Cluck's Corner of the Internet
Apologies, but it’s modest brag time.
Thanks to my epic Barbacoa Beef Brisket earlier in the week, I had a tub of über tender beef sitting in the fridge, awaiting its calling. I have bestowed said calling 🙂 A slightly messy, burger-like arrangement packed with shredded beef, pickles and sauce.
The “buns” are shredded sweet potato, in case you were interested 😉
I found this recipe on Paleo Pot a few weeks ago and became a little obsessed with it. Problem was I didn’t have a slow cooker or canned chipotles, and I object to paying for fresh beef stock unless it’s actually going to be part a noticeable element of the final dish e.g. French onion soup.
So I had a trawl around the great online library and cross referenced a few different recipes and techniques to come up with my own. Result, AWESOME! if I do say so myself 🙂
Step 1: went to farm shop and asked if they had any unrolled brisket. Nice chap went out the back and returned with what looked like a whole side of cow. Ooops. I came out with just under 2kg of beef, which is about equivalent to the 4lb maximum mentioned in the Paleo Pot recipe, @ £8.50/kg – not bad.
Step 2: When I got this huge slab of meat home I realised that I didn’t have a big enough roasting tin. No problem. I thought it might be a bit too much for just the 2 of us to eat in a week, even with leftovers, and I wasn’t 100% sure how it would come out [ this being my first attempt at cooking brisket ] so I halved it and put a piece in the freezer for another day.
Step 3: Mixed up a blend of Texas-style BBQ seasoning [sorry, secret recipe] and gave the beef a good rub down before wrapping tightly in cling-film and stashing in the fridge over night.
Step 4: Heat oven to 180c and give the beef a good blast for 1hr. After that, reduce heat to 150c and carefully pour in a mixture of home-made chipotle abobo sauce and fresh apple juice. This is just to give enough liquid to help braise the meat, so only needs to be about 2cm depth. Apply a lid, or cover in foil, and ignore for 2 hours.
At this point it was very late in the evening so I just turned off the oven and left it there over night.
Next day it was chilled in the fridge, so I could scoop off some of the excess fat and it makes it easier to cut thin slices. To serve, I cut 1cm thick slices across the grain and reheated it in the braising sauce.
My original inspiration had been the Chipotle salad bowls we enjoyed in San Francisco, with crunchy salad, sautéed peppers and onions, avocado and a little cheese – so that’s what I did 🙂
Note: only half of the batch was used for dinner so there are leftovers for later in the week, plus there was enough to sneak a slice onto breakie with eggs and hash. Bonus!
Next week I’ll get to play around with the other kilo currently hiding in the freezer 🙂
This is the first proper ‘meal’ recipe I’ve tried from my new book, and I thought it would be a good “Welcome Home!” meal for my hubby.
Strips of beef steak, skewered and grilled then glazed with a sweet/ sour cherry sauce. Original recipe called for flank steak, but couldn’t get that anywhere so went with a thick piece of rump which was on special offer. Actually made the sauce a few days ahead [I like to get ahead 🙂 ] and it kept fine in the fridge.
Even better, we only used about half the sauce (despite being seriously piggy with it – and me slopping most of it on the skewers instead of the steak) so I can serve it with the turkey cranberry meatballs later in the week. If I make another batch I think it would taste AMAZING with braai 😛
Note: Yes, we did have more than 3 skewers each, but 6 doesn’t look as photogenic 🙂
Having shirked the BBQ and beer event at a nearby pub (even though it would have been amazing and their beer is good, it’s expensive and it’s waaaay too easy to spend a long time there) I made it up to my long suffering Hubby by recreating the evening at home. I stuck with the meat and salad, with matching beers, but omitted the Boston beans (legumes) and corn on the cob (corn, nuff said).
Menu:
I normally pressure cook pork as spare ribs but they always seem to taste a bit Chinese-takeaway, so this time I used a spicy chipotle dry rub (Williams-Sonoma) and baked a whole rack in the oven, wrapped in foil. 1½hrs @ 160°c did the trick, followed by baking unwrapped for 25 mins, oven turned up to 180°c, with a glaze made of:
Ribs got basted again at half-time. The wings got a chilli-lime sea salt rub (also c/o Williams-Sonoma). 180°c as the oven was already on, and I only have one oven … oh, the hardship…. and 25 mins later – taa daa!
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