Mirepoix: Beef Pot Pie

Here's another way to use the wild rice soup starter from Julie Languille's Meals in Jars.

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Roast Beef Roundup

A collection of roast beef recipes...these recipes let you cook once for two meals by making enough for dinner with leftovers to use in other recipes.

Looed Crockpot Beef

Baltimore Pit Beef

Russian Dressing Beef Pin It

Oxtail Scrapple

Scrapple gets a bad rap.  Full disclosure: I've never had any but homemade, so maybe it's on account of packaged store-bought versions.  Full disclosure: I'm not squicked out by the idea of making foodstuffs out of all edible parts (like ears, feets and tails), and in fact, I rather think it's irresponsible consumership not to.  Full disclosure: I'm not from Pennsylvania (whence hails scrapple as a regional dish), so I haven't a clue whether what I make is anything like "the real thing".

I think it's largely a linguistic problem..."scrapple" is a hideous-sounding word.  I've successfully served this dish as "breakfast meatloaf" to people who squeal like five-year-olds at the word "scrapple".  When you frame it as "fried herbed polenta with braised pork", it sounds like something out of Food & Wine Magazine.  Words matter, yo.

At its core, scrapple is nothing more than a grain (like cornmeal) cooked with broth and herbs (this is called "polenta" if you're Italian or "cornmeal mush" if you're Southern American, and I never hear "Jimmy's in my AIR SPACE!" squealing about those dishes) and some finely chopped meat, usually from a very bony part that's hard to cook in any way other than boiling (i.e. the "scraps" of the animal), then chilled in a loaf pan, then sliced and lightly fried.  The exact blend of grains (sometimes buckwheat is used), the particular herbs and what meat "scraps" are used may differ.  

I've made this recipe with pork neck bones, pork shoulder and beef oxtail. I like oxtail the best...the more bony the part, the more gelatin is extracted in the cooking process and the richer the final dish is.  I've not done it, but I would imagine this would be an ideal way to use parts highly gelatinous parts like trotters or pig ears without the dish being too, well, trotter-y or ear-ish.

I also like getting the meat part cooked in a crockpot because who has time to sit around for 2-3 hours babysitting a simmering pot o' oxtail?  Crockpot-ing also keeps the meat especially tender and easy to pull off the bones.

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Advanced Prep-ahead: Beef Burgundy and a Cookbook Shout-out

Pressure canning/dehydrating is probably a step beyond what most people are willing to do to prepare and store meals in advance, so I'm going to keep this pretty short.  But I do highly recommend this book, as there are many complete prep-ahead meal recipes that do not involve pressure canning.

I tried a recipe out of a cookbook called Meals in a Jar by Julie Languille for Beef Burgundy.  I dehydrated my own mushrooms (although you can buy dried mushrooms at the store and skip this part) and did a scaled back version of the recipe (hers called for 16 lbs of stew meat and made 16 6-serving portions of finished beef burgundy), leaving out a meal's worth to have for dinner that night.  It was delicious and I'm awfully glad I've put up the 6 quarts I have along with pre-portioned cornmeal and rice for side dishes of polenta and pilaf.

There are LOADS of recipes in this book that are made entirely out of store-bought dry ingredients and can be assembled and stored in jars without canning at all, but there are also a lot of recipes for canning things that I don't think freeze very well (pulled pork and mushrooms being two of them).

I'm definitely going to hang onto a few recipes for things that would make great new baby/home from the hospital/get well type casserole gifts but that wouldn't require the recipient to make room in their freezer.

Also I gotta say, if I still lived in Florida (where our big natural disaster threat was hurricanes which will knock out power for days or weeks at a time and you'd lose a big freeze stash if one hit), I'd do more prepping ahead like this.

Some pictures...

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Rice-topped Shepherd's Pie (dialysis diet)

This one is mostly for me. I originally started this blog as an easy way to share the couple dozen recipes I recommended frequently to people who needed to prepare meals in advance, but it's also been useful for me to document how I've changed recipes that I want to make again.

So this is one of those recipes.  It's from a cookbook called Cooking for David that provides recipes for folks on dialysis.  I'm cooking for a loved one who has been experiencing worsening chronic kidney disease (CKD) and is now receiving dialysis treatments.  Side note...Boy, have I learned about food and the kidneys lately.  Lemme tell you, if you've been diagnosed with diabetes (and CKD is likely in your future if you have poorly managed diabetes) and think the diabetic diet is restrictive, that's NOTHING compared to the CKD/dialysis diet.  Keep your kidneys (and pancreas) healthy people...life is not fun when they don't work.

