HOLYCRAPDELICIOUS STEAK!!

I am a firm believer in the time-honored, two-step method for cooking steak:

1. Get the best quality meat that you can.
2. Don't Fuck It Up.

I believe I successfully followed this code of ethics this evening.  

I fulfilled Step One by buying a quarter cow (~125lbs split into a variety of cuts) from Haiwick Heritage Ranch (www.haiwickheritageranch.com).  They sell hormone free, pasture raised, grain finished Angus.  No feedlots, no stress, no unnecessary antibiotics.  Plus, it is dry aged for several weeks, which I haven't seen from any other grass fed beef suppliers online.  Awesome.  The quarter cow arrived today, and of course we had to try it immediately.  We decided to thaw out a pack of two New York Strip steaks and give them a shot.  

I fulfilled Step Two by treating the steaks with simple care.  First, I sprinkled a little salt and pepper, then put them on a very hot grill.  I cooked them for a total of about 8.5 minutes, 5 on the first side and 3.5 on the second side, rotating them 90 degrees halfway through each side.  Then, they rested for about 5 or 6 minutes in foil (normally I would let them rest longer, but I was hungry!).  Then, we ate it with a side of salad.  

Resulting Deliciousness:

The steaks were a perfect medium to medium rare throughout, with a respectable crust.  This might have been the juiciest steak I've ever made.  The high quality of the meat was fully on display.  The strip of fat was perfectly done and just melted in your mouth.  This steak was easily on par with any I've had in high end steakhouses (and yes, I've been to Keens and Peter Luger's in NYC).  The dry aging and high quality grass fed meat is definitely the key.  Luckily, I was able to pull off Step Two and didn't overcook it or, worse, cover up the meat's inherent taste with a bunch of seasoning or sauce. 

This is the first time I've bought meat in bulk and so far have zero regrets.  Quite the opposite.  If you don't have a chest freezer full of awesome meat, you should seriously re-examine your priorities in life.  

Bacon!

This was my second attempt at making bacon.  It turned out very, very good.  This might be my new favorite thing to do.  We decided to invite some friends over to watch Game of Thrones the night I smoked the bacon, so I cut off a few slices to grill and put on burgers.  It was fantastic!  Enjoy!

Album with captions at https://plus.google.com/photos/114710096003730109118/albums/5864673173534066881

Ingredients:

Bacon:

• ~4 lbs pork belly from www.forestfed.com
• 1/3 cup kosher salt
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• ~2 Tbs fresh ground black pepper

Burgers:

• 1 lb grass fed ground beef from www.polyfacefarms.com
• gluten free buns from www.happytartbakery.com
• 1/4 of a white onion, finely chopped
• 1 egg
• ~2 Tbs worcestershire sauce
• ~2 Tbs dried oregano
• salt
• black pepper
• swiss cheese

Asparagus:

• 2 bunches of asparagus
• ~1 Tbs lemon salt (we have some salt with lemon peel)
• ~2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
• ~1 Tbs roasted garlic olive oil

Salad

• I need to get the ingredients from Carlyn, who makes awesome salads, but she is asleep!

Sweet potato fries

• store bought and made in the oven

Angry Orchard cider was also an invaluable ingredient, if not directly used in food preparation.

Procedure:

Bacon:

Bacon is simple and elegant.  I used a gorgeous slab of forest fed pork belly from www.forestfed.com.  I rinsed it off, patted it dry, then gently rubbed on a cure of half salt and half brown sugar, plus some black pepper.  Then I wrapped the belly in plastic and sealed it in a ziploc bag and put it in the fridge to cure for 6 days, flipping it over every day for even curing.  When it was ready, I rinsed off the excess cure, and was pleasantly surprised that most of the black pepper stayed on while the extra salt and sugar dissolved off.  I did not rinse my first batch of bacon and it turned out too salty.  Rinsing is a critical step!  After rinsing, I patted it dry.  Next came smoking.  When smoking bacon, you are not cooking it, you are further curing it by drying it out, and adding the smoke flavor.  So you want the smoker to be at a low temperature, around 140-180.  As you can see in the pictures, I added a second thermometer to my smoker, the stock Warm/Ideal/Hot indicator is not good enough for keeping a specific temperature.  This cost about $10 and is absolutely worth it.  I smoked the bacon for about 4.5 hours, adding apple wood chips regularly.  Dinner was a little earlier than 4.5 hours, so I took it out and sliced a few pieces off early to grill and put on the burgers.

