ODG Eats

Well, I was down to my last few pieces of round roast, and I felt like I had been making surprisingly good progress so far, so maybe tonight would be the night to work some fucking magic. My biggest takeaway from  experiment three  was that I needed to break the meat down a little bit more. I know that I could do it with an acidic marinade, but that shit would fuck with my flavor, and if there's one thing I didn't want to do after last time, it was to fucking with the flavor.   So what are my other options? I could cover it in egg whites before cooking it to help hold in moisture and keep it tender while cooking, but that's not really what's causing my issues. The same goes for cornstarch or baking soda. It wasn't moisture loss that was causing my issues, though. I needed to get the insides broken down, get the muscle fibers to chill the fuck out. So to start with, I decided to stab the shit out of the meat with a fork. Next, I threw the meat into a sandwich bag wit...

So in the last post , I think I got my cooking method down for smokeless smoking, so my next task for making pot roast seem like wagyu steak was to figure out what prep steps I need to take that would increase the tenderness and embolden the flavor without fucking up the appearance. As I got to thinking about what made that steak  so fucking amazing, I remembered that kickass steaks have got badass marbling, then I remembered that my beef was just about the fucking opposite.  So how do I add marbling to a solid hunk of meat? Well, I couldn't marble it, because that's not how shit works. Instead, I decided to do what seemed like the next best thing: add fat throughout it. I started off by seasoning the meat with salt and pepper, then used a metal skewer to stab twelve hold into each piece, not quite all the way through, but just about. Next, I used my meat injector to pump a little bit of melted butter into each hole. This is how I learned that, if you put the nozzle too deep i...

If at first you don't succeed, you fucked up, so change something and make it better. That's what Palmer should have said, but he was a babyback bitch. Yeah, I said it.  So my first attempt was a glorified leather hockey puck. "This time is gonna be better," I swore to myself. Also, I swore a lot to myself throughout cooking this shit. I didn't score the beef this time, but I did still season with just salt and pepper. I'm trying to keep this shit simple and focus on the texture. The flavor will sort itself out. I did a bit of a reverse...well...everything with this attempt. The beef was on a broiler pan, which I put on the bottom rack of my oven, then I stuck an inverted Pyrex casserole dish on top of it. The dish extended a little past the edges of the pan, so air could get up in there. I also put a layer of aluminum foil on top of the casserole dish for extra insulation. Once again, I was going for a low and slow-style cook: think smoking meat without actu...

As I recently posted, I finally had my first taste of Japanese A5 beef, and it was mind shattering. Unfortunately, I am me, which means I need more. Unfortunately, I am me, which means I can't fucking afford to spend fifty fucking dollars for an ounce of beef, no matter how damn amazing it is.  So, like I said in that post, I'm going to figure out some way to approximate it with something that costs a bit less if it kills me, and, honestly, it probably will.  So I went to Kroger and found the cheapest hunk of cow per ounce that I could, which happened to be bottom round roast at $8.95/lb, or fifty-five cents per ounce. For those counting at home, that's a 99% price save on the A5 at a restaurant in Orlando. Obviously you'll spend less buying the fancy shit at a store or paying wholesale, but I can only operate with the prices I have available. I cut the roast into 7 slabs about half an inch thick and had a couple extra pieces left over, too, so that comes out to 8 serv...

Well, I finished up stream tonight and was feeling a bit peckish, so I figured I should eat something. The problem was it was late and I didn't feel like doing much prep or cooking, but still wanted to have something tasty and not too unhealthy. Also, I haven't bought chips or crackers from the grocery store in a long time to help prevent eating 9000 calories in half an hour...fuckin Doritos, man.  I had a couple mushrooms left, so I figured I'd do mushrooms and eggs. I started off by sautéing the mushroom caps for a few minutes. I wanted them to be firm, but with a little flavor, so I didn't fully cook them. I melted a little butter in my pan and started cooking them gill-side down. When the bottom had started to soften a bit, I flipped them over and spooned some of the melted butter over them until they were filled with melted butter because melted butter is lovely. I seasoned both sides with a bit of salt and pepper. Just keeping it simple tonight. Once the mushrooms...

So I've been at a work conference all week and haven't done any cooking. On the bright side, it's been nice to not have to worry about cleaning the kitchen, planning meals, prepping, cooking, plating, cleaning, buying, planning, prepping, cooking, plating, and cleaning all the fucking time. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy doing it all. Well, maybe not the goddamn cleaning, but the rest of it. Anyway, on our last night in Orlando, we had a vendor take us to dinner at STK, and to say that it was a life changing experience may be an understatement. The evening started off well enough with a Czech cab. It was a little dryer than I expected, almost with an Italian bent to it, but I'm no fucking sommelier. As we sipped on the wine, we perused the menu and made our selections. The bread service came first. It was a couple of fairly ordinary loaves topped with some garlic and herb butter and accompanied by some chimichurri. Nothing spectacular, but prett...