What did I cook this weekend.....

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Since we seem to be on the ground meat train... Any recommendations for a not overly expensive grinder? I was looking at the kitchen aid attachment for the stand mixer. Any thoughts?
 
I have it too and it's all I've ever used - for years! Made short work of the 17 pounds of brisket. The trick is cutting it properly to begin with so it will feed easily. I like long strips about 1" on each side and as long as you want to cut them. Having them ice cold or slightly frozen works great.
 
TheDudeLebowski said:
aaaand do you incorporate butter into the mix? That's the recommendations I've heard of.
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About twice a year i buy a whole usda prime boneless rib eye primal (~18lb). The tip end has a strip of fat that it useless on the steak, and just causes flare ups on the grill. So i trim it off, cube it up, and freeze it. When its burger time, i just add a few extra cubes of the prime rib eye fat to the mix.

I have found you can add too much though so you need to measure it. For ground chuck, no more than about 10% additional fat. I have found you can add too much (i know, i didn't think it was possible either).
 
Temptd2 said:
I have it too and it's all I've ever used - for years! Made short work of the 17 pounds of brisket. The trick is cutting it properly to begin with so it will feed easily. I like long strips about 1" on each side and as long as you want to cut them. Having them ice cold or slightly frozen works great.
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Awesome! Thanks!!
 
Today I've been cooking a pot of beans only those suckers REFUSE to get tender. Really pizzes me off. Two pounds of pintos, sorted and rinsed, soaked, into the roaster oven this morning about 10 am, brought to a boil, reduced to simmer; no salt, here we are 10:45 at night and they are still almost crunchy. Should've known - KOTC soaked them overnight and they had absorbed very little water by this morning. They're older beans, have been in a cool dark cupboard in a plastic sealed container but they're probably a couple years old and found a crack in the container. Have a feeling the whole lot is gonna get dumped. GRRRRRR.
 
I like the dimple you put in there. I used the press last night on preground burger (I wimped out!) and used too much meat. The plain ones bulged up too high.

The Stuffed burgers were kind of a PITA to make with that thing, but they cooked ok and tasted fine. I messed up my brurger though. I wanted egg on my burger, so I scrambled an egg and poured a bit into the pocket. When I pressed the top layer of burger on it, the egg kind of oozed out. I microwaved it a bit to try and firm up the egg, and ended up cooking the burger all the way through in the microwave. I was hungry and wanted to get back to my chores, so I just ate it. It was still pretty good.

As far as the press goes, I do like the press, but depending on the meat I use, I might press them thinner or take the patty out and press a dimple in the middle to keep the center from bulging way out. They were so thick we had to cut them in half to eat them! Nobody complained, though. I added 1 egg to the meat to help hold them together, and I mixed in some "Chicago" seasoning to add a bit of flavor.
 
Temptd2 said:
Today I've been cooking a pot of beans only those suckers REFUSE to get tender. Really pizzes me off. Two pounds of pintos, sorted and rinsed, soaked, into the roaster oven this morning about 10 am, brought to a boil, reduced to simmer; no salt, here we are 10:45 at night and they are still almost crunchy. Should've known - KOTC soaked them overnight and they had absorbed very little water by this morning. They're older beans, have been in a cool dark cupboard in a plastic sealed container but they're probably a couple years old and found a crack in the container. Have a feeling the whole lot is gonna get dumped. GRRRRRR.
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Keep cooking them. I made beans not long ago and they took over 16 hours in the crock pot to get tender. They were old beans in the cupboard. The fresh beans I've used since then were nice in about 8 hours (Maybe less, I was at work...)

But the old beans did get tender after a while.

Speaking of beans, I have to rant. Monday night I made some biscuits right before bed so I could have biscuits with my beans for lunch this week. I made 6 tall, fluffy biscuits and took one to work yesterday for lunch.

This morning I cannot find any biscuits. Wife said she hasn't seen them. One daughter says she did not eat them. The other kid hasn't responded, but I'd be amazed, pissed, impressed if she ate the other 5 biscuits!

Now I am wondering if I set them somewhere and forgot. The kitchen is kind of a mess right now due to getting ready to paint. I'm seriously questioning if my 22 yo kid could/would even eat that many biscuits in 1 day.

All I know is that I didn't get any biscuits with my beans for lunch today (Beans and rice because I added some rice this time for some reason....)
 
Years ago SWMBO and I went to France. There was a bakery next to our hotel.

O. M. G.

I'd had stuff that was sort of like bread before but I'd never had bread until that trip. It was life transforming. The first baguette we bought came up to our room after a long day of walking around Paris. I tore into it while she took a shower. She starts looking for the bread after her shower and I tried playing it off. "What bread? What are you talking about? Have some wine."
 
trav77 said:
Not sure if this should go in this thread, the bread thread, or the smoking meat thread but...

Traditional Easter dinner of BBQ pork shoulder. Sous chef is prepping the green play dough appetizers. Also have some brioche buns proofing for sandwiches. And some Carolina style BBQ sauce.

