All Day Meat Ragu

Heavenly meat sauce.

ALL DAY MEAT SAUCE

Every carnivore ought to have a phenomenally impressive meat sauce at the ready.  This is one of those "recipes" you don't need a recipe for. It's a formula, and can be adjusted several ways--and exact proportions are unimportant. And it is perfect and delicious every single time. You cannot mess this up.

This ragu is a hearty, richly-flavored and intense tomato meat sauce, perfect for the snowy winter weather we're having in Denver now. Incredibly rich, complex and satisfying, it is an impressive and welcoming dish for a dinner party, or you can keep it in the fridge and eat it gradually over the course of a mid-winter week. It reheats excellently and gets better over time.
It is just incredibly delicious. And, though it takes at least several hours to complete, most of that is braising time--it's really an easy recipe.
And this can be varied in a number of ways. I've made it with half of a bone-in leg of lamb, with a skinless pork butt, with short ribs, or with a beef chuck roast (the cheapest way! and always phenomenal tasting). Below is the beef chuck version, which is fabulous--but all of these are excellent. Depends what you have on hand and are in the mood for.
This recipe makes a full pot of sauce in my 6 quart dutch oven--this is enough for more than a dozen hearty eaters.

Ingredients (in order of use) 
1 beef chuck roast (3 ish pounds)
salt
pepper
flour
olive oil
6 or so strips of bacon (I like a smokey, thick-cut kind)
3 white onions, diced small
1 bottle of red wine
5 16 oz cans of tomatoes (I usually use 3 cans of crushed and two of diced)
sugar
2 or 3 raw beef soup bones OR a raw pork hock (these are usually quite cheaply available in the meat section of any grocery store)
2 heads of garlic, minced

Linguine with beef ragu, topped with herby ricotta. 

Directions
I like to start this the day before I want to eat it--but you could also start it in the morning and plan to have it for dinner. The flavor deepens as it sits.
First, take out your large, lidded pot and pour in a few glugs of olive oil. Unwrap your chuck roast and pat dry with paper towels. Generously season the roast with salt and pepper, then dust it with flour (2 or 3 tablespoons should suffice). Turn the heat on under the pot--when the oil shimmers, brown the roast on all sides--a few minutes per side should be fine. Remove the browned roast and place it on a plate.
Dice up your bacon and add it to the pot. Let it cook for a couple of minutes, until a good amount of the fat has rendered but isn't entirely crisp. Then, add the onions. Cook for 10 minutes or so, stirring every so often. These should get translucent and take on a little color, but not caramelize much.
Add the bottle of wine. Dump in the whole thing, unless you happen NOT to be pregnant, in which case you can pour yourself a glass to enjoy while you finish cooking, then dump in the rest of the bottle. In my chunky sober case, the whole bottle went in. Sadness. Only a few more months.
As the wine boils, scrape the bottom of the pot. Allow the wine to boil and reduce for a few minutes. Add your canned tomatoes. Sprinkle a tablespoon or so of sugar on top--this eliminates the tinny metallic taste from the canned tomatoes.Make sure there remains a few inches of space at the top of the pot--you need room for your roast and the soup bones. Mix the tomatoes and wine together and bring to a boil.
Add the beef roast and the soup bones. Submerge them in the sauce. (The bones--or pork hock--add collagen to the sauce as they cook--this results in a silky richness and a depth of flavor the sauce would otherwise lack. If you are using meat that includes bone--shortribs or a leg of lamb--it's not necessary to add bones to the braise).
Turn your oven on to 300 degrees. Cover the pot and place it in the oven. Then, walk away for four hours.
After four hours have elapsed, turn off the heat, and remove the pot and leave it covered. Allow the sauce to cool completely (I just turn the oven off, and leave the sauce pot in there overnight). When the sauce is cool, skim any grease you can off the top and throw is out. Remove the soup bones and toss them (or give them to your dogs). Remove the roast and shred the meat, using forks or your fingers. Add it back to the pot, mix well. Taste for salt--you may want to add a few teaspoons more. Viola! The sauce will be deep red, meaty, and utterly delicious.
Serve over a pasta with some traction--I like rigatoni, or spirals, or linguine.
To make herby ricotta--chop up a bunch of parsley and a bunch of basil--mix with whole milk ricotta. Place a dollop on each plate of pasta and sauce.

I cannot recommend this enough. It's absolutely delicious. 

Enjoy!

Cooking Lately: Big Meats, Drunk Crowds

12 hour brisket for a backyard BBQ

I haven't been posting many recipes lately. Perhaps out of embarrassment out of the sheer, shameless gluttony of what I've mostly been making.

