Category: beef

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beef food potatoes

roasted beef roasties

roasted beef roasties

We’ve just seen the back of national chip week for another year! That’s the excuse you needed to have chips tonight sorted then. In celebration of this auspicious occasion, Albert Bartlett sent me some Innovator potatoes to try out. They’re a floury general-purpose type so I cooked ’em a bunch of ways. My favourite were these beef dripping-soaked gold nuggets which lit up the Sunday roast.

They made some pretty mean chips too. They were made in the standard ActiFry way, tossed with a little garlic salt. As crisp yet fluffy as you’d expect.

To make these you need to set a rack over your roasting dish. Plonk a beef roasting joint over par-boiled potatoes and let it go to work. I have one of these Retro Roasters with the rack built into it which is perfect. The fats and juices from the meat drip down slowly on to the potatoes which are thirsty for flavour. You’ll get a deep crunch giving way to fudgy-textured spuds, with dark pieces of concentrated beef fat crowding the pan ripe for scooping up with slightly-scorched fingers.

If you’re not dribbling already, there’s something wrong with you. Or vegetarian, I guess. Go try.

Thanks to Albert Bartlett for the spuds to try.

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roasted beef roasties

A way to get deep, savoury flavour into your roast potatoes.
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 2 kg beef joint such as silverside
  • 1 kg Albert Bartlett Innovator potatoes peeled and chopped (keep the peelings)
  • 1 onion sliced

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 170C.
  • Season the beef joint all over with your favourite flavourings, I like to use salt, pepper, garlic powder and mustard powder, brought together with a little olive oil. Carefully fry the meat all over in a heavy pan, before transferring to the oven.
  • Put the potato peelings in a tied up clean dishcloth. After 30 minutes parboil the potatoes in salted water along with the peelings. After 10 minutes drain thoroughly and discard the peelings.
  • Remove the beef from the oven, add the potatoes and onions to the baking tray and baste well. Return the beef to the roasting dish, on top of a rack over the potatoes if you have one.
  • Roast for a further 45m or until your beef is done. When it's out crank the oven up as high as it will go and continue to cook for a further 15 minutes or until the potatoes are as crisp as you like them. Serve sprinkled with sea salt.
Categories
bagels beef food gherkin mustard salt sauerkraut

salt beef bagels

I’ve been enjoying Tom Kerridge’s Proper Pub Food, a series where the affable chef cooks some of his favourite dishes. It’s got some great ideas and tips, and a decent range. I don’t think anything’s going to top the brisket from the first episode, a sandwich piled high with pickles and other goodies. “You can buy salt beef, but I’ve made my own” got my attention. The Tom Kerridge salt beef was thick and flaky so I grabbed my pen, ready to receive the recipe. Unfortunately it moved on to a method for pickled veg. Now the veg is awesome I’m certain, but not the star attraction as far as I’m concerned.

I really like the recipes on the program but it does suffer from being BBC cooking-show-formatted to death. Opening scene in his restaurant? Check. Fluffy indie tune interstitials? Check. Irrelevant mixing with the riff-raff? Check. It looks like it has slipped from a late Spring TV slot too, featuring asparagus and barbecue recipes. They lose their lustre on a rainy October evening. I could stand to hear the phrases “ultimate”, “cheeky” and “amazing” a few less times too. Tom’s a big enough character to overcome this however, with great cooking tips and must-make food so I hope it gets another series.

For another view, here’s Danny from Food Urchin’s thoughts about the show.

Lacking a Tom Kerridge recipe for salt beef, I set about making my own. I’ve been a fan of brisket for years, but somehow making salt beef had never occurred to me, so I hit the books. First up a five day brining, something salty and sweet to kick it along. Then a gentle poaching to cook it through, then a final heat through to serve. It sounds like a lot of stages, but none of them are difficult and mostly leaving it to do it’s thing.

And every bit of it is worth it. I’m sorry if you came here for a recipe for Tom Kerridge salt beef, but I reckon he’d be pleased with this. Toast up some bagels, pile the condiments high and let people make their own. Everyone will love it.

Tom Kerridge’s book, Proper Pub Food, is available from Amazon.

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salt beef bagels

Course Brunch
Cuisine Jewish
Servings 8 people
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 1.5 kg beef brisket rolled and tied

For the brine:

  • 300 g salt
  • 250 g brown sugar
  • 4 leaves bay
  • 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
  • 1 tablespoon black peppercorns

For the poaching:

  • 1 carrot chopped
  • 1 onion chopped
  • 1 leek chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic bashed

For finishing:

  • 100 ml beef stock
  • Knob butter

Instructions

  • Combine the brine ingredients in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover the beef. Bring to a gentle simmer, stirring to dissolve the salt and sugar. Allow to cool completely and transfer to a clean bowl with the beef. Ensure the beef is completely submerged (I weighed mine down with a Kilner jar filled with rice). Place this in the fridge for five days.
  • When the time's up rinse the beef and place in a saucepan with the chopped veg. Cover with water, bring to the boil then gently simmer for 3 - 4 hours until you can poke a knife into the meat with no resistance.
  • You can serve the beef straight from the broth, else allow to cool. Carve thickly and reheat in a shallow frying pan with the butter and stock for a couple of minutes. Serve with a toasted bagel and your choice of mustards, sauerkraut, gherkin, mayo, cream cheese or whatever condiments do it for you.
Categories
beef curry food lime

beef rendang

When Jamie started banging on about using brisket to save money, I didn’t need any convincing. I’ve been a fan of this largely ignored beef cut for years; I’ve got 5 or 6 recipes around here somewhere including the mighty cholent, a very popular dinner in this house.