Burgers:

For burgers, I did my normal procedure.  Whisk 1 egg per pound of meat, add the seasonings and mix in with the egg.  Add the meat and mix thoroughly by hand.  Make patties, thin in the middle so you end up with burgers, not meatballs.  The grass fed beef was from Polyface farms (www.polyfacefarms.com), and it was fantastic.  Usually, I eat burgers with no bun, but this time we got buns from our local gluten free bakery, the Happy Tart (www.happytartbakery.com).  I toasted them on the grill (in the same spot I had cooked the bacon...) and they were awesome!  I also made Sriracha mayo by, you guessed it, mixing Sriracha and mayo until the heat was where I wanted it.  This went on the buns and was used to dip the sweet potato fries.

Asparagus:

The asparagus was simply tossed with oil, salt, and pepper, and grilled.  I got it off the grill at exactly the right time, when it still has a good snap to it.  It was by far the best asparagus I’ve ever made.

Resulting Deliciousness:

This was a great meal with great friends.  I don’t think I’d change a single thing about it.  It was a perfect pre- Game of Thrones hangout!  The bacon turned out fantastic, I can’t wait to eat the other 3.75 pounds of it!

Local Grass-Fed Applewood Smoked Beef

Many people are intimidated by slow cooking techniques like smoking.  In reality, it is one of the oldest, simplest, easiest, tastiest ways to prepare food.  Low temperature slow cooking is very forgiving.  While you'll want a smoker to really do it right, you can improvise quite well with a grill (see my North Carolina Pulled Pork Barbecue!).  This was the first thing we made with my dad's new smoker.  

The meat we smoked was very special, although it shouldn't be.  We used extremely fresh, locally raised grass-fed beef, which was absolutely beautiful.  As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I am a huge supporter of feeding animals the foods they evolved to eat.  No cow can properly digest corn.  A happy cow is out in a field eating a variety of different grasses.  A grass-fed cow's meat is leaner and far superior in taste to any feedlot meat.  Because the meat is more lean, low and slow techniques are helpful because it can be easy to overcook lean meat on a grill if you're used to fatty grain-fed beef (less fat means less juices).  Low and slow also helps make the meat even more tender.  If the environmental, health, and moral shortcomings of feedlot meat won't convince you to go for more expensive grass-fed meat, maybe the taste and texture benefits will.  And that isn't limited to cows - in my opinion, the taste benefit of a free-range life and natural diet is even greater for chicken and pork than it is for beef (check out forestfed.com, makes other pork taste like uncooked tofu).  Anyway, here is what we did:

Ingredients:

• Sirloin Roast
• Short Ribs
• Kielbasa
• Dale's
• Rub
• Sea Salt
• Brown Sugar
• Paprika
• Black Pepper
  
• Garlic Salt
• Dry Mustard
• Celery Salt
• Red Pepper
• White Pepper
• Cumin
• Thyme
• Onion Powder
• Cloves
• Zucchini
  
• Yellow Squash
• Potatoes
• Barbecue Sauce
• Ketchup
• Dry Mustard
• Tabasco 
• White pepper
• Red pepper
• Black pepper
• Oregano
• Garlic Salt
• Paprika
• Red wine

Procedure:

My dad and I started this meal by marinating the beef.  I used some Dale's, one of the very few pre-packaged marinades I use.  While the meat marinated for about an hour, we got the fire in the smoker going with some charcoal and scraps of oak, and cut some green branches off our apple tree (you can also buy wood to smoke).  While the fire burned down, I mixed up the rub - about half and half sugar and salt, plus whatever seasonings you have around, to your taste.  After marinating for an hour, I took the beef out, patted it semi-dry, and rubbed in the rub.  Remember to really rub the rub into the meat - it's not called a 'sprinkle'.  Once the fire was ready, we put the beef on the lower rack in the smoker, right above the water pan.  About 5 hours later, it was ready.  Over the course of of the 5 hours, we periodically threw in some more green applewood to keep the smoke going.