Glazed Roast Pork Shoulders

In the last two weeks, I've hosted a couple of events in our backyard, both of which I used as an excuse to make gigantic, spectacular meats and a ton of sides. One was a party ("I Did A Dime") I threw for myself to celebrate my tenth year in the classroom, and the other was my school's end-of-year party.

For the ten-year party, I made BBQ Brisket in the smoker, which I dry rubbed then smoked for 14 hours at 190 degrees. I also made glazed pork shoulders, picked red onion and fennel, German potato salad, and Greek tomato salad. 

Look at this glorious pork!

I had white bread, BBQ sauce and sweet pickles to go with the brisket.

German Potato Salad

Proof that there were vegetables there. 

Everything was inhaled. This BBQ also featured my most genius innovation this year--using home brewing equipment to carbonate boxed Franzia into world's worst "champagne". An entire 5-gallon keg of this was drunk before 9 pm. 

Also notable was the quality of the brisket. I've been practicing and tweaking my technique since we got the smoker two years ago, and this was the best version to date. What I've learned boils down to basically just being super anal about controlling the temperature. Watch it like a hawk and keep it steady and low (190-205) for the first seven hours, then at about 225 for the next five. Never let it get too hot for too long. 

So then, for the end-of-year school party, I decided to go all-Asian, as certain members of our staff claim fashionable food intolerances. Last year when I hosted, I played it safe. I made chicken piccata, roasted root vegetables with goat cheese and balsamic, walnut pesto pasta salad, tomato salad, and  ordered some cupcakes. It was good, but didn't really scream OH MY FUCKING GOD I AM SO GLAD THE YEAR IS OVER. It was too subdued, healthy, tame, and virtuous. Charter school teachers suffer from an overabundance of personality-crippling virtue, as it is. This year I went way more dirty. 

I made Bo Ssam, which I have been wanting to make for at least a year. 

Bo Ssam, in the most-used roasting pot in Denver. 

Bo Ssam is a Korean roast pork that all the food blogs on the internet have been obsessing over for the past year. The recipe I used is here.

It was INSANE. I also made the scallion sauce and ssam sauce. 

I also made a red-cooked, Szechuan pork belly, because why not? It was an experiment, and I wanted to push my kale-loving coworkers out of their comfort zones. Also, I had a tub of Szechuan pepper corns I'd bought forever ago and hadn't used yet.  

Red-Cooked Pork Belly 

To go with this, I also made some chile-soy marinated chicken skewers for the pork-rejecters in our midst And my classic peanut sauce.

In addition, I made a Vietnamese noodle-and-herb salad with nuam choc dressing, stir-fried veggies, and a big pot of sticky rice. 

Vietnamese Salad

Bo Ssam, Scallion-Ginger Sauce, Peanut Sauce, Sticky Rice 

A nice party plate!

So all in all, the summer is off to a fantastic start. Looking forward to cooking, relaxing, reading, and recouperating from year 10 in the classroom.

Will get some of these recipes up as soon as possible!

Carne Asada with Chimichurri

A delicious, juicy carne asada taco with chimichurri, guac, and salsa roja. 

Far and away, the best food location I've ever lived in was the Rio Grande Valley. With the possible exception of Cajun food, I think it's the best regional eating in the whole country. The valley-dweller cannot help but encounter phenomenal food everywhere she goes. Never have I had a more wonderful breakfast than the Breakfast Tacos at the gas station down the road from the high school where I was teaching--the flour tortillas were made right there behind the counter (flour, water, salt, lard--patted translucently thin) and you could choose from about 10 different fillings--from Chorizo-Egg-Potato to Egg-Nopale to Egg-Chile-Chicarron. So fabulous. I often bought two and had one for breakfast and the other for lunch and was usually wishing for a third around 3 pm.
The Valley has a ton of dishes you rarely see elsewhere: carne guisada, for instance, I haven't seen on a menu anywhere since. Or the Papa Fuerte--a baked potato busting with meat, cheese, and salsa roja. Tortillas made with black or red corn. Cabrito en salsa (ok, that's everywhere, but I had it first in the Valley).
But: the best thing to eat down there is the CARNE ASADA. Every taco stand seemed to have the best steak you'd ever had. If you went to a sit-down restaurant and ordered the Parriada, a pile of smoking, succulent, charred-yet-juicily-rare, deadly-delicious meat would appear. It came with grilled jalapenos, peppers, onions, and the ubiquitous, ever-heavenly house tortillas. Corazon! That's still my Last Meal--accompanied by copious canned Tecates.
So: this is not that. Not even close. But since I ever lived in the Valley, I have been obsessed with finding or creating the best carne asada I possibly can.
So while this carne is not Valley--it's really, really good.

Cooking Carne makes this Valley girl nostalgic.

Carne Asada Recipe

Ingredients

Chile powder

Salt

Black pepper

Skirt steak, boneless chuck steak, or beef: at least 4 lbs but you could do more. 

