In light of the recent interest in soups, here's my recent foray into making stock (aka 'soup base').
I started by taking the roasted fat trimmings from a 2.3 lb chuck roast that I made earlier in the day, and combined them in a big pot with wilted-but-not-rotten veggies, as well as the carrots I roasted the roast on top of, and stems / tops / random bits from some root vegetables and kale that I cooked separately. I covered the meat and vegetable trimmings with water, brought it to a boil, and then covered it and left it to simmer. For a long time. Eventually, I strained the liquid into a container and discarded the solids. The result could be reduced a bit more, but it is a perfectly serviceable beef/vegetable broth for making soup.
This same process also works for chicken carcasses (be sure to add the feet, if you have them).
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Soup recipes, please!
If any of you have any good paleo-friendly soup recipes, please post them! I have a mad craving for soup but am not really sure how to put all my veggies together into a soup.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Is a calorie just a calorie?
I really love this guy's youtube channel "Underground Wellness"
He's very pro Weston Price/ Paleo, and he has a knack for explaining very complex biological processes in laymans terms for dummies like me.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Sausages and Packaged Meats
Be careful with sausages and packaged meats (even from Trader Joe's!), they're often laden with a million weird ingredients including sugar, corn syrup, MSG, wheat-derived substances, and horrible preservatives. In fact, it's very rare to find commercial sausage that doesn't have sugar. READ THE LABELS!!!!!! I can't stress this enough. Don't just read the nutritional information, read the ingredients, which is really more important anyway.
I've found the Roma brand sausages made right here in Baltimore are decent, cheap, and often available at Giant or Safeway. The label on Roma sausages says "pork, salt, spices." I'm not always sure what "spices" means, but I reckon it's not as awful as the crap they put in the Giant brand. I haven't yet found good salami, but you could probably ask people at Trinacria to see ingredient labels and such. Incidentally, their roast beef is pretty awful, just a tiny notch above Arby's - tastes like salty plastic.
The market at Belvedere Square has some nice stuff meat wise if you can splurge. They don't take food stamps unfortunately. Whole Foods also often has some ok sausage as well.
Wild Alaskan Salmon Salad
Here's something you can make the night before and bring to work with you in some tupperware with some sliced up cucumbers or on top of a salad for lunch. Oh, it also goes really well with avocado! Sorry about the crappy pictures, all I had was my phone.
$2.68 at Giant... wild-caught, sustainable, omega-3 rich Alaskan salmon.
That's two omega-3 egg yolks in there with the juice of one lemon, a pinch of salt, and a spoonful of mustard. Blend it. Then, keep the blender on as you slowly pour in oil.
This is what it should look like when it's done. Mayonnaise.
Mix as much of that as you want with the salmon, basically until it attains the consistency of tuna salad. I chopped up some apple, shallot, and scallion and threw it in there. Black pepper. You could put some parsley or celery and carrots in there... whatever you like. From start to finish, the whole process took me about 5-10 minutes.
Update: I just spooned out the salmon salad onto cucumber slices and put bacon bits on them. A few of them I even put a little blue cheese under the bacon.
$2.68 at Giant... wild-caught, sustainable, omega-3 rich Alaskan salmon.
That's two omega-3 egg yolks in there with the juice of one lemon, a pinch of salt, and a spoonful of mustard. Blend it. Then, keep the blender on as you slowly pour in oil.
This is what it should look like when it's done. Mayonnaise.
Mix as much of that as you want with the salmon, basically until it attains the consistency of tuna salad. I chopped up some apple, shallot, and scallion and threw it in there. Black pepper. You could put some parsley or celery and carrots in there... whatever you like. From start to finish, the whole process took me about 5-10 minutes.
Update: I just spooned out the salmon salad onto cucumber slices and put bacon bits on them. A few of them I even put a little blue cheese under the bacon.