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Very pretty! Brioche just look amazing in your second post!! Yes, it belongs in all three threads! Well done!
 
kev211 said:
Since we seem to be on the ground meat train... Any recommendations for a not overly expensive grinder? I was looking at the kitchen aid attachment for the stand mixer. Any thoughts?
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I'm late to the party but the KitchenAid is a good grinder. Lousy sausage stuffer though.
 
I think I said the other night that any recipe that starts with bacon is a keeper. This one starts with pancetta. So I am amending that comment. Any recipe that starts with pork fat is a keeper!! Lol
 
Teriyaki chicken, jasmine rice, and a touch of sambal oelek.

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I had six leftover 16-20 ct shrimp, so I got a nice prime tenderloin fillet and cooked it rare using the afterburner method. Cut the fillet in half and warmed up the shrimp, and we had surf & turf with sprouts and carrots.

Love the afterburner method, but it can be a little terrifying with prime beef or really good tuna. Great results, but not very forgiving.
 
Found Polish Kielbasa and Brussels sprouts in the fridge, so I baked them in the oven with some onion chopped into large pieces with olive oil and salt, and then sprinkled liberally with Parmesan Cheese with they were cooked. One kid and the wife really liked it. The other kid would never eat that because it has 3 things she doesn't like (Well, I'm not certain about the sausage, but I'm playing the odds on that one...)

After that, I made M&M chip cookies with a hint of almond extract and cinnamon added. I made that recently, but it was requested by two family members separately, so I whipped some up. Thankfully we are going out for a partay tonight so I won't have to eat too many of them!
 
So would you southern guys walk me through the whole gumbo process please? If you make a roux why do you need okra, leaving aside for a month the anthropological connections between African slave cooking and French/Canadian "Cajun"refugee cooking? From a functional point of view you're going to bind up the soup.

Admittedly I've never been to Louisiana. That will change.

Thanks for enlightening a ******* Yankee. I'll repay the lesson in seafood for anyone who comes this way
 
paulthenurse said:
So would you southern guys walk me through the whole gumbo process please? If you make a roux why do you need okra, leaving aside for a month the anthropological connections between African slave cooking and French/Canadian "Cajun"refugee cooking? From a functional point of view you're going to bind up the soup.

Admittedly I've never been to Louisiana. That will change.

Thanks for enlightening a ******* Yankee. I'll repay the lesson in seafood for anyone who comes this way
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I will give you my take in a few minutes. Busy at the moment. But I learned Gumbo from my late mother in law, my late dad who was born in N'awleans, and my mom who is from Alabama. So I've pretty much got Cajun and the south covered.
 
paulthenurse said:
So would you southern guys walk me through the whole gumbo process please? If you make a roux why do you need okra, leaving aside for a month the anthropological connections between African slave cooking and French/Canadian "Cajun"refugee cooking? From a functional point of view you're going to bind up the soup.

Admittedly I've never been to Louisiana. That will change.

Thanks for enlightening a ******* Yankee. I'll repay the lesson in seafood for anyone who comes this way
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Gumbo is basically a Cajun stew. Blonde rouxs are used all the time as methods to thicken all kinds of things. As you take a roux darker the thickening character decreases and the flavor increases. Gumbo rouxs are for flavor, not thickening. Really dark rouxs lend an almost nutty flavor to the dish.

The roux is scorching hot and dangerous by the time it gets to this point. My youngest daughter has scars on her arm to prove what happens when you start bull****ting when you are helping with a roux and ignore the warnings your father gave you about liquid napalm.

The rest of it is just a stew. When the screaming hot roux is done you throw in the trilogy of onion, bell pepper, and celery. The smell of that alone is my favorite part of cooking gumbo.

If you got your shrimp fresh and saved the heads and shells you can make an awesome shrimp stock from them to add, because you need more liquid after you throw the veggies into the roux. I freeze shrimp stock but run out before I run out of frozen shrimp so I usually use chicken stock and water to bring the liquid content up.

The rest is meat, and okra. Okra traditionally was used because the slime given off will thicken the stew. Alternatively Filet is used either while cooking or at the table as a thickener and for flavor. Filet is ground sassafras. It really, IMO, brings little to the table in the form of flavor, but it does thicken.

Meats you use vary depending on what you have available. In northern LA you find rabbit, venison, etc. used in gumbos. As you move further south it's all about seafood. Firm fleshed fish are awesome. Usually when I'm cooking this down at the coast we clean blue crabs and throw them in whole. I buy pasteurized crab here and throw that in when I run out of frozen crabs.

As far as other ingredients I throw in a couple of bay leaves, just because, a bit of oregano, some Cajun seasoning (Slap yo mama tonight) , and of course some cayenne.

Hope that was not more than you wanted in a response. Lol
Cheers
 
Oh, I left out an obvious but important point. It needs to stew for 4 hours or more before you even think of putting shrimp and other seafood in. You should throw that stuff into the hot stew shortly before you are ready to serve. Might seem obvious.
 

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