beef and whiskey

Did you know that Colonel Sanders wasn’t a real Colonel? He served in the military, that’s true, signed up when he was 16, served all his time in Cuba. But the Colonel handle was an honorary one, bestowed on him by the Governor of Kentucky, I think.

He also wasn’t fond of the direction his Kentucky Fried Chicken went after he sold out. They even sued him when he described their gravy as “sludge” haha. He was probably being too kind.

Ah, the things you learn from wikipedia!

KFC has been in the news a lot lately, because of their new sandwich, the notorious double down. You know, two pieces of chicken, some bacon, some sort of sauce, cheese, and GASP! NO BUN!!!

But the chicken is breaded, unless you get the grilled version. Both versions, however, are fairly low in carbs, and I would certainly eat one or the other, were I to find myself in a jam and really hungry and had no other choice… But for the most part, I think I’ll avoid this mess, it’s bound to be full of all sorts of things, including the bad fats. I’m not worried about saturated fat, mind you, but I’m sure vegetable oils are in involved somewhere along the way with this thing. And who knows what kinds of chemicals are involved.

After stumbling over my 999th blog or news article about this ridiculous sandwhich, it occurred to me, why not make my own? Why not, indeed? But I’ll make it the healthy and fun way-I’ll sous-vide the chicken (organic chicken), using some cajun spice and grass-fed butter, I’ll use some Italian hot sausage, some home-made mayo, along with some brie cheese. Dean Ornish would love this!

Not a drop or spec of anything I consider unhealthy in there! Ok, well, I don’t know exactly what all’s inside those sausages, but hey, let’s live dangerously!

Here’s the chicken in the bag with butter and spice rub. Btw, that’s the Sous-Vide Supreme vacuum sealer in the background, finally decided to step up from the ziplock hand pump bags. And glad I did, I love this thing.

Here’s all the sammich makins-organic chicken, home-made mayo, hot Italian sausage, cheese:

And the assembled monstrosity! Yes, I actually ate all of this. For Breakfast. At around 3 in the afternoon.

Next time I think I’d better slice those huge breasts in two, maybe use the jaccard to flatten them a bit, and if I get really ambitious, I’ll brine them over night.

Since I was in double down mode, I decided a few days later to whoop up a double down burger. Pretty much the same approach, but I used bacon this time. Sort of a double-sous-down-shack-vide burger…

Update May 1, 2010

Here’s some pics of my second version of the double down, this time with a single breast sliced into two, berkshire bacon, cheese, home-made mayo, and a couple of fried eggs.  Oh yeah, I used the jaccard gizmo to flatten out the chicken some and to let the seasoning and butter seep in while it was cooking in the sous-vide supreme.

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.