This was the first time I've tried to smoke vegetables.  I ended up losing track of time and didn't put them on as early as I wanted.  So, I cut them up, coated them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, wrapped it loosely in tin foil, then added them to the upper rack of the smoker.  After about an hour, they were soft and ready.

    Just before serving, my dad mixed up his barbecue sauce.

Resulting Deliciousness:

    This was the best smoked beef we've ever made.  The rub worked very well and the smoke flavor was fantastic.  The meat, however was the real star.  It was moist and so tender you could cut it with a spoon.  You could really tell the difference from going with good cuts of grass-fed meat.  The vegetables were good, but because they were pre-sliced, the smoke flavor was too strong.  Next time I wouldn't cut them up and would use more seasoning after smoking and slicing.

Although very good, my rub and my dad's sauce didn't closely follow any major style of barbecue, so any fans of a particular region would probably point out some shortcomings (although the apple wood was definitely a feature of our region of Western North Carolina).  I think the next few times I do barbecue, I'll try to follow a few different regions closely.  If you have any favorites that you want to see me try, tell me about it in the comments!

Locally Raised Grass-Fed Beef Burgers

Last weekend, I went home to Hendersonville, NC. We picked up some local grass fed ground beef and made some killer burgers. We also grilled some sliced up vegetables and whole ears of corn.

Ingredients:

• Burgers
• 2lbs ground beef from local grass fed cows.
• 1/2 an onion, finely diced
• 1 egg
• Oregano
  
• Worcestershire
  
• Dales
• Black pepper
• Paprika
• Garlic powder
• Corn (whole ears)
  
• Eggplant
• Zuccini
• Onion
• Sweet potato
• Red bell pepper
  
• Cherries
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper

Procedure:
This was about as straight forward as it gets. I mixed all the burger ingredients together and made 8 1/4 pound patties. While I did that, others cut up the vegetables and covered them in olive oil, salt and pepper, and cleaned up the corn. The patties went on the grill, the vegetables went in a grill basket, and the corn went up on the top rack. This was the first time I used my dad's new grill, and it was great.
Because we used grass-fed beef, I grilled the burgers at slightly lower heat than I might have used for standard corn fed. For burgers, this really isn't necessary because of the standard mix of lean meat and fat. However, for non-ground, real cuts, you normally need to cook grass fed beef a little slower and have to be more careful about overcooking. This is because grass fed beef generally has less fat, and the fat acts a little different than that in corn fed beef. This makes grass fed less forgiving and easier to burn. The healthier product and superior taste is well worth it.

Resulting Deliciousness:
The grass-fed burgers were fantastic. It's amazing how much grass-fed beef tastes more like beef than corn-fed. Grass-fed beef has a more full, robust flavor that will prove it's superiority over corn-fed even if you don't know the somewhat disgusting fact about how corn-fed cows are raised.
The vegetables turned out well too. the grill basket was filled to the point of overflowing, but everything still cooked through evenly. The cherries that my brother, Sam, through in were awesome. Grilled cherries are a new one for me.
The corn was some of the best grilled corn I've ever had. We didn't soak it or anything, so I was a little worried. But, it cooked well on the top rack. At one point, I moved the corn down to where the burgers had cooked and some of the husks caught on fire. I was afraid there would be a burnt flavor, but it turned out to taste kind of smoked. It was delicious... of course, the butter didn't hurt.

It's been a while since I've had grass-fed beef, but you can count on seeing a lot more of it on this blog, along with more free range naturally raised meat. Beyond the moral, health, and environmental reasons for going with this type of food, it simply tastes a whole lot better.