6. Combine sour cream, tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce. Add some of the beef sauce to sour cream mixture. Return to pan and heat meat and sauce, stirring. Do not boil. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve with buttered parsley noodles.

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