I bought a lovely 2.5kg piece for £19, divided it up and froze half. I roasted the other half to serve 4 people generously and still had four portions left. Two of them ended up in this beef rendang. I don’t often get out to a Thai restaurant but this is my go-to order. It’s a thick, rich and deeply coconutty curry with a low, slow-burning heat.

And this recipe is a blinding version of beef rendang. As with every single Jamie recipe in existence I’ve dialled the heat right down but it still packs a spicy punch that really delivers. This one is going on regular rotation in my house.

Based on a recipe from Save with Jamie.

Beef rendang (serves 2):

250g shredded brisket (any cooked beef will do, or you could fry some strips of steak instead)

½ teaspoon turmeric

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

300ml coconut milk

200ml beef stock

1 lime

Flatbreads or tortillas, coriander leaves and more lime wedges on the side

Coconut rice to serve

For the paste:

1 red onion

1 thumb-sized piece of ginger

2 cloves of garlic

1 bunch of fresh coriander

  1. Blitz the paste ingredients together with the coriander stalks in a food processor with some salt. Add some oil to a pan and fry this paste off for about 15 minutes.
  2. Add the beef, stock and coconut and bring to the boil. Simmer for another 15 minutes, grate in the lime zest and add lime juice to taste. Season and serve with rice, flatbreads, coriander leaves and rice.
Categories
beef coconut coriander curry food leeks tomato

beef madras

YouTube is quickly giving rise to a whole new breed of superstar; the self-made vlogger. From NineBrassMonkeys to Periodic Videos, if you’ve got something to say there’s a place for your voice. And if people like you, you’ll build a following (a quick shout out to my great mate MeganIsSleeping – go watch, subscribe and like!). This of course allows room for all hobbies, including food and cooking. I’ve given it a try myself but struggle to make it work. Some people that have found the magic formula are Sorted Food. With nearly half a million subscribers and over 35 million combined views, they’re clearly doing something right.

I was sent a printed copy of Sorted Food’s Food with Friends. On first pass everything reads a little ordinary, but looking again there’s surprising time-saving ingenuity at play – tapenade as a duxelle substitute in a Wellington, tinned oysters in a gratin, BLT in tortilla form. In terms of writing all the instructions are bold and brash with laddish overtones, featuring plenty of SQUEEZE this and SPLASH that. There’s definitely a debt to Jamie Oliver in the style, but it may put some off.

As a fan of the channel, Spud Jr took over this one. We left this simmering for 90 minutes but there was definitely something missing from the flavour, it lacked depth. I had to tone down the chilli content for the family so the tomato was the dominant flavour. It took a little boost from powdered coconut to add a rich sweetness (I love  this stuff from Maggi’s and have always got a box handy for coconut rice, Thai dishes or cake mixes). The instructions are slightly off on this recipe, referencing a paste which you may not realise you’ve just created in previous steps. My beef also wasn’t tender in 90 minutes, so this recipe would need someone confident dealing with casseroling meat to know it may take longer. I reckon with patience 4 hours would make this melting and delicious.

This are nitpicks really, from someone who’s spent a long time in the kitchen. If you’re looking for a great core of recipes you’re likely to actually want to make in an accessible style, this would be a good start. With recipes at the more humble end of budgets and a focus on fast food (the good kind!), this would be a great book to slide into a student’s bag before they head off to Uni (or gift them the Kindle version).

If you want to give it a try, The Ultimate Barbie from the Sorted crew is free to download for Kindle. Thanks to Penguin for the book.

Beef madras (serves 4):

2 onions, peeled

2 cloves of garlic, peeled

Thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and chopped

½ teaspoon chilli powder

1 tablespoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

1 teaspoon salt

Juice of 1 lemon

800g diced beef

4 tablespoons tomato puree

200ml beef stock

1 tin tomatoes

2 tablespoons powdered coconut

For the leek garnish:

½ a leek

1 tablespoon cornflour

  1. Get a large lidded casserole on the hob over a high heat. Season the beef and fry all over until browned.
  2. While the beef browns, in a food processor blitz the onion, garlic and ginger to a paste. Add the salt and some pepper, the chilli, coriander, lemon and fennel and whizz for a second or two to recombine. Add this to the browned beef and continue to fry until fragrant.
  3. Add the tomato puree, tinned tomatoes and stock, stir well to combine and then cover. SImmer on a low heat for 60 minutes and stir in the coconut. After 90 minutes check to see if the beef is tender.
  4. For the leek garnish, slice the leek into fine strips and dust with cornflour. In a generous amount of oil fry the leek strips for a minute on each side then drain on kitchen paper. Sprinkle with salt and scatter over the curry. Serve with creme fraiche and basmati rice.
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