So back to the recipe...you don't futz with dialysis recipes.  This is so hard for me.  There's a pretty strict limit on potassium and phosphorus intake, in addition to sodium, protein and liquid limits and it's different for each patient.  Unfortunately, potassium and phosphorus are nutrients that aren't required to be listed on nutrition labels the way sodium, carbohydrates, protein and fat grams are so it's hard to know just how much you're getting unless you follow a tested recipe very closely or use a renal diet food analyzer like this one: http://www.davita.com/food-analyzer/

Also unfortunately, the foods that are high in potassium and phosphorus are healthy foods...whole grains, many fruits and veggies, nuts and beans, dairy products.  "Low sodium" products are also a minefield as most aren't simply made with less salt, but with a potassium salt substitute (not necessarily a bad thing for those of us with functioning kidneys...in fact here is a report of a study suggesting that more than high sodium intake alone, a combination of high sodium and low potassium puts you at higher risk for cardiac problems... but it's problematic for renal patients. Also a reminder that when buying packaged foods, "low" anything oftens means "substitute" rather than just "less" of whatever the reduced ingredient is).  So again, the takeaway is that you follow the recipe, don't add extra veggies (crazy, right?), don't substitute whole grain products and read labels.

Shepherd's Pie is a family fave here.  I was excited to see a kidney-friendly recipe that substituted low-potassium/phosphorus white rice for the usual high-potassium/phosphorus potato-cheese crust (did you know that a potato has more potassium than a banana...my dance teacher always said that, but I thought she was full of it).  It did use a lot of high-sodium sauce additions though..."no salt added" beef stock, additional beef bouillon granules, Worcestershire sauce, Kitchen Bouquet (who even has this any more anyway?).  I checked the labels on all my stock/bouillon/sauce options and settled on a vegetable base bouillon made without potassium salts and a healthy slug of red wine (which I also checked on the Davita food analyzer) instead of all that other stuff.  I made it with long grain white rice...I might try arborio rice next time for a creamier, more potato-y texture.

And so to bring it all back to where I started...my husband requested that I make a note of what I did so I can make this recipe again in the future...soon, preferably.  No pictures because I prepped it ahead for my family to cook on my late night at work.

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Beef Roast & Beef Manhattan

Beef Manhattan is one of those looked-down-upon dishes because you typically see it in cafeterias and hospitals.  Really, it shouldn't be overlooked.  It's a great way to repurpose leftover roasted beef.  The first day after we have roasted beef, there's an excited flurry of roast beef sandwiches for lunch, then...it sits.  Beef Manhattan revives and reinterests the dinner-time audience ;)

If you don't want to use Russian dressing (because, really, it is a bizarre form of salad dressing that's far better suited to marinades than dressing salad IMHO), use an equal amount of ketchup with liberal dashes of salt, pepper and garlic powder with a splash of red wine vinegar.  If you do use Russian dressing but wonder what else to do with it, I recommend this freeze-ahead chicken dish.

To make the gravy for Beef Manhattan, I used a red wine reduction to happy up the stock.  If you'd prefer to skip the wine, use 1 tbsp tomato paste and brown it very well (5-ish minutes over medium heat without oil) in the saucepan instead.

If you're planning well in advance, you can make the gravy without the cooking juices from the beef and freeze it.  When you're ready to serve the second-round Beef Manhattan, thaw the gravy, warm it to bubbling, add the reserved juices and chopped beef and simmer until it's a good consistency.

You can serve Beef Manhattan over bread (white or whole wheat) or over mashed potatoes.  If you're looking for a lower-carb version, serve over pureed cauliflower.

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Baltimore Pit Beef

Some more lerve for Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen/Chris Kimball.  If ever I could be persuaded to move full-time to the snow-barren Northeast, it would be to work for these folks. 

If I am ever going to make a beef roast for sandwiches, this will be my recipe.  

Now, it does call for (authentically) charring on the grill, but since my personal comfort range for cooking outdoors ranges from about 60F to 75F ambient temperature, this will only fly for about 3 weeks out of the year.  

On the recent Superbow...er, Big Game... weekend (during which the Baltimore Rave...er, East Coast Team...prevailed), I used a combination of oven-roasting and stovetop cast iron grilling to make this to very good reviews.

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Roast Redux Salad

Leftovers can sometimes be a hard sell.  Not many people like eating exactly the same thing for dinner then lunch, then dinner again.  Which can be a problem if you've made, say, a large roast and a LOT is left in the fridge.  For some reason, leftover roast (be it beef, pork or lamb) lingers at our house.  Maybe because no one wants to deal with slicing it once it's cold, maybe because reheated roast tends to get dry, or maybe because it can be just plain boring to eat the same meat-plus-two-veggies for back-to-back meals.

