Crock Pot Oxtail Stew

Erhmahgerd sterw!  So yeah, wow, it’s been a while, but here we are back again.

Yesterday we made a pretty good meal (really, to serve as lunches at work) from some of the meat provided to us as part of M.F. Dulock’s “meat club.”  On the chopping block: oxtail.  If you don’t know what oxtail is (and admittedly, we didn’t either)….it’s exactly what it sounds like -- the appendage used by bovines to swat at flies on their buttocks.  ;)  There’s more meat on there than you’d think, though, and it turns out it’s great for braising and/or stewing.

Here’s the easy recipe (parsed down from one we found online, and amended slightly to our tastes)….

• 1.65 pounds oxtail, disjointed (this just means chopped up into singular vertebral chunks)
• Pork fat that was leftover in a pan where we had cooked breakfast bacon that day
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 cup beef stock
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 1/4 cup tomato sauce
• 6 peppercorns
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 dried red chile pepper, chopped (some, but not all, seeds removed)
• 3 whole cloves
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1/2 tablespoon chopped parsley
• 3 potatoes, cut in chunks
• salt and pepper

Brown the oxtail pieces on all sides in the cast iron skillet with the pork fat, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.  Add the onions and garlic (with a bit more salt and pepper) and cook about 5 minutes more until the onions start to become translucent.

Put the potatoes and carrots in the bottom of crock pot, and season with salt and pepper.

Add the browned oxtails, onions, garlic, and remaining ingredients.

Cover and cook on low 6 hours or until the meat is easily pulled off (or falling off) the bones.

Quite delicious, super easy, and the house smelled fantastic all day, right from moment the meat went into the pork fat.  The weirdest part is that once you’ve gotten the meat off the bone of “normal” cuts, you are used to what the bones will look like.  Here, you end up with vertebrae.  Freaky.

Pot Roast

Hubby and I recently became members of the M.F. Dulock Pasture Raised Meats "meat club," wherein for a certain set price each month, you get a minimum of 5 pounds of the butchers' selection of various meats and offal, plus bones for stock above and beyond that 5 pound base weight.  This month, included in our bag (which incidentally weighed a good amount over the 5 pounds) was this beautiful two-pound bottom round.  We decided to turn into a pot roast.

We did our Googling, and chose to base our efforts on this recipe by The Pioneer Woman.  We of course, as usual, added our own twists and turns to it.

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 275-degrees.

Step 2: Generously salt and pepper the meat.

Step 3: Roughly chop a whole onion and toss it into a large enameled cast iron pot (or whatever oven-safe pot with a lid that you have) along with a couple tablespoons of very hot (but not smoking) olive oil.  Cook them for a few minutes until they start to turn brown:

Step 4: Remove the onions from the pot and repeat the quick browning procedure with some chopped carrots.  You  may or may not need to add a little more oil to the pan -- you be the judge....for the record, I didn't add any myself.

Step 5: Remove the carrots from the pan and brown the meat on all sides, again adding a touch more oil if you think you need to.  I did choose to add a little oil at this point.

Step 6: After removing the meat from the pan, deglaze it using a little bit of red wine (or beef stock or water if you don't have wine).  Pictured below is the wine the we happened to have sitting around last night, so that's what I used.  I only used enough to barely cover the bottom of the pan, though, because I needed to reserve about 2 cups of it for another upcoming recipe.  I wanted more liquid than that for deglazing, however, so I added a little of my homemade beef stock, too.

 

Step 7:  Here, because I wanted more vegetables in our final dish than just carrots and onions, I opted to chop up two russet potatoes and a few mushrooms.
 

Step 8:  Now it's time to put it all back in the pot.  First, in goes the meat.  Then, pour in as much beef stock as is needed to cover it about halfway up.  Next, toss in all the veggies.  Finally, top it off with Rosemary and Thyme....as much as you like, and fresh if you have it (we used dried).

 

Step 9:  Put the lid on your pot and bake it all together for about 2 hours.  (I think the rule is about an hour per pound of meat.)  We happened to let ours go for 2 hours and 20 minutes.

This is what it will look like when it comes out.  Try not to dive in too fast, though....it's very, very hot.  Plus, you still need to make the gravy.

Put the meat on a plate to let the juices redistribute, and scoop the vegetables out of the pot, leaving all the liquid still in there.

