Category Archives: Beef

Beef Short Ribs

Beef Short Ribs

I have not had a lot of luck cooking beef short ribs. I love the ones I get when eating out – beefy, rich, and fork-tender. I’ve managed to get mine smoky and tasty, but they were also usually tough and dry. Since our last quarter of beef included two packs of short ribs, once more unto the breach, dear friends…

1 pound bone-in beef short ribs
Kosher salt & fresh-ground black pepper
1/4 cup red wine

Set your smoker up for at least a 6 hour indirect cook at 250°F. On the Big Green Egg this means filling the firebox with lump charcoal and using an inverted plate setter to diffuse the heat and a drip pan with a little water in it to catch the fat.

Once the smoker is up to temp, toss in your smoking wood (I used pecan), Season the ribs lightly with salt and pepper, then arrange them bone side down on the grate. Close the lid and let the smoker do its magic for 4 to 5 hours, or until the ribs reach 160°F internal.

Beef Short Ribs

When the ribs are ready, arrange them on a sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil, meat side down. Pull up the edges of the foil to make a little bowl and then pour the wine over the ribs. Wrap the ribs tightly in the foil, making sure to seal the edges.

Put the bundle of ribs back on the smoker, meat side down, and cook until the ribs reach 190°F internal (about an hour).

Remove the ribs from the foil and return them to the smoker bone side down. Cook for 30 minutes or so, until the meat has tightened up and pulled well away from the bones.

Beef Short Ribs

Remove ribs from the smoker and let rest for 10 minutes before serving.

The Verdict: ★★★★★
Finally! No knives were needed to take apart these little blocks of beefy wonder. They practically melted. I was also glad I stuck with a real simple preparation and let the meat and the smoke come though.

The Nutrition:
3 ounces of rib meat is a whopping 11 points and 165 calories, so these are a rare treat.

One year ago – Fish Tagine with Chermoula and Moroccan Rice Pilaf
Two years ago – Foodie Technology

Adiós Steaks

I am one lucky guy – my dear wife will be taking me someplace warm and lovely for my birthday. When she told me that she’d made the reservations, I asked her what I could make her as a going-away treat. Without missing a beat, she said, “Steaks, big thick steaks.”

Rib Eye Steaks

I seasoned up a pair of nice rib eye steaks with fresh-ground pepper and kosher salt and let them sit out at room temperature while I got the Big Green Egg up to a roaring 700°F.

When everything was nice and hot, I tossed the steaks on for 90 seconds of undisturbed searing. Then I rotated the steaks 90 degrees and gave them another 30 seconds on that side. I flipped the meat and repeated the process on the other side.

I shoot for medium-rare with steak. So after both sides had been seared I checked the internal temp. When it hit 125°F internal (about another 30 seconds), I moved them off the grill and onto a plate and let them rest for 10 minutes.

Stay warm, folks!

The Verdict: ★★★★★
Since we’re headed to a place known for their tropical drinks, not their steaks, I needed these to be good – big band of tender, rosy-red meat with a great crunchy char on it. These were perfect.

The Nutrition:
If you trim it, steak is 5 points for 3 ounces of meat.

One year ago – Winter Grilling Tips & Tools
Two years ago – Valentine’s Day

Prime Rib – Testing the Reverse Sear

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Prime Rib is on the menu for Yew Year’s Eve at our house and that gives me all the excuse I need to do some “test” cooks before the big day.

For me, a great rib roast is all about getting a heavily seasoned and crispy crust with as much juicy and tender medium-rare inside as possible. I’ve had really good results using a couple of different cooking techniques. The simplest is just roasting the meat at a steady 350°F (Deck Warming – Prime Rib & Yorkshire Pudding). The other was to sear the roast over a hot, direct fire, give it a rest, and then finish it over lower indirect heat (Ruhlman’s Twenty – Grill-Roasted Prime Rib).

