Chuck – Super-Slow-Roasted Rosemary-Crusted Chuck Steak

Now we’re talking.

See? I told you this wasn’t just a dude-who-makes-steak-over-and-over blog. I’ve been busy. Cut me some slack.

While I was out cavorting on Whitney, my wife had designs of her own. She was prepping an outright feast.

Namely, a recipe out of the Grassfed Gourmet cookbook that Chaffin Orchards turned us on to when we brought home our beef.

In essence, it’s a chuck roast, roasted over very low heat for a very long time.

Chuck is the shoulder of the steer. It’s large, and it does a lot of work. As a result, it’s very flavorful, but can be very tough. It’s also one of the most economical cuts of beef at retail. Consumers see a little less of it now than they used to, because it’s one of the cuts most commonly turned into ground beef.

You generally have to cook chuck low and slow, which causes all the collagen (connective tissue)  in this particular collagen-heavy cut to convert into gelatin, which is delicious. It creates an unmistakably unctuous mouthfeel. It’s a huge component of the richness we tend to associate with many comfort foods.

The roast. Three pounds o’ chucky goodness. Brought to room temp, liberally coated with a Garlic-Rosemary rub.

We slide it into a 250 degree oven for a few minutes. Then, we knock the temp down to 170, and let it go for four hours or until internal temp hits 125, but no higher, lest it be wrecked.

Hey, wait… Our oven thermostat doesn’t go down to 170! Eh, I’ll just guess.

Friends, do not just guess.

We check it at two and a half hours, out of an abundance of caution. And because it smelled really good.

Internal temp: 157.

Ladies and gentlemen, we wrecked it.

We pulled it, and laid out dinner. We had some other stuff, but I want to talk about the roast. So let’s say we had sides of fugu, durian, and an ’88 Chateau Lafite.

The chuck,  needless to say, was overcooked. And because it cooked so quickly, most of the connective tissue remained intact. There was a lot of slicing to separate meat from nonmeat.

Regardless, the chuck still tasted very… chucky. I found it fascinating, as I’m not sure I’ve ever had a piece of unadulterated chuck before. I’ve had it ground, primarily. Never whole.

This is the flavor that non-beef items try to emulate to taste beefy. It was far richer than the steaks we’d done previously, or even grain-fed pot roasts I’ve made. It was rich and robust. It had a certain piquant fullness at the top of my palate. This could be very, very good.

I need to try this again. And I think it’d be a hoot to do it without ruining dinner.

Moral of the story, kids: get an oven thermometer.

Top Round – Jerky, cont’d

Jerky was a big hit.

Protein is an excellent, yet slow-release, energy source. Jerky is almost all protein.

On our trip, I hauled it all the way up to Upper Boy Scout Lake. (Google it.)

We had an excellent group. I shared with the crew…

…and as we ascended, we shared with a ranger who used to be a meat cutter. He said some nice things.

Ranger approves

We didn’t wind up summiting, unfortunately, due to time constraints. But we did make it up to fourteen thousand feet. In case you were wondering, that looks like this:

(almost) on top of the contiguous 48

Next time.

Short Loin – Campfire New York Strip

I’m outside the Mt. Whitney trail trailhead. It’s a small campsite for trail hikers only, with a maximum one night stay Tomorrow, I go up.

Tonight, we eat. Steaks, NY Strip, over campfire.

I’ve grilled NY Strip before. Tonight, however, there are considerably more variables, so I’m counting this as a distinct application.

First, no oil. We’re camping, for Juniper’s sake. I don’t ordinarily tote Canola in my kit.

Second, salt and pepper changes. They don’t make camp kosher salt, unfortunately. So it’s generic granulated and pre-ground pepper.

That said, let’s dance.

Charcoal into a chimney starter. I want to make sure I have a sharp, hot center in the fire, without having to futz around with finicky firewood (alliteration!).

The coals take the better part of an hour to get going, because we’re camping at 85oo feet. There’s no air up here.

note: it's light.

When the coals are up, we throw foil-wrapped potatoes in, because they’re gonna take a while.

Granulated salt, but only a little. This stuff dissolves quickly, because it has less surface area than kosher granules. I don’t want to turn dinner into a salt lick.  A little pepper, but not too nuts.

When the potatoes are close, we ring them with firewood and light the kindling. We have a low, smouldering fire in about ten minutes.