Bring it to a boil on your stovetop to reduce it down as much as you like.  We let it boil for 5-10 minutes, then used a cornstarch slurry to give it one final thickening.  (I know that some schools of though, including my beloved A.B., frown upon letting corn starch anywhere near gravy, but since I am currently not eating wheat unless it's necessary or a special occasion, we opted to skip the usual flour route -- it still tasted great.)

 

Slice up your meat, plate it with a scoop or two of the veggies, top it with the gravy, and enjoy!!

Everything was delicious, and the meat was so tender.  The only thing I would do differently next time is perhaps cook it for a little less time, because the potatoes were squishier than I would have liked and meat on the rarer side is always preferred in our house.  But other than that, it was a definite success that we are happy to have lots of leftovers of for lunches.

Stuffed Pumpkin

It was a pumpkinpalooza of sorts on Facebook last week.  While one of our friends was harvesting oodles of them, another shared this recipe which of course we were quite inclined to try.  Today, a rare Sunday afternoon spent at home, was the day.

It took a bit of time (waiting while it baked), but was otherwise quite easy to do.  The house smelled fantastic and there is no doubt that the original recipe writers were correct to dub it "Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good."  I mean, there's bacon, and cheese! - need I say more?  For our version, I made some substitutions, and because the pumpkin I picked up turned out to be 6 pounds, I doubled everything....

INGREDIENTS

• 1 pumpkin, about 6 pounds
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 3 rice cakes, chopped into chunks (based on the idea given in the original recipe of, instead of bread, using rice in general)
• 1/2 pound Gruyere cheese, cubed
• 8 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
• 8 strips of bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped
• Dried chives (I used up all that we had left, probably a tablespoon and a half)
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• Freshly grated nutmeg

PROCESS

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with Silpat (or parchment paper).

2.  Cut a cap out of the top of the pumpkin (think Halloween jack-o'-lantern).  Clean out the seeds and strings, season the inside of the pumpkin generously with salt and pepper, and put it on the baking sheet.

3.  Toss the rice cakes, cheese, garlic, bacon, and herbs together in a bowl. Season with pepper, and pack the mix into the pumpkin.

Obligatory bacon close-up because, well, it's bacon.

The pumpkin should be well filled.  You might have a little too much filling, or you might need to add to it.  I definitely could have used more filling, but since I had already depleted all of several of the ingredients I had on hand, I just left it as is.

4.  Stir the cream with the nutmeg and some salt and pepper and pour it into the pumpkin.

Again, you might have too much or too little — you don't want the ingredients to swim in cream, but you do want them nicely moistened. (Don't worry, it's hard to go wrong here.)

5.  Put the cap in place and bake the pumpkin for about 2 hours, or until everything inside the pumpkin is bubbling and the flesh of the pumpkin is tender enough to be pierced easily with the tip of a knife.  As the original recipe writers suggested, I removed the cap during the last 20 minutes or so, so that any excess moisture could bake away and the top of the stuffing could brown a little.

6.  When the pumpkin is ready, very carefully (it's heavy, hot, and wobbly) bring it to the table or transfer it to a platter that you'll bring to the table.

7.  Allow it to cool until the stuffing solidifies a bit, or if you're impatient like me, scoop all the stuffing out with a spoon into a separate container, slice the pumpkin into wedges, and serve it all up right away.

This was so, so, sooo good.  Bacon, cheese, cream, pumpkin, Autumn.  Yummy, yum yum.

We got 5 servings with stuffing, plus (because I didn't have/make enough stuffing to completely fill the pumpkin) leftovers of 2 slices of pumpkin and the pumpkin meat on the cap, from which I will make soup in the next few days.

Real New England BBQ

Real New England BBQ?  Yes, I said "New England" BBQ, because that's where we live.  ;)

We are big BBQ fans -- which in case you don't know is not the same as "cooking out."  Texas, Carolina, Memphis, Kansas City, you name it.  It's all good.  And while there are a slight few worthy restaurants near us for this type of food, it's still hard....very hard....to find good BBQ around us.  So, why not make our own, right?

What we have for you in today's third foodventure installment (can you tell it's a catch up day on the blog?) is yet another Alton Brown recipe.  He calls it AB-BQ, and while it's time consuming, it's easy peasy.  Here's how we did it (of course we didn't stick exactly to the recipe)....

YOU WILL NEED:

• 3 quarts water
• 12 ounces kosher salt
• 8 ounces  molasses
• 8-10 pound boneless pork butt (We only used about 3 pounds, because we're only 2 people and also that's the size we found at our local supermarket)
• Special Equipment:  A smoker and 4 ounces of hickory or oak wood chunks

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

1.  Place the water, salt, and molasses in a large container and stir until the salt dissolves.  Add the pork butt to the brine and weigh it down to make sure it is completely submerged.  Alton suggests filling a zip top bag with 2 cups of the brine and laying it on top of the pork to accomplish this, but we opted instead to lay a couple of small plates on top of the pork -- works just as well.

