ksmith | (no subject)

Winter Classic...not.

Well, maybe the first period. After that, a blizzard should have blown in and wiped out the lot.

A good dinner, anyway. Fried a piece of sirloin tip steak, adding a little butter toward the end. Set it aside. Added a dram of whisky to the fry pan--about a teaspoon--and let it cook down a bit, then added a mix of half and half (the recipe called for cream), Worcestershire sauce, and Dijon mustard. Cooked that down a bit, then poured it over the steak. The only side was a nuked sweet potato, fork-mashed with a little butter. This served as a reminder why I prefer sweet potatoes and yams to white potatoes. Flavor.

I managed to mis-time the steaks, as usual, so I nuked them for a minute to warm them. Still more rare than I usually go with, but it was Lasater beef, so I trusted the meat and et it anyway. It was good, although I find grass fed beef chewier than corn fed. More flavorful, but an occasional work out of the jaw. Unless I'm cooking it wrong, which is completely possible.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Is this where I confess to being a Detroit fan? Though I'm really interested in what the Blackhawks will become over the next few years with such good young players.

The Hawks are, iirc, the youngest team in the league. Sometimes, it shows.

My Mom was born in Hamtramck, so if there is no Chicago team affected by the results, I will root for a Detroit team. But. Not now.

Still over three months to go in the season. Anything can happen...and probably will.

Edited 2009-01-01 22:44 (UTC)

I was going to try to see a Flames game at WFC this year, but didn't make it to WFC. I'm hoping for the Sharks in San Jose this year. I like it when cons are in hockey towns.

Lasater beef has great flavor. But it is chewy. If you can get it, beef slaughtered in the fall is more tender than beef slaughtered at other times of year. I don't know why. Yum!

A

Beef slaughtered in the fall (where Lasater is) has had the most fresh grass, and has thus walked around a little less, and thus hasn't toned its muscles as much. Fall and winter grass is dryer, and requires the animals to walk farther for the same net nutrition.

Tenderest grass-fed is part milk-fed--young ones slaughtered at the end of the green grass (whenever that is) and still taking some good creamy milk off mama along with the grass. But it's not economic (this isn't veal, which is all milk-fed, but tender beef.)

But yeah, grass-fed is chewier because the critters are free to move about and there's not all that fat in the muscle bodies. OTOH the flavor...! We raise our own--and someone sent us Omaha Steaks ground beef for Christmas. I cooked up a couple of hamburgers today and thought "Well...okay...but not as good as ours."

The Lasater beef is definitely more flavorful, and even though it's chewy, it's not stringy. And even though I'm pretty sure I overcooked the rump roast I made for Christmas and dried it out, it was still good.

I have something labeled 'pot roast' in this latest shipment that looks like a chuck roast. I am betting that will taste really good.

Overcooking does toughen beef, so if you don't like rare or medium rare, consider using methods that involve more moisture. You're right, though, the grass-fed still has flavor even when overcooked.

Pot roast...yeah. Add that liquid, pile vegetables around it, cover, low-medium oven.

What I find is that less actual meat satisfies me more--apparently, my taste buds want a certain quantity of flavor, and demand more until they get it. One of "our" burgers is enough for me; I needed two of the Omaha Steaks burgers to accomplish the same sensation of "enough beef for now."

Question: you talk of "nuking" a sweet potato...how do you do that?

Question: you talk of "nuking" a sweet potato...how do you do that?

Microwave. I bought a couple of the big fancy ones that come wrapped in plastic and ready to nuke--you put it in the microwave on HIGH for 6-8 minutes, and it's ready to eat. But the one I made today needed trimming, so I unwrapped it, peeled it and cut it up. Put it in a microwaveable container with a little water and salt, and let it go for 8 minutes. The pieces were tender and fully cooked--I mashed them with a fork after adding a little butter. Very tasty.

(boggle) I don't think I ever saw them wrapped and ready to microwaves. We don't have a microwave...my mother had one and it's in the other house. I think Michael uses it sometimes.

When I was a kid, my mother used to put a sweet potato, its skin pricked, in the oven at noon when she came home for lunch, and it was my after-school snack--it would be cooked by the time I got home, and I'd cut it cross-ways and eat it like an ice cream cone, squeezing the cooked center out the top. Haven't done that in years. I'm actually fond of "regular" potatoes, most fond of the yellow ones. Boiled in their skins, fork-mashed, eaten plain or with butter/salt/pepper or my favorite (not dietetic!) with some ranch dressing, some picante sauce, and grated cheese, all mixed in while they're still hot.

I should try sweet potatoes again, though.

I have always wondered if it's not just as much the change in nutrition between seasons as it is the change in exercise. Maybe winter grass is "leaner" and programed with hormones to strengthen the grazers who eat it, just as the spring hormones seem to trigger breeding in most mammals.

I'm with you on the taste. I bought corn-fed rib eyes for Christmas, and they were pathetic by comparison to my grass fed beef.

Adrianne

If you really mean sirloin tip instead of sirloin (sirloin tip is really part of the round), frying might have been part of the problem. Sirloin tip needs to be thoroughly marinated (or sometimes dry-rubbed; chimichurri is a good method) to be treated as a steak; otherwise, it's best as a slow-cooked roast or braise. Either way will help deal with the fascia and tendon in a "true sirloin tip."

--CEP

Welp, it was cut like a steak--a single, thinnish slab--but the wrapper read Sirloin Tip. So I may well have cooked it wrong, but it was too small to roast or braise.