Interestingly, I couldn't persuade anyone to eat the leftovers of the roast I used to make this dish, but my husband took the leftovers of the repurposed leftovers twice for lunch.  This leftover salad is just that good.

This grain-based salad is inspired by a recipe from Julia Child's The Way to Cook for managing leftover lamb roast.  I did make this with thinly sliced leftover leg of lamb, but I think it would be good with beef or pork roast too.  I made it with bulgur as the grain base (per Julia's directions), but rice, quinoa or couscous would be good too...just be sure to cook the grain according to package directions.

Now the tomato and onion roasting is NOT a fast process and you don't really have to do it (Julia didn't, she just put these ingredients in her salad raw).  But it made the winter hothouse tomatoes de-lish-us and roasting takes that sharp, bitey heat out of the onion that you'll get if you leave it raw.

You can do all of this a day in advance, which is precisely what I did (if you roast the veggies, I'd fridge them for 2 or 3 days even, for as long as you fridge your leftover roast).  I got to walk in the door after work to a fully prepared meal.  And THAT, in addition to how good it tasted, is the real beauty of this meal.

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Hungarian Stuffed Peppers: Quick-style

Baked sausage and chard casserole

I love the Frugal Gourmet's Hungarian Stuffed Peppers, but when I was at the store today and saw red bells unexpectedly on sale, I couldn't summon enough wits to remember all the ingredients for that recipe.  And it takes a lot of steps which I just didn't feel like knocking out today.  So I'm borrowing the elements that I think make that recipe distinctive--notably the use of paprika and sauteed parsley--and sliding them into a "regular" stuffed pepper recipe.

Because I just bought ingredients willy-nilly today ::blush::, I wound up with a boatload of filling for 4 peppers.  Which worked out well because it yielded a second bonus dish!  You could also halve the filling recipe to just make 4 peppers, or use all the filling for 8 peppers.

The peppers are freezable and crockpot-able; the bonus casserole is freezable (possibly crockpot-able, too, but someone will have to experiment and report back to me on that one).  By the way, my kids LOVED this casserole, even the one who doesn't like veggies.



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Sauerbraten

A beef roast that's been marinated in spiced red wine, then braised in the crockpot with gravy thickened with gingersnaps...that so says "holiday season" to me!  My recipe is a mash-up of a recipe from a 1975 cookbook called The Crockery Pot Cookbook by Lou Seibert Pappas and the Frugal Gourmet's Immigrant Ancestors recipe.

Sauerbraten can be made with a variety of beef roast cuts...I used a rump roast, but eye round, chuck pot roast, bone-in, bone-out, it all works.  It does need to marinate for at least 3 days, if not longer, so making this up and freezing it works well.  The marinade recipe I use is about 2 parts wine to 1 part vinegar, and I'd be comfortable freezing it for up to 3 weeks before I'd start to worry about the acid level of the marinade making mush out of my roast.  You can also leave the beef and marinade in the fridge until you cook it, if you have the space.

A word on browning meat before putting it in the crockpot.  It's a pain.  It completely detracts from the no-fuss appeal of using the crockpot.  It's usually not *really* necessary.  In this recipe though, I think you need to brown at least the top side of the roast.  Reason being that when you take the roast out of its 3-day booze bath, it will be purple.  Purple.  Not purple-y.  Purple.  Like Violet in Willa Wonka.  Purple.  Browning, well, makes it brown instead of purple.  Now if you don't brown the roast, it's not like you'll end up with a roast that looks like a grape popsicle at the end of the day, but it won't be quite as roast-colored as usual either.

To slice a roast well, let it rest several minutes before touching it.  Look for the direction of the grain of the meat...if you see long ridges in the meat, that's the "grain".  Don't cut directly across the grain, or you'll wind up with shredded beef.  Don't cut with the grain or you'll have tough slices of beef.  Make slices at about a 45 degree angle to the grain for the right balance of tenderness and cohesion.

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Saffron Chili

Dratnabbit, I made this chili the other night and forgot to take any pictures!  It *looks* like regular ol' chili, so you're really not missing much in the visual aid department, but what really sets it apart is the flavor and aroma that the saffron brings and we don't have smell-o-blog technology any way.

This is an adaptation of another Frugal Gourmet recipe.  I halve the recipe b/c I'm only feeding a small army, not a huge one, and do a lot of the steps differently to keep from making every single pot I own dirty. 