2.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.  Remove the pork from the brine, and pat dry.

3.  Heat your smoker to around 225 degrees F.  Add the wood chunks, and place the pork into the smoker.  AB's recipe didn't call for it, but since our smoker has a separate tray for liquid, Hubby filled it mostly with water and then added a 12-ounce can of Coke to the water.  In it went to the smoker.

4.  Cook until the pork reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees F, or 4 to 5 hours.  We didn't use a thermometer, and since our pork butt was a lot smaller than what AB's recipe calls for, we just smoked it for four hours.  Note: you may need to add more charcoal or wood chips throughout the process, depending on how long you soaked your chips, the temperature outside, and how fast things burn off.

5.  A bit before you go to take the meat out of the smoker, heat your oven to 300 degrees F.  Wrap the pork in aluminum foil and transfer to a pan with high enough sides to catch any drippings (we don't want no messes in the oven, now do we?).  Place on the center rack and cook until the pork reaches an internal temperature of at least 200 degrees F, anywhere from 3 to 5 hours.

6.  Remove from the oven and rest, covered for 30 minutes before serving, pulling, or otherwise messing with it.  This is what ours looked like after resting:


Dayam, right?

 

Look at that caramelization!  Mmmmmm.



And the smoke ring.  Ooooooh!

7.  Use two forks to pull the pork apart.

So.  freaking.  good.  We served it with garlic-chive mashed potatoes, buttered corn, and a sliced garden fresh tomato.  The sauce that you see on top here was whipped together by Hubby.  Unfortunately, like most of his rubs and sauces, no measurements were done, but we can tell you that it contains ketchup, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, tamari (that's gluten free soy sauce), garlic powder, apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper, and that he cooked it on the stove to reduce it to a desired consistency.  No worries, though, sauces are a personal thing and you should make yours (if you even want one) to your own liking.

BBQ Pulled Pork and Buttery Cornbread

In my last post I mentioned how Hubby and I spent Sunday doing some low and slow bbq style cooking, including the brisket that I talked about there. Well, also whipped up during our lazy, rainy afternoon was some most excellent Slow Cooker Pulled Pork and Buttery Cornbread (as is customary you will find the recipes that we based our adventures on at the links). Both of these were super easy and required little attention. Here are our versions, as usual slightly altered from what we found online:

PULLED PORK

Ingredients

• 4 pounds of pork tenderloin
• 24 fluid ounces of root beer
• Homemade bbq sauce (Hubby’s recipe consisted of approximately 12 ounces ketchup, 6 ounces molasses, 6 ounces Worcestershire sauce, a tablespoon or two of garlic power, a tablespoon or two of onion powder, a half-tablespoon of cayenne pepper, and a half-tablespoon black pepper)

Directions

Place the pork tenderloin in a large crock pot along with the root beer. Cover and cook on low until well done and the pork shreds easily, about 5 to 6 hours.

Shred the meat with two forks and mix it with the bbq sauce.

Like a lot of barbecue that isn’t of a typical Carolina style, this one was all about the sauce. We tasted the meat before mixing it with the sauce, and truthfully, couldn’t quite discern the root beer much, if at all. Therefore, we don’t know that it was necessary to use root beer per se, and perhaps any liquid of your choice would have done. Once it was coated in the sauce, though, damn was it good. All those kudos go to Hubby for the sauce he created. Sauces and rubs are, after all, his forte.

BUTTERY CORNBREAD

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 and 2/3 cups milk
• 2 and 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 4 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 ear of corn, raw, kernels removed

Directions

Preheat your oven to 400-degrees.

In a mixing bowl (we used a stand mixer), cream the butter and sugar.  Combine the eggs and milk in another bowl. In a third bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt.

Add the wet and dry ingredients to the creamed butter/suger mixture alternately until everything is incorporated.

Dump in the raw corn kernels and give it one last twirl.

Pour the batter into a greased 13x9 dish and Bake at for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cut into squares and serve warm or cold. 

I'll tell you what -- the name of this cornbread did *not* lie.  It was super-buttery and delicious.  A lot of times I will spread butter onto my cornbread before eating it -- that was wholly unnecessary with this one.  =)