beef and whiskey

Just wanted to share this picture of a recent attempt at making a protein-shake-smoothy that went very very wrong. Not sure what happened, but I think I hit the start button before I had the blender jar properly seated in place. Somehow the cutting unit thingy unscrewed itself and smoothie stuff went flying everywhere. Lots of it. More than this picture even shows, there was purple gunk all over the cabinets and on the floor too.

Here’s the recipe I was using:

a few ounces of water

a couple small chunks of frozen banana

a handful of frozen blueberry

2 and 1/2 scoops protein powder

1/2 can coconut milk, that I had poured into an ice tray and left in the freezer overnight

1 raw egg

1 tablespoon Torani sugar free vanilla syrup

Factory farming is evil. And feeding beef grains, not their natural diet, is wrong, for all sorts of reasons. These are well documented all over the internets, so I won’t go into here.

However, grass-fed, whilst being the more ethical and sustainable and healthy choice, has three problems:

• It’s more expensive.
• It’s a lot tougher.
• It has a lot less fat in it.

Not much you can do about the first one, really.

But you can do a lot about the toughness and the low fat content.

All you need is a Sous-Vide Supreme (or a similar contraption), some butter (grass-fed preferably), and some patience. Just season the meat, put it in the bag, add a generous amount of butter (or beef fat, or duck fat, or whatever!), drop it in the bath, and when it’s done, sear it and enjoy!

In recent days I’ve been cooking up a grass-fed storm. Here’s my notes and pics on each one.

I used the same basic approach for all of these: season, add a boatload of butter, bag ‘em, and cook at 130 degrees in the sous-vide machine for 24 hours, give or take a few. The only exception was the burgers, no butter needed for those (they were 75% lean),  and I only cooked them for 2 -3 hours.

All of the meat you see here is grass-fed and came from US Wellness Meats.

[Note: I don't receive a dime for plugging either the Sous-Vide Supreme or US Wellness Meats, but, if they really want to, they can send me money... or free steaks... or a second SVS... really, guys, I wouldn't object...]

Hangar Steak

This one was hands down the best of the batch. It was a revelation. Amazing flavor and super tender.

Ribeye

This was really good too. Super tender, nice flavor.

Delmonico

Not quite as good as the hangar or the ribeye, but still, not too bad.

Strip Steak

I tried an old favorite grilling recipe: coat with olive oil, cover with mustard powder, add some hot sauce (I used habanero sauce, but forgot to include it in the pic). This tastes great for grilling, but I gotta say the effect somehow got lost in the sous-vide process. And the strip steak was only so-so. Not bad, not by a long shot, but not great, either. Not sure if it need more time in the SVS, or less. Maybe more butter. I may try using the jaccard gizmo with it. We’ll see.

Burgers

Ah, it’s pretty hard to ruin a burger. Or two. I had these with some guac and salsa on top. A hearty breakfast, indeed.

When I lived in LA in my late twenties, I used to frequent a place called “The Shack” in the little beach town of Playa del Rey (between Marina del Rey and Manhattan Beach). The one thing that has stayed in my noggin from all those years ago was their brazen serving of-get this-right there in the middle of low-fat health zombie mecca central, right then during the middle of the peak of the zenith of  low fat mania-the most unhealthy sandwich you can possibly imagine. It combined two of the worst heart attack provoking evil-doers known to sun worshipping fat fearing Californian pseudo-vegetarian wannabees: Hamburger and Sausage! Egads!

Like, wow, dude, that burger is totally gnarly, man! Like, totally. Fer shure.

I’ve been back to LA a few times in recent years, and each time I’ve been trying to get back to the Shack to see if the famous Shack burger lives up to my memory of it. Which is admittedly very faint. Lots of beer and whiskey and burgers and time between now and the last time I had one, which must be, hmm, lemme see, way back in 1986 or so.

But fate keeps interfering.  I got really close a couple of months ago, with my wife. We parked, walked in, she took one look around the place, and refused to stay.. (it is kinda ramshackle… I tried to sell her on the beach shack charm angle, but she wasn’t buying it.)

There was also the time before that, a couple of years ago, I was supposed to land at LAX in the evening, plenty of time to pop over to the Shack. But my flight got delayed and by the time a friend and I walked in the door, dreams of greasy shack burger sausagey goodness dancing in my head, we were informed that the kitchen had just closed.

Damn.

And I am still peeved about the time in 1989, just after finishing a biathlon (running/biking/running-yeah, I used to do that kinda crazy shit…) that finished practically right in front of the place, I thought the perfect post race meal would be a shack burger or two washed down with ridiculous amounts of beer. But my idiot friends felt differently. I think we wound up at a Pizza Hut. A god*(&mned Pizza Hut.

I will get back to the Shack one of these days. Oh. Yes I. Will. On my next trip to LA, I’m gonna ditch whoever I am with, and get my ass to the bar, order up some beer and a shack burger, and finally settle this for once and for all.

But since I live 3000 miles away, I decided to make do for now by making my own shack burger. I dropped a burger into the Sous Vide Supreme for a few hours at about 120 degrees, then I seared the top and bottom, then I added some hot italian sausages cooked in my Breville indoor grill, which does a nice job of flattening the sausage. And this time, I kept it truly low carb and grain free by using a homemade “bun”, known as the “ooopsie roll.” It’s made with eggs and cream cheese, you can find the recipe here.

Oh yeah, I added cheese and mayo and mustard. And a fried egg (of course!) Damn fine burger. Probly better than the real thing.