1 head of garlic 

2 jalapenos

3 limes 

2 oranges or other sweet citrus 

1 red onion 

1 can of cheap beer. Tecate or Dos Equis are the best, but any crappy-type Pilsner will work.

What To Do

First, go buy some meat. I like either skirt steak or boneless chuck steaks for this. But any kind of thin-sliced beef will work. Look for something with fat in it--too lean will get tough. You will want leftovers so get a lot. 

Then, grab your meat (heh) and RUB IT! (heh heh). Sprinkle both sides of the meat with salt, chile powder, and black pepper. Place the meat in a tupperware and leave it while you make the marinade. 

Sprinkled-with-spices meat, ready for rubbing in.

Peel all the cloves of garlic and put them in a food processor or blender. Toss in the jalapenos. Juice the limes and oranges on top. Blitz it up!

Before! 

After! 

Now, pour the marinade over the rubbed meat. And dump in the beer! 

Unfortunately I only had PBR. 

Then squish everything around so the marinade touches every meat-surface. Slice up a red onion and toss it in. Cover the tupperware and put it in the fridge. Leave it from anywhere between overnight to three days (done both--always good!).  

Then, take the meat out and grill it!

Neighbors = jealous. Yummy smells...

So, to go with this I made chimmichurri, salsa roja, guacamole, and some warmed-up corn tortillas. I also made a pot of chorizo and potatos in the interest of copious leftovers.

So, chimichurri: this is not a Valley condiment--I first found it in an Argentine restaurant in Managua, and have LOVED it since then. We had chimichurri on the steak at the wedding (nowhere near as good as mine).

Ingredients 
1 bunch parsley
4 garlic cloves
3 TB red wine vinegar
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp honey
juice of 2 limes
1 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp cayenne (optional)
dash of salt

What to do
Put the garlic in the food processor and blitz them up into teeny little specks. Then, add the parsley and pulse a few times: you want the parsley chopped but chunky.

Place in a container and add the vinegar, oregano, lime juice, honey, and oil. Season to taste with salt and cayenne.
Serve at room temperature. Dribble over steak (or veggies. Or fish. Or chicken. Anything)

We ate this on the back porch and it was GREAT.

Eating juicy meat made Eric feel like this.

Mexican food is awesome. 

Enjoy!

Short Rib Ragu

A rich, sticky pot of meat and tomato goodness.

After two weeks of our Belize fish-and-beer diet, I was really craving something meaty and hearty. After all, fish meat is practically a vegetable.

 

This is really the sort of dish that evokes snowy evenings, wool socks, dark stouts, and exhausted ski legs. But I wanted it in July, when the oven shouldn't even have been turned on. Well, whatever--the stomach wants what it wants!

Any ragu takes hours to make. And short rib ragu takes an especially long time, as it involves braising meat on the bone, then taking it off the bone and adding it back into the sauce. 

But--it's still summer, so I had the whole day free. And putzing around in the kitchen braising meat is obviously the best possible way to spend an afternoon.

And this sauce is WORTH the time. It is totally, totally fabulous. Short ribs have a distinct flavor--between an aged steak and a pot roast--a meaty, melt-in-your-mouth fattiness. The tomatoes, cooked for hours, are jammy and dense; the garlic and wine have a mellow sweetness; the onions and bacon are barely detectable in the background. Absolutely delicious. I like to serve it over a big-textured pasta--like rigatoni or campanelle--with a dab of ricotta and some fresh basil. 

Oh hell yes.

This is tied with lamb ragu as my all-time favorite pasta sauce. It takes time, but it's special enough to serve for a holiday or occasion. 

Short Rib Ragu 

Ingredients 

About 8 beef short ribs (2 grocery store packages). Make sure to get the ones on the bone. 

2 large yellow onions, diced

6 strips of bacon, chopped

half a bottle of red wine

1 bulb of garlic 

About 12 fresh tomatoes (I used a combination of roma and hothouse tomatoes)

1 can of diced tomatoes

a cup of flour

olive oil 

salt and pepper 

dash of sugar

What to do 

The first step is to brown the short ribs. A good brown crust on meat is essential to a good braise. First, sprinkle the shortribs with salt and pepper. Heat up a few glugs of oil in the bottom of the pot you'll use for the sauce. 

Dredge the short ribs in flour, then brown on all sides in the oil. You will need to work in batches. Remove the browned short ribs to a plate and set aside. 

Short ribs browning. 

Short ribs post-browning. 

After browning, leave the oil in the bottom of the pan. Dice the onions and chop the bacon--add them to the oil and cook until the onions are starting to brown, about 20 minutes. 

Your kitchen smells amazing at this point.