Butterfly-Cut Leg of Lamb
marinade:
Leg of Lamb, butterfly cut
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/8 cup wheat-free tamari
3 sprigs of rosemary, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed and coarsely minced
2 shallots, diced
salt/pepper
Butterfly usually means that a thick piece of meat is sliced partway through it's lateral midsection. Generally this is done to make it cook faster and more thoroughly. In the case of the lamb leg, the meat is sliced to the bone and unwrapped. This essentially turns the lamb leg into a flat steak. The butcher that sold me the meat also butterfly cut it for me but, it's a reasonably simple operation.
First you'll want to take all the ingredients (besides the Lamb itself) and combine them in a mixing bowl. Then marinate the Lamb. I ended up transferring the whole operation to a food storage container and marinating it overnight. You don't have to marinate it this long, but it's nice.
Begin by preheating an oven to about 375F.
I decided to serve it with some brusselsprouts and carrots I had on hand. So I put the sprouts and carrots into a bowl and tossed them with some olive oil, salt/pepper and a little bit of
butter and, put them in the oven.
Pull the Lamb out of the marinade and place the cut fatty-side (the outside) down in an unheated frying pan and place it on the stove over medium high heat. The cool thing about working with meats that have a thick fatty layer on them is that you can cook them in their own juices very easily. By placing the meat into the pan when it is still cold, you can slowly render out the fat as the pan comes up to temperature, rather than carbonizing the fat when it comes into flash contact with a hot pan. This trick also works really well with Duck breast and Bacon.
When it starts to sizzle, flip it over and fry it quickly on each side (the edges too if possible, tongs help for this, the less squeamish among us use our own washed hands). This process seals in the juices of the meat, so that all the flavor doesn't run out when it goes into the oven.
Now, move the lamb to the preheated oven
and roast for about 20 minutes, depending on how thick it is and your desired degree of doneness. If you're cooking your veggies in the same oven, you'll want to check on it earlier (I ended up overcooking mine a bit).
When it's done, take it out and let it sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before carving, in order to let the meat reabsorb the juices. In my case this meant staring at it and 'testing' little pieces of it.
Leg of Lamb, butterfly cut
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/8 cup wheat-free tamari
3 sprigs of rosemary, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed and coarsely minced
2 shallots, diced
salt/pepper
Butterfly usually means that a thick piece of meat is sliced partway through it's lateral midsection. Generally this is done to make it cook faster and more thoroughly. In the case of the lamb leg, the meat is sliced to the bone and unwrapped. This essentially turns the lamb leg into a flat steak. The butcher that sold me the meat also butterfly cut it for me but, it's a reasonably simple operation.
First you'll want to take all the ingredients (besides the Lamb itself) and combine them in a mixing bowl. Then marinate the Lamb. I ended up transferring the whole operation to a food storage container and marinating it overnight. You don't have to marinate it this long, but it's nice.Begin by preheating an oven to about 375F.
I decided to serve it with some brusselsprouts and carrots I had on hand. So I put the sprouts and carrots into a bowl and tossed them with some olive oil, salt/pepper and a little bit of
butter and, put them in the oven.Pull the Lamb out of the marinade and place the cut fatty-side (the outside) down in an unheated frying pan and place it on the stove over medium high heat. The cool thing about working with meats that have a thick fatty layer on them is that you can cook them in their own juices very easily. By placing the meat into the pan when it is still cold, you can slowly render out the fat as the pan comes up to temperature, rather than carbonizing the fat when it comes into flash contact with a hot pan. This trick also works really well with Duck breast and Bacon.
When it starts to sizzle, flip it over and fry it quickly on each side (the edges too if possible, tongs help for this, the less squeamish among us use our own washed hands). This process seals in the juices of the meat, so that all the flavor doesn't run out when it goes into the oven.
Now, move the lamb to the preheated oven
and roast for about 20 minutes, depending on how thick it is and your desired degree of doneness. If you're cooking your veggies in the same oven, you'll want to check on it earlier (I ended up overcooking mine a bit).
When it's done, take it out and let it sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before carving, in order to let the meat reabsorb the juices. In my case this meant staring at it and 'testing' little pieces of it.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Jessie's Flava Flav Chicken
Seen here with turnip greens, sweet potatoes, and bison burger... and Keelin's hand.
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