Soy-Braised Beef

I'm having serious difficulties with Blogger's image upload function so bear with me. I took this photo with my cell phone because I absolutely love this crockpot. This is a faux wood-paneled lovely from the church kitchen. If you are having difficulty in reading it, it's the "Canadianna [sic] Crockery Cooker by... (drumroll please) K-mart"!. I thought I would put up a recipe that has probably never been made in this gem.

3 lb cross rib or blade roast
4 each carrots and green onions
2 whole star anise or 6 whole cloves
2 pieces dried tangerine peel or peel from 1 tangerine, mandarin or clementine (or, if you're doing this in a crockpot, use grated orange rind)
1 tsp peppercorns
1 piece (2") cinnamon stick, broken
1 piece (1 1/2") ginger, sliced
3 cloves garlic
1/2 c dark soy sauce
2 T rice wine or dry sherry
1 t sugar
28 oz can tomatoes, undrained and coarsely chopped
1 T Chinese black vinegar or balsamic vinegar

Cut beef and carrots into 2" chunks. Thinly slice whites of onions and chop greens into 1/2" lengths. Set aside seperately.

Cut cheesecloth into 7" square and tie up star anise, tangerine peel, peppercorns, cinnamon and ginger.

In shallow Dutch oven, combine all (except onion greens and vinegar) with 1 cup water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer until meat is tender (about 1 1/2 hours). Discard the spice bag, stir in the vinegar and onion greens and simmer till the onions are wilted, about 5 minutes.

For crockpot: combine all but vinegar and onion greens in the crock with 1/4 c water(note the reduction of the water, please, you will regret adding a cup of water unnecessarily to a crockpot). Add the spice bag and cook covered for 5-6 hours on low. Whisk together 1 T cornstarch with 1/4 c water and whisk into slow cooker. Increase heat to high and cook covered for about 10 minutes before adding onion greens, orange rind and vinegar.

The best part of this recipe was getting to use my star anise. It feeds something like 6-8 people but freezes wicked well because there's no starch in it really. It was really good over steamed rice.

Pulled Pork with Root Beer Sauce

I know that this sounds really weird but I've tested it during multiple meals with many people and it always gets rave reviews. I have to confess that I don't usually tell anyone that it's got root beer as the main ingredient until after the good reviews start coming in. It'll feed a fair number of people and there is usually leftovers the next day. The official recipe yield is 12.

1 T olive oil (whatever, I use as much as I need)
3 lb boneless pork loin roast
2 t salt
1/2 t pepper (I use significantly more than this)
1/2 c chopped onion
3 c root beer (NOT diet, ever, it just doesn't work)
12 oz bottle of chili sauce (or 455 ml for those of us living in civilized countries)
1/2 t salt
12 sandwich buns

Brown roast in olive oil. Place in crockpot with salt, pepper, onion and 1 c of root beer. Cover and cook on low for about 7 hours (roughly).

30 minutes before serving (but can be done more in advance), bring remaining root beer, all of the chili sauce and the last little bit of salt to a boil in a saucepan. Reduce the heat and simmer until it's glassy and reduced to about 2 1/2-3 cups of sauce.

Remove the pork from the slow cooker and shred with two forks. Put all the little bits of pork into the sauce and stir until it's all juicy and coated. Serve about 1/2 cup of pork on each bun (or as much as you can cram on there).

That's it, that's all.

OMFG Ribs

When Erin and I were at Pal's the other afternoon, they had pork side ribs on sale. We used to go to Montana's with my parents whenever they came in for birthdays and such, I always ordered ribs because I have this policy in restaurants of ordering things that would normally be too much bother at home.

Anyway, the whole package of ribs was about $5.50 so I thought I could probably find a crockpot version. From Allrecipes:

* 4 pounds pork baby back ribs
* salt and pepper to taste
* 2 cups ketchup
* 1 cup chili sauce
* 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
* 4 tablespoons vinegar
* 2 teaspoons dried oregano
* 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
* 1 dash hot sauce

Put the ribs on a broiler pan, salt & pepper both sides. Bake at 400F for 15 minutes, flip them over and bake for another 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the rest of the ingredients into a barbecue sauce. I cut the ribs up into sections and put them into the crockpot. Pour the sauce over to coat and cook on Low for 6-8 hours.

The place smelled amazing when I got back this afternoon. I made up some creamy garlic pasta (otherwise known as a package of Sidekicks (I'm trying to get rid of them.))

Fall Apart Deer Roast

So we pulled a deer roast out of the freezer, around 4 in the afternoon and nuked it till it was thawed (hippies use microwaves, who knew!).

By the way, I didn't name the recipe. Waldo found it on this site that also had recipes name Fried Deer Steaks With a Lil' Kick, Cheesy Deerloaf, and BBQ'D Deer Balls (which, thank God, are actually just made of plain old ground deer meat). I've added the site to the list on the sidebar because, well, you never know when you might need to cook a giant critter.

Anyway, the recipe with Waldo changes:

~ 2 to 4 lb deer roast
~ 2 medium onions, chopped
~ 2 cloves garlic, chopped
~ 1 lb baby carrots
~ salt and pepper
~ 2 cups water
~ 2 beef bouillon cubes
~ 2 tbsp corn starch

Place the roast in a crockpot. Add the onions, garlic, carrots, salt and pepper to taste and the water.

Cover and cook on high for 4 hours. Check the water and add more if needed. Drain the juice into a saucepan. We never checked it once.

To the juice, add the bouillon cubes. Stir to dissolve. Heat to a boil. Stir the corn starch together with a little water in a cup. Add the corn starch and stir until the juice thickens. Sharon did all of this part.

Pour the gravy back into the crockpot over the meat. Cook on low for 1 hour. We skipped this part, Sharon made the gravy and we just used it out of the saucepan (actually, we started to use the argumentative gravy boat (it picked a fight with the pepper shaker once) but it had suffered internal injuries after its last fight and had to be put down mid-meal, the saucepan finished it off).

Serve with mashed potatoes or rice. Super good with mashed potatoes

Meag was not a huge fan but she still cleaned her plate and I think I saw her snitch an extra bite, I know that Alice did and I know that I did. I thought it was heaven on a plate but then, I grew up eating deer and moose etc. Yes, really.

Waldo said that a lot of the recipes that he saw called for allspice and that he wouldn't mind trying that the next time. Makes sense to me, my mom always used to put cinnamon in with moosemeat because it gets rid of the game-y taste (which I happen to be personally fond of).