Steaks.

The hot center coals do their job, and we rotate the meat between high heat in the center, and lower heat over the wood on the outside.

Note: It's dark.

You can never have too many photos of grilled meat.

Result?

Success, all in all. Nice medium rare, with one steak slightly rarer than the others. Happy happy.

The end products were slightly different than my previous experiment at home over gas. Without my kosher and pepper, the steaks didn’t ever really develop a deep mahogany crust like they did before. Also, I’m sure the lack of oil inhibited browning somewhat, leading to a paler surface.

Still, they were wonderful. Something about eating in a pine forest at elevation, with a mountain stream gurgling thirty feet away makes a meal remarkable, regardless of the technical details of the cooking process. Great way to start a hike.

However, my camp spork was completely inadequate.

*Special thanks to Zac, Uriah, and Natalie for the additional photographic help.

Round – Jerky

Alright, I’m climbing the highest mountain in the contiguous 48 in less than a week.

I need carbs, protein, and the hopes of a thousand children.

Let’s focus on the first two. Alton Brown will help me climb this mountain.

First, his homemade granola. Detailed elsewhere, and not to be replicated here. Detailed here.

Second, jerky. I like his recipe. And I like the Whys of his recipe.

But I have one cow. And one cow has only so much flank steak, which his recipe demands.

Most butchers use top round for jerky, because it’s cheap and vaguely low fat (and fat will make jerky turn rancid, defeating the point of jerky).

Top round is low enough fat, but lacks the grain structure of flank. If you slice flank with the grain, when you remove the moisture, the muscle fibers shrink along predictable, established vectors. In other words, they grow shorter. But they’re still a continuous piece of food.

With top round, however, that muscle fiber is sliced differently. It isn’t a single, continuous piece. So it winds up thinner and more brittle than flank.

I’m keeping it in a zip-top bag, however, and will eat it in a few days. So I don’t care. I can eat dust if I have to. And I have more round than Liberace has sequins. Let’s dessicate some top round.

I use AB’s generic jerky recipe. Ordinarily, I’d  double his liquid smoke and red pepper amounts, because I enjoy smoke and red pepper. But this top round is grass fed. It’s my first time working with it, so, again, this is a control experiment. I’ll stick to the recipe.

So I marinate, and then I strap it to a box fan between furnace filters. I differ from AB in this respect, in that I use paper towels as a moisture buffer between the furnace filters. In other words, fan-filter-papertowel-meat-papertowel-filter, repeat ad infinitum. The towels impede airflow, but you aren’t stuck picking filter fragments off your meat. I’ll take that trade.

It also takes longer. AB says 8 to 12 hours. I say 10 to 15.

Yes, you could do this faster in a cold or hot smoker. Cold, maybe four hours. Hot (i.e. 225 degrees-y) as little as two. But I have a toddler, a mountain to prepare for, and houseguests. I need idiot-proof. I need fire and forget. And a box fan on meat is hard to wreck.

The result? Delicious, but suboptimally formed. Smaller, more delicate, yet equally delectable pieces of grass-fed, top round jerky than if you’d rocked some grain-fed flank. But, as I said, I’ll eat it with a straw. It isn’t a stick o’ beef… it’s a toothpick o’ beef. But it will be there when it counts.

Also, from my experience, it’s moister than I’m used to. This could be a function of either the cut (flank vs. top round) or the beast (grass vs. grain). Regardless, it’s chewy and lovely, and I’ll reserve judgement for a later date.

See you on top of the country…

Ground – Mini-burgers

My wife made mini-burgers. They were lovely.

But she took no pictures. It’s almost as if we had a hundred and forty pounds of beef in a freezer, and she had a hungry toddler to feed.

Regardless, I’ll recap here. She didn’t quite do ‘em like you’d expect.

Some ground beef. Ketchup, mustard, cheese.

But buns? Puff pastry. Completely sealed around browned grass-fed beef, baked in a stupid hot oven.

My wife is both smart and innovative.

Result: Yum. I’m gonna eat these for days.

Advice: Brown the beef, and set it aside. Bring the puff pastry to just below room temp, fill with ground beef, add a little good cheddar, seal the puff, and bake. It’s like a Hot Pocket filled with every good thought your mother ever had about you.

Good ingredients.

Don’t mess ‘em up.

Yum.

…poof!