When the onions are soft, translucent, and a light caramel color, pour in half of a bottle of red wine. Pour yourself a glass with the remaining wine to enhance your cooking experience.

Allow the wine to boil and reduce by about half--this should take about 8 minutes. Stir occasionally, making sure to scrape up the cooked bits of bacon, onion and short rib that may be sticking to the bottom of the pot. 

Wine  reducing with onions and bacon.

While the wine is reducing, peel all the cloves of a bulb of garlic. Place them in a blender or food processor. Add the fresh tomatoes in with them and blitz everything up into a smooth puree. 

Before.

After.

After the wine is reduced, add the tomato garlic puree to the pot. Stir to combine everything and bring to a boil. Allow to boil and reduce on medium heat for 20 minutes. 

Add the can of tomato puree, a dash of salt and pepper, and about a tablespoon of sugar. Bring back to a boil and allow to boil on medium for about 10 more minutes. 

At this point, add the short ribs back into the sauce. Submerge each one. Cover the pot and place into the oven at 300 degrees. 

Leave in the oven for 3 hours and 30 minutes. (Or longer--but at LEAST 3:30). 

During this time, clean your kitchen up, enjoy the smell, and try to resist the urge to peek in the pot too often. 

After the time has passed, take the pot out of the oven and allow to cool slightly for 10 minutes. 

There will be a layer of fat sitting on top of the sauce--skim off most of it and throw it away. 

Remove the short ribs from the sauce with tongs. They will be extremely tender. Place on a plate or cutting board and allow to cool until you can handle them with your hands. 

Short ribs after braising.

When the ribs are cooled, take the meat off the bone and chop or shred it. Add the meat back into the sauce and throw the bones away. 

And---you're done!!! 

Worth the wait!

Boil up some pasta and drown it in this fabulous ragu. Tear up some fresh basil and sprinkle it on, and top it with a blob of whole-milk ricotta. 

I cannot over-emphasize how fabulous this sauce is. Make it the next time you really want to impress. 

Enjoy!

Smoked Brisket!!!!!!!!!!

Making this brisket was incredibly fun for me. It combined several of my favorite types of cooking: cooking an enormous piece of meat, cooking with exciting equipment, and cooking for a group of appreciative happy people. We made a total of 32 pounds of brisket to celebrate my wonderful and sweet brother-in-law's 27th birthday. We had people over for a backyard BBQ and the meat ALL got eaten. Any crowd that gets so excited for bbq is good people.
Also: it came out so, so good. People were slicing off chunks and eating them plain with their fingers. Absolutely fantastic. The whole night made me feel like it was already summer (different story this morning at 6, when I had to struggle my butt to work).
First I had to go shopping for gigantic meats. I had seen full briskets in the grocery before and stroked them kind of wishfully, thinking of how fun it would be to cook something so huge. But then my logical mind would say: that is way too much meat, even for you. So I would walk away and find something less awesome to cook. I have been wanting to make one of these for a long time.

But then I couldn't find any! All the stores just had smaller pieces of brisket. I went to 4 stores and finally found these at a King Soopers nearly in Aurora.
How big were these meats?

Bigger than a Chihuahua!
These were 16lbs each, so they had to be cut in half in order to fit in the smoker. Look at that fat distribution! That's why they came out so juicy.

We got this smoker last summer. We have been experimenting with it and some things have been more successful than others. This was by far the best thing we've made with it yet.

A smoker going in the backyard on a Sunday means life is good.

The Recipe

Ingredients
Enormous brisket(s). I used two 16 lb briskets. These come whole in a plastic wrap.
1.5 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup table salt
1/4 cup garlic powder
1/4 cup chile powder
1/4 cup onion powder
2 TB mustard powder
2 TB cayenne

What to do
Make the rub by combining salt, sugar and spices.

Rub the brisket all over with the rub. Get as much to stick on as you can. Let the briskets sit with the rub on for a few hours or overnight.

Then, put it in the smoker for hours. 12 hours would be best. You want the smoker to stay between 200 and 250. I use three wood chips--try to space them far from the heating coils so they don't catch and flame.
We checked it every half hour or so--if it got too hot we unplugged it. This is a great excuse to sit in your backyard all day drinking beer.

One of the briskets smoking. The thick end is on top. My theory was that the fattier piece would drip down onto the leaner piece and keep it juicy. 

After all those hours of smoking, turn your oven all the way up and blast it for about 10 to 15 minutes to get a nice char on the outside. This might set off your smoke alarm or cause grease fires--both happened to me.

Finished brisket. 

This was a fantastic night in the backyard--great food, excellent company, all dogs stayed out of the pond, and we killed a whole batch of homebrew (rye pale ale).
Looking forward to a summer of smoked meat and yard games!