The recipe calls for 2 spendy ingredients...shallots and saffron.  They really are worth it here.  If you don't want to splurge on both, substitute red onion for the shallots, but you must, must, must have saffron for this recipe to be anything but plain ol' chili.  A small pinch goes a long way and really does shine through.  Other ideas for using saffron include: Saffron cornbread, Scalloped Potatoes and Saffron Griddlecakes. 

For prep-ahead/make-ahead instructions...to prep ahead, chop the shallots/onion and garlic and combine.  Stir saffron into broth.  Measure out spices.  That's about all you need to do.  You can ofc make this entirely ahead to reheat (in a crockpot, perhaps) or freeze.  I served this chili same-day and froze the leftovers for another meal of chili stroganoff (2 cups chili melted with 8 oz. cream cheese and served with bread and veggies for dipping). 

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April's Microwave Salisbury Steak

The original recipe is from a friend who writes a gluten-free cooking (and other stuff too) blog at An April a Day.  This recipe, she tells me, is not gluten-free thanks to the canned golden mushroom soup.  I'm not wild in general about using store-bought canned soups, but golden mushroom soup would be a PITA to recreate homemade (and I'm willing to go aways in the direction of homemade substitutions) so take that as you will.  And it's so good that it's worth it...my 18 month old would have licked his plate, if he had better hand-eye coordination.

This is an awfully fast dish to put together thanks to the store-bought help and use of the microwave for cooking, but it's EVEN FASTER when you prep it ahead and stash it in the freezer.  Plan ahead for your storage needs...the patties will  need to cook in a microwave-safe baking dish, so you'll either need to freeze in an appropriate container or be prepared to transfer the somewhat delicate patties between freezer container and microwave cooking dish.

I have also used this recipe as the basis for a crockpot roast.  Instead of making patties with ground meat, brown a roast on all sides, then put in a crockpot.  Combine the remaining seasonings (omit breadcrumbs and egg) and sauce ingredients and pour over.  Cook 8-10 hours on low. 

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Salsa Verde Meatloaf

I'm trying to use up the straggler tomatillos from my garden, and had a yen for meatloaf, so this is what we have!  If you were to include *actual* salsa verde in the meatloaf mix, it would be far too wet.  This recipe draws on the salsa verde flavors without making soup out of the meatloaf.

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Crockpot Sloppy Joes & Mustard Bread buns

Spending some time slow-cooking makes this sloppy joe filling remarkably tender and blends the flavors in a way that just can't happen in 20 minutes on the stovetop.  The real beauty of this recipe (adapted from BH&G's Slower Cooker Recipes) is that it adapts to whatever your cooking time frame is...if you've got a whole day free before you need to serve it, you can do it completely in advance and reheat from fridged or frozen...if you've got just a little time to prep and more to cook, just measure, assemble and freeze the ingredients to finish on Dinner Day...or if you're in between, you can cook the beef and onions and freeze it with the sauce to dump into the crockpot on Dinner Day.  Options, options, options!

This recipe makes A LOT of sloppy joe filling, so serve it for a crowd or serve half for dinner and freeze the remainder for another day.

I'm serving this tonight with Mustard Bread buns, a recipe adapted from one of James Beard's.  If you use a bread machine, add the ingredients in the order recommended by your instruction manual and use the dough setting.  The bread dough can itself be frozen if desired.  If you freeze shaped rolls, simply thaw them at room temp, let them rise until doubled in size (if you take them out of the freezer in the morning, they should be good by afternoon) and bake them off.

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Beef and berry stew

WHAT kind of stew??  (I can hear some readers asking already)

Beef stew.  With blackberries.  Calm down, it's delicious.  And easy with only 5 ingredients.  And seasonal.  And a lesson in our nation's cultural heritage.  According to the Frugal Gourmet (from whom the original recipe comes), this is a Sioux recipe that would have been made with bison meat charred briefly over an open fire with wild berries picked at the height of summer. 

This is a great recipe for me as my blackberry plants only produce a handful of berries at a time toward the end of the season, where most blackberry recipes call for several cups.  If you use frozen berries and plan to make freezer kits, one 12 oz. bag will make 2 batches of this stew so go ahead and get double the beef and broth and make one batch for dinner and one batch into a freezer kit.

Stew beef is a more convenient choice than a slab o' buffalo IMHO. And cooking it in a crockpot instead on the stovetop is a far more convenient choice.

