Good afternoon, interwebs. Great to rap at ya.
It’s autumn here in the City of Angels, and the signs are everywhere. People wear scarves in fifty degree weather. Schools and civic groups begin to think about importing snow-making machines. And high above, it’s vaguely overcast. Maybe. If you squint.
I’m a Kansas kid and I love the fall, so I’ll take it when I can get it. My family and I went on a long bike ride yesterday in Santa Barbara, and I had to put a hoodie on over my t-shirt. I’ll take it.
Because it’s fall, we’re feeling like comfort good. But which? Is it cold enough for a stew? Chilly enough to knock out some Beef Bourginon? I know Los Angeles thins the blood, but I need to save the culinary big guns for when I really need it.
Thankfully, the Grassfed Gourmet cookbook has some options. I decide on some chili.
There are as many chili recipes out there as there are DNA sequences. Frequently, they call for ground beef. I’m not really interested in using ground beef today. I have some time and effort to spare. So I find a recipe in the Grassfed Gourmet that interests me.
It calls for “stew meat,” which I have and have used in this space before. However, it also calls for bones and/or oxtails. Fascinating. I’m saving my oxtails for something special, but I have plenty of stew meat and bones.
Plus, it calls for beer, biscuits and (weirdly) turnips. I’m onboard. Let’s see what you’re all about, Turnip Chili.
The mise:
Note the root veggies on the right.
The recipe calls for 1.5 pounds of meat in any combination of stew meat, oxtails, and soup bones. I have stew meat in one pound increments, so I have a half pound to do something or nothing with. I vote something.
I find a big soup bone that isn’t really suitable for roasting for marrow (go go gadget future plans!), and that weighs about a half pound. Ish.
One of these things is not like the other.
I dust everything involved in seasoned flour.
All the meat gets a quick sear in olive oil, including the bone. Set aside.
More olive oil, and the onion goes in for a sweat.
A little more olive oil, and in go the diced carrots and turnip.
My recipe calls for three carrots. My veggie delivery service this week provided peeled-and-washed baby carrots. I estimate.
Close enough for jazz.
And the turnip is still just weird to me.
Onions are just starting to brown. Back in with the meat and the bone.
In goes a can of beer, enough beef stock to cover, thyme, and a couple of bay leaves.
Boil, reduce to simmer, cover.
An hour and forty-five later, and the meat chunks are soft and lovely. I pull the bone, and throw together the rough biscuit dough for the topping. After I apply it, I stash the pot uncovered in the oven.
Fifteen more minutes, and everything is golden brown and lovely.
I can get down.
Plate.
Ah, fall.
Verdict: Some number out of some larger number. Frankly, I’m not where to start on this one.
First, it was lovely. The meat was braised nicely, the beef flavor was pronounced, and the biscuit was, quite frankly, a show-stopper. And my toddler son devoured it by the spoonful fistful.
For good or ill, I was not aware of any particular turnip presence.
But chili? Really? I wouldn’t call that. I’d call it a nicely done beef stew topped with biscuits.
Further, either my heat was a tad high, or the biscuits absorbed a fair bit of the liquid beneath them. Because the biscuits didn’t so much float on the “chili,” so much as they rested on it.
Still, if you’re looking for comfort food on something resembling a fall day, this is a fine choice.
The Wife Says: If you’re expecting competition-style Terlingua chili? 5 out of 10 peppers. She thought it had more in common texture-wise with stuffing than with chili.
However, if you’re interested in a hearty and fulfilling fall meal that’ll make the house smell delightful… 9 out of 10. It was delicious and satisfying, it just didn’t resemble her concept of chili.
However, I’d make this again. The beef really shone. And if I massaged it a bit, I think I could manage the liquid content better so that it didn’t remind anyone of stuffing.
The Son Says : Ten! But that’s because that’s the highest he can count, and he’s pretty excited about it.
Is this a turnip? In chili? Really?
I would, and will, make this again.
Next up: Everything goes all spangles and tarts.
Hello from northeast Kansas. I’ve really enjoyed your site. This looks awesome and I look forward to future posts. A friend of mine has a bunch of lamb he butchered himself that he bought from a local farmer and this post made me hungry for something like that. Keep up the good work.
Thanks, Shawn! I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog. I’m from Lawrence, myself. Crazy small world.
You’ll hafta let me know how subbing the beef for lamb works out. I bet it’d swap out pretty nicely. Might take slightly longer to cook, but I’m sure it’d be delicious.
New (ish) reader to your blog- was linked by Chaffin Orchards. Do you have links to the recipes you use? Or are they from a particular book? This one in particular is one I am interested in creating!
Thanks,
Courtney
Hi, Courtney – Thanks for stopping by.
This recipe came from a cookbook called The Grassfed Gourmet. I couldn’t find a link to the recipe itself, unfortunately. But that book has been a pretty good resource for me.
Thanks for reading, and good luck!
Did I miss a step in there? I seem to have been shorted on the bits from browning the onions to the whole thing being done.
the biscuit sounds yums. Like a meaty cobbler.
Oh…so if the guy gave you suet, you should totally make biscuits with that instead of butter some sunday morning.
meaty biscuit + gravy = holy crap
Thanks, man. Good eye. I dropped a sentence. Corrected now.
After the onions, I added carrots and turnip. When they’d been in for a few minutes, I returned the meat and bones, added a can of beer and enough stock to cover. When we were getting close, I whipped up my biscuit dough. Then when the meat was done, I pulled the bones, topped with the dough, and baked it for fifteen-ish minutes.
Suet biscuits! Egad, man, that sounds too good to pass up. I wasn’t able to get suet as I was told (if i recall correctly) the fat near the kidneys protects the tenderloin during aging. Do you think something like that would work with bone marrow?
Probably. That’s a crazy idea. You might want to render the marrow, push it through a fine sieve (tamis or chinois) and let it resolidify before making them, however. This will reduce the amount of impurities that might come along with the marrow (sometimes you’ll get bone chips in there).
Just a simple biscuit recipe that I use every day here:
You’ll need to scale it down because it makes a restaurant-sized batch.
12 c a.p. flour
2 Tbsp baking podwer
2 tsp salt
1 lb fat of some kind
4 1/2 c milk (using raw milk here, if you can find it, is really good)
Mix dry, sift if necessary.
cut the fat into 1 cm (ish) cubes
rub the fat into the flour between your fingers. You’re wanting to do what the French call ‘frissage’ in the first step here, it’s usually a later step all by itself, but you can do it right from the beginning. What you want to do is to smear the little chunks of fat between your fingers (or palms) so that they’re like dime-to-quarter sized flat diskish things. The recipes will say something like pea sized chunks…forget that nonsense. This technique will develop layers within the dough which will ultimately result in a very flaky, multilayered biscuit.
After the fat has been incorporated, add the milk and stir to combine.
Dust the dough with a little more flour and fold it over on itself about 6 or 8 times. This multiplies the layers you created during the frissage. This is also all the working this dough needs. Cover it and let it chill out in the fridge for about an hour or so.
Roll ‘em out to about 3/4″ (I like me a fat biscuit) and brush them with butter. Bake at 425 for about 12-15 minutes, or until they’re done (I don’t know your oven, silly…I can’t predict crap like that).
Let me know how they turn out…I’m all curious.
-E
That rocks the kasbah. Thanks for the recipe, man. I’ll report back when I have results.