So I was very interested when Craig “Meathead” Goldwyn of Amazing Ribs updated his beef roast recipe to use a reverse sear method. Hmmmm…

1 beef rib roast, boneless (I used a small 2.5 pound one for testing, but I plan on making about a pound per person for New Year’s)
1 teaspoon sea or kosher salt per pound of meat
1 teaspoon Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow Crust (or your favorite Montreal steak seasoning) per pound of meat

Big Green Egg in Snow

Due to some inclement weather, I did this test inside in the oven, but it will work even better on the grill.

Set up for an indirect cook at 250°F. Slather the roast with your seasoning of choice mixed 50/50 with olive oil. Set a roasting rack on a rimmed sheet pan (something shallow, like a jellyroll pan). Set the roast in the rack and load everything into the oven/grill.

Roast until the internal temperature of the meat hits 115°F (using a remote thermometer helps immensely here). Remove the roast and let rest for 30 minutes while you get the oven up to 500°F or set the grill up for a high temperature direct cook.

After roasting until 115°F internal.

After roasting until 115°F internal.

Return the roast to the oven and cook for 10 minutes (or sear for about 2-3 minutes per side on the grill) until you get a nice crispy brown crust.

After roasting for 10 minutes at 500°F.

After roasting for 10 minutes at 500°F.

Remove roast from oven/grill and let rest 20 minutes before slicing and serving.

Prime Rib

Rested and ready to serve.

Overall Verdict: ★★★★½
The roast ended up tasting great (love the Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow Crust) and being very juicy and tender, but the crust wasn’t very brown and crispy and there was too much of a gray ring of overcooked meat.

This recipe may work better on the grill, but while I like the idea of being able to have the roast essentially done in advance of dinner, and then just crisping it up at the end, I hate giving up that expanse of medium-rareness.

The Nutrition:
Plan on lots of snow shoveling to burn this off.

One year ago – Looking Forward
Two years ago – Infamous Dave’s Habanero Hot Sauce

Ruhlman’s Twenty – Grill-Roasted Prime Rib

I can’t tell you how much this book has changed the way I think about cooking.

I’m used to cook books that are nothing but recipes. Ruhlman’s Twenty has plenty of those, but they’re all wrapped around the 20 core cooking tools and techniques that Ruhlman has distilled from his years of being a chef and writing about food.

Before this book, to me an egg was just an ingredient. Now they are Technique #6, little oval kitchen workhorses – cooked gently they become a meal unto themselves, while egg whites leaven souffles by incorporating air, and egg yolks emulsify simple oil and acid into that amazing concoction we call mayonnaise.

Even the shallot (Technique #4) becomes a bit of a wonder in Ruhlman’s book. I always though of them as uppity onions, but mince them with some vinegar (Technique #5) and whirl them with some olive oil and you’ve got a quick vinaigrette (Technique #12) that works  wonders when paired with cold veggies and beats anything that comes in a bottle.

Of course, being a grillmeister and all, I was most interested in his Technique #18, Grill: The Flavor of Fire. Having recently secured a very nice rib roast, I  decided to try his grill/roast technique using a wet rub to season the roast.

Wet Rub
1 4-6 pound rib roast
4-6 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tablespoon sea or kosher salt
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Allegro Marinade or Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon paprika

Make the wet rub by putting the garlic, salt and peppercorns into a food processor and pulse until the garlic is minced. Add the oil, vinegar, Allegro, rosemary, thyme and paprika and give them a whirl to combine.

You’ll need a flame-proof roasting pan (I use an old 9×13 baking pan) with a rack.  Put the roast on a cutting board with the deckle (fat cap) on top. Score the fat by making shallow diagonal cuts in a diamond pattern at about 1-inch intervals. Pour half of the wet rub over the roast and work it into the cuts. Turn the roast over and cover the bottom and sides of the roast with the remaining rub. Set aside and let rest while you set up the grill.

