Category Archives: Beef

Austrian, Beef, Doughs and Batters, Dumplings, Meat, Offal, Stock and Soup

Beef Liver Dumplings

Leave a comment

Liver!For me, the most shocking part of buying a side of beef was how much liver we got.

A lot.  I like liver more than most, and I thought it was too much.

If you have to get through a lot of liver, there’s no better way than to just sear it in a pan and tuck in.  When the distinct, glandular texture of liver wearies the palate, there are liver dumplings.

This was a staple when I was in Austria.  Lunch always consisted of soup, meat, and dessert, and the soup often contained some manner of offal.  Most notable were the soft, bready liver dumplings the size of a toddler’s fist, floating in beef broth.

The biggest problem with … Continue reading.

Beef, Charcuterie, Meat

Air-Dried Beef

1 Comment

Air-dried beef goes by many different names in many different places.  The most famous, I think is bresaola, from northern Italy.  In adjacent Switzerland air-dried beef is pressed into a unique block shape and called Bündnerfleisch, after the Swiss canton of Graubünden.  Nearby in eastern France it is often lightly smoked, and called brési.  In all of these alpine regions it is a common accompaniment for fondue.

Eye of round is one of the best cuts to use for air-dried beef.  It is a single muscle, with very little internal fat, easily trimmed to a convenient size.  First remove any silverskin and fat.

Beef eye of round, with silverskin and fat

The cleaned eye of round:

Beef eye of round, cleaned of all silverskin and fat

The clean muscle is then rubbed with salt, … Continue reading.

Beef, Meat, Offal

Braised Beef Heart

5 Comments

The raw beef heartThis was my first time cooking beef heart.  My logic was this:  “Heart, while offal, is a muscle, not a gland.  A hard working muscle, at that.  I guess I’ll braise it.”

In hindsight, probably not the best way to cook beef heart.  The final dish was okay: it was tender, but a bit dry.  This makes sense, as heart has no intramuscular fat, and I trimmed away what little fat there was on the outside.

The heart’s texture really surprised me.  Raw heart has no visible grain, almost as if it were a very firm, nebulous liver.  A few people had told me that heart is not a very “organy” meat.  Michael Ruhlman goes so far as to say … Continue reading.

Beef, Canadian, Charcuterie, Meat, Québécoise

On Smoked Meat, Montreal, and the Gout

5 Comments

I have a certain old friend.  Technically we went to high school together, but I first got to know him in Lister Hall, then at the Kappa Alpha house on university row.  He studied philosophy, and after graduation he followed a girl to Montreal.  There he fell victim to many of the city’s seductions: strong beer, girls, and cocaine, yes, but above all these, smoked meat.

For a while he lived only a few blocks from Schwartz’s, that Mecca of Montreal smoked meat.  For a while he ate there every day: a sandwich, a pickle, and a cherry coke.

Montreal smoked meat is that city’s answer to New York’s pastrami: beef, cured with a concoction of spices similar to those … Continue reading.

Beef, Charcuterie

Notes on Dry-Curing Meat: Mold

3 Comments

When dry-curing, mold is inevitable, yet there’s little detailed information available to guide the beginner. I don’t know for sure why this is, but I have some theories:

  • mold is so variant and hard to describe,
  • mold-discussions might disgust customers, and
  • mold is a mystery of the charcutiers’ cult.

The general rule in charcuterie is that smooth, hard, white mold is “good.” I don’t think it affects the flavour of the meat in any way, but it discourages the growth of “bad” mold, that is, mold that is pathogenic or that somehow compromises the meat. Any type of fuzzy mold is said to be bad.

Luckily, undesirable mold can simply be cut away; it doesn’t taint the entire batch of … Continue reading.