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Roasted Red Pepper Lasagne

This is a recipe liberally adapted from a recipe published in the Washington Post a million years ago for "Subanik", a traditional Costa Rican dish of meats simmered in a spicy red pepper sauce and served over rice.  Many of the ingredients are the same, but I've layered the Latin American flavors onto the Italian lasagne structure. 

You can shorten up your work time by buying red pepper spaghetti sauce (many brands have a "roasted red pepper" flavor), but if you were playing Mystery Dish at home and roasted your red peppers already, now's the time to pull them out of the freezer.

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Beef Cabbage Casserole

I loves me some cabbage rolls, but the head of cabbage I had in the fridge wasn't really big enough to get decent-sized leaves off of for rolling.  Besides, I'd just spent the afternoon throwing together the next couple of weeks' worth of freezer meals and I was pooped.  So I decided to make "deconstructed" cabbage rolls instead.  A bonus of making this casserole instead of regular cabbage rolls is that you aren't left with that tiny ball of cabbage that you can't get any more decent-sized leaves from.  While it most certainly can be shredded and repurposed into a recipe for coleslaw or salad, some days that's just too much bother.  And it's as easy to make two of these casseroles as to make one.

This recipe can be cooked from a frozen state but it will take at least 2 hours in the oven.  If you want to do this, be sure to assemble the casseroles in metal pans (disposal or regular metal baking pans), NOT in ceramic or glass pans!!!  Ceramic and glass will be fine if you thaw the casserole first, though I'd still leave the dish on the counter for 30 minutes or so to avoid cold-glass-meets-hot-oven fireworks.  With *really* good planning, this can be a crockpot meal as well...just be sure to assemble and freeze the casserole in a pan that is smaller than your crockpot insert (a small cake pan works for mine) or put 1/2 the following recipe directly into the crockpot insert for next-day cooking.

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Lewd Crockpot Beef

I went shopping today without a real meal plan...not unprecedented, but definitely not common.  I picked up a few cuts of meat that were on manager's special (sounds better than "bargain bin beef", doesn't it? LOL) and figured I'd figure out what to do with them when I got home. 

So Surprise Dinner #1: Crockpot Chinese Looed Beef.  Looed is pronounced "lewd", much to my husband's giggly delight.  Looing is, according to the Frugal Gourmet, a Chinese method of cooking wherein meat is slowly simmered in a flavorful cooking liquid which can be reused for subsequent looing sessions.  Sounds like a perfect recipe for the crockpot to me. 

Star anise is a vital ingredient in this sauce. It is really an unmatched flavoring agent in Chinese cooking. It isn't quite the same as aniseed or fennel seed, though they are similar in flavor. If you can't find whole star anise, use 1 tsp of ground anise or 1 tsp of five spice powder.

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Marinated London Broil and Carrots with dill butter

I hate the lack of standardized nomenclature for cuts of meat at the grocery store/butcher/farm processor.  Makes me crazy.  A "London broil" cut is basically a thick top round steak, but might be labeled "top round roast", "london broil", "round steak", "top round"...you'll know it when you see it though...about 1 1/4" thick and kind of rectangular.  This is adapted from the South Beach Diet cookbook.  The nutritional info is skewed a little high for calories, sodium content and carbs because the SparkRecipes website doesn't allow you to discount nutritional content from a marinade which doesn't get completely consumed as part of the final dish (or if it does, I don't know how to make it work).

I like this carrot dish (adapted from Better Homes and Gardens) since it jazzes up cooked carrots and can be frozen as a kit...no need for last-minute shopping to insure there's a vegetable side dish to go with your roast.  You can make this with fresh carrots, but if you plan to make a freezer kit, you'll still have to blanch the carrots to keep weird enzyme things from happening in the freezer.

Also, I don't know if I've ever mentioned that when I use butter, I use unsalted butter.  Makes a difference regarding sodium content and how strongly the dish tastes of salt if you add more.
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Ancho Chicken, Coffee-Cocoa Beef Roast

A shout-out to Albuquerque's Fruit Basket whose chile-not-chili powder appears in a great many of my dishes.



Coffee-Cocoa Beef Tenderloin with
roasted asparagus and carrots

 Both the Ancho and Coffee-Cocoa dry rubs work well on a variety of meats.  Whatever you choose to do, try to get the spices on the meat and at least refrigerate it overnight.  The longer the dry rub sits on the roast, the better it gets IMHO.  Of course, if you're planning way ahead, go ahead and vacuseal and freeze the dry rubbed roast for a no-prep meal later.

The Ancho Chicken in particular is a rock-star leftover when sliced and added to a green salad.  Leftover Coffee-Cocoa pork or beef roast makes a tasty sandwich the next day, too.
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