The heart of Ruhlman’s grill/roast technique is to sear the meat over a hot, direct fire, give it a rest, and then finish it over lower, even heat. The sear gets you that crispy, tasty crust. The resting time stops the heat from pushing too deeply into the meat, giving you an evenly-cooked roast with more lovely medium-well meat and less gray, over-cooked meat. It also lets you control when you serve the meat. Once the searing is done, you can finish it right away on the grill (or in the oven, if you must), or stash it in the fridge for up to a day before finishing it right before serving.

For the sear, set your grill up for a direct cook over high heat (500°F). Get the cooking grate is nice and hot and sear the roast for 90 seconds on each side. When the roast is browned all over, move it to the rack (fat side up) set in the roasting pan.

If you are finishing it later, move the roast to the fridge until it is cool and then wrap with plastic wrap. If you’re serving it right away, tent loosely with aluminum foil and set aside to rest for at least 30 minutes while you get the grill down to the roasting temperature.

Close the lid on the grill and adjust the vents to reduce the heat to 300°F. On the Big Green Egg, I shut the vents almost all the way down and added an inverted (legs up) plate setter to diffuse the heat. You could also use a flame-proof pizza stone, sheet pan, or trivet to give you indirect heat.

When the grill is down to roasting temps, put the roaster loaded with the meat back onto the grill. Add about a cup of water to the roasting pan to keep the juices from burning. Cook for about 15 to 20 minutes per pound, or until it hits 130°F internal.

Move the roast to a cutting board and let rest for 20 minutes before carving and serving.

The Verdict: ★★★★★
I made this for my dear mother’s 82nd birthday dinner and everyone loved it. The roast had a nice, wide band of tender, rosy-red meat with a great crunchy char on it. Slicing the deckle let the bits of fat fry themselves into a kind of beefy bacon. Perfect.

As for Ruhlman’s Twenty, I find myself reaching for this more than any of my other cook books. I’m not always making recipes from the book, but I am always leveraging his techniques.

The Nutrition:
When you get to be 82, you get to quit counting calories.

One year ago – Scallop Gumbo
Two years ago – Tasty Licks Salmon

Sous Vide Steak

After discovering that the nice, thick t-bone destined for dinner was still mostly frozen at 2 hours out, I decided to try cooking it sous vide. Sous vide (a.k.a. hot tubbing) is a cooking technique that I don’t use nearly as often as I should. The food is vacuum sealed in a plastic bag, put into a water bath, and then held at an almost-done temperature for as long as you can stand it before finishing it on the grill.

The compromise at our house on when a steak is “done” is on the medium side of medium-rare, ideally coming off the grill at 130°F internal and reaching 135°F by the time it hits the table. The joy of sous vide is that by holding the meat at 120°F, all the grillmeister has to do is put a sear on it to get a nice, wide band of meat done the way you like it without much of a ring of gray meat around it.

So, I sealed the unseasoned steak in a FoodSaver bag and floated it in an old beer cooler that I had filled with 120°F water. After 15 minutes, the water had dropped to 115°F, so I added more hot water to bring the temp up to 120°F again and closed the lid. After and hour the temp had dropped to 110°F, so I added more hot water to bring it back up to 120°F and went off the get the grill ready.

I set the Big Green Egg up for a direct cook at sub-nuclear temp, about 700°F. When the grill was ready, I removed the steak from the bag, seasoned it heavily with some ground sea salt and black pepper, and slapped it on the pre-heated cooking grate.

I seared the steak for 60 seconds on each side, then turned it 90° (to get those fancy, cross-hatched grill marks) and grilled it for another 60 seconds on each side. I checked the temp and found that while the ribeye side was done, the strip side wasn’t there yet. So I grabbed the steak with the tongs, turned it sideways to the strip side was down, and grilled it for another 30 seconds. Then I moved it off the heat to rest for 10 minutes.

The Verdict: ★★★★★
Big band of tender, rosy-red meat with a great crunchy char on it. Perfect. Both the ribeye and the strip seems to have picked up a bit stronger mineral/beefy taste than normal. Might be from the enzyme voodoo that’s supposed to happen when you hold warm food in a vacuum.

The Nutrition:
If you trim it, t-bone steak is 5 points for 3 ounces of meat.

One year ago – Sweet Corn, Brats, & Udi’s Gluten-Free Buns
Two years ago – BBQ 25 Steaks

 

Basted T-bones & Giardiniera

With the heat we’ve had lately, any excuse not to fire up the stove is a good one. I found these two t-bones lurking in the bottom of our freezer and decided to grill them both up so that we could have plenty of leftovers for steak salad.

My dear wife made a big batch of giardiniera (pickled veggie salad) well in advance so that it was nice and cool and all the flavors had drawn through. It can be ready to eat in 25 minutes, but making it a day ahead (and making enough to snack on through the week) is the way to go.

Giardiniera adapted from Eating Well
2 cups white vinegar
2 cups water
2 tablespoons sugar
1 bay leaf
1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper, divided
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, divided
1 small head cauliflower, trimmed and cut into bite-size florets
2 cups green beans
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
1 carrot, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Combine the vinegar, water, sugar, bay leaf, and 1 teaspoon each crushed red pepper and salt in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil.

Add the veggies and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook until the vegetables are tender-crisp, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and let stand for 5 minutes. Reserve 3 tablespoons of the cooking liquid, then drain.

Transfer the vegetables to a medium bowl. Stir in oil, pepper, the remaining 1/2 teaspoon each crushed red pepper and salt and the reserved cooking liquid. Refrigerate for at least 25 minutes to chill. Stir and serve with a slotted spoon.

Butter Basted Steaks
2 t-bone steaks
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon lemon juice
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 teaspoon sea or kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Remove the steaks from the fridge and give them a good dusting with some ground sea salt and black pepper. Then set your grill up for a direct cook at slightly sub-nuclear temperature (about 600°F).

While the grill is getting up to temp, make the butter baste. Combine the butter, oil, thyme, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper in a shallow baking pan (I use a 9×13 disposable foil pan) and heat it up right on the grill, stirring to combine everything as the butter melts. Then set the pan beside the grill to keep it warm.

Sear the steaks for 60 seconds on each side, then move them off into the butter sauce. Flip them a couple of times to coat both sides with all that herby/buttery wonderfulness, then back on the grill for another 30 seconds on each side. Keep flipping every 30 seconds or so and start checking for doness – I like my steaks medium-rare, so 125°F internal. These steaks took just over 2 minutes per side total.

Move the steaks off into the butter sauce and give them another flip. Let rest for 10 minutes, then move the steaks to a cutting board. Reserve the butter mix and keep the pan warm.

Trim off any fat or connective tissue from the steaks and then slice the meat on a diagonal into 1/4-inch slices. Put the sliced steak and any accumulated meat juices from the cutting board back into butter mix. Give the pan a shake to coat the meat.

Serve with the giardiniera on the side, or over a mixed green salad.

The Verdict: ★★★★☆
The t-bones were mostly ribeye, so the meat was rich and tender. I got a nice char on them, and I love that contrast between the crisp, almost bitter outside and the smooth and meaty inside. The butter baste is the icing on the steak. You could live without it, but it does add lots of juiciness and more layers of flavor.

The giardiniera was a great accompanying dish with plenty of bite and a little heat. Feel free to double the recipe and use whatever veggies are fresh. This dish also makes a great appetizer, or bump up the olive oil and add some cheese and salami and you’ve got a light antipasto lunch.

The Nutrition:
If you trim it, t-bone steak is 5 points for 3 ounces of meat. The baste and the giardiniera adds about 3 more points for the oil. Go heavy on the veggies and it’s all good.

ONE YEAR AGO – Pulled Picnic

TWO YEARS AGO - Apricot-Glazed Pork Chops with Peanut Noodles