Pot Roast and Kale
At my recent trip to the farmer’s market I picked up my inaugural batch of Russian red kale. Kale has a deep, green flavor. (One of my cookbooks calls it an “assertive green.”) The Russian variety has a reputation for remaining slightly chewy, even when fully cooked. Given deep flavor and toothsome texture, I opted to serve my Russian red kale alongside something hearty: the beef top round in the freezer.
Despite the name, a pot roast is a braise. In any braise you want to cook in a flavorful liquid accented with aromatics. So while I pulled my beef roast out of the chill chest I also grabbed chicken broth and a bag of pearl onions: the former to serve as the liquid and the latter as an aromatic.
I thawed my roast in the sink under cold water, just as I did with my beef back ribs.
When my roast was thawed I popped my chicken broth into the microwave to defrost.
I put a few tablespoons of peanut oil in my Dutch oven and let it sit, covered, over high heat. Any high-heat oil would do. The first step of any pot roast is to sear the meat. The second your room-temperature meat hits the pot it will pull out a lot of heat. But you’ll still have three other sides of roast to brown. So make sure your Dutch oven is holding as much heat as possible before you throw the meat in.
While my broth defrosted in the microwave and my Dutch oven heated over the stovetop, I prepared my aromatics. In addition to a bag of pearl onions, I grabbed a big carrot and two stalks of celery. Carrot, onion and celery together form mirepoix – the powerful aromatic triumvirate prized by the French. I also grabbed whatever veggie odds-and-ends were lurking in my fridge: ¾ of a red onion, and half of a red bell pepper. Peal onions already come bite-sized. Everyone else got a rough chop.
I grabbed a couple of potatoes and gave them a rough chop, too. When thrown into a pot roast, potatoes soak up flavorful liquid and turn into a delicious side that I would take over mashed potatoes any day.
Potatoes and aromatics.
I browned the roast on each side, going for a deep mahogany. The browned bits on the meat and in the pan ultimately dissolve into the braise and flavor everything inside, so I wanted as much brown as I could get.
We're here. We're seared. Get used to it.
When the meat was browned, I threw in all the aromatics and potatoes. Then I added ¾ of a cup of chicken broth, a half a bottle of beer, and pepper to taste.
Chicken broth and beer: the liquids.
I clamped on the lid and threw the Dutch oven into a 250 degree oven for two hours.
Now, it was time to tackle the kale. Since Russian kale is reportedly chewier, the first step was to lose the stems. Sometimes I like to mince the stems very fine, and sauté them with onions to serve with the leaves. But reports suggest that Russian kale stems are just too tough for this treatment.
Stemming kale is pretty easy. I just clasp the stem firmly in one hand and pull the leaf through the pinched fingers of my other hand, like I’m trying to wipe off a dip-stick. The offending thick part of the stem stays in one hand, the leaf in the other.
Russian red kale, sans stems.
Once stemmed, I tore the kale leafs into rough chunks, and then threw them into a large pot of boiling, salted water. I let the kale boil for seven minutes.
- Your green destiny.
After seven minutes had passed, I strained the kale in a colander. I rinsed my once-boiling pot with cold water to cool it down. Then I threw the kale into the pot and filled with cold water to cover.
One handful at a time, I extracted the now-cool kale and squeezed the water from it.
When all my kale was cooled and dried, I set up my sauté station. I gathered one ounce of bacon, cut into strips, one small onion, minced, one clove of garlic, minced, my dried kale, roughly chopped, two tablespoons of chicken broth, and a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.
A sauté moves fast -- make sure you have all your ingredients ready.
Over medium-high heat, I crisped the bacon strips. When they were brown, I fished them out with tongs and set them on a plate lined with a paper towel.
I tossed the onion into the pan, stirring until soft.
Next I added the garlic, stirring for about 30 seconds.
Then came the greens. I tossed the kale in the pan until it was coated in the garlic, onion, and fat.
Kale, coated.
Then I added the chicken stock, threw a cover on the pan, and killed the heat.
When my pot roast was ready to serve, I put the pan of greens over high heat for 2 minutes, to warm through.
The final step was just to plate everything and enjoy a hearty meal that took advantage of my local farmer’s market and helped clean out my freezer at the same time.
Pot roast over braised potatoes with bacon-onion Russian red kale.
Leftover Theatre: Behind the Scenes: Deep Freeze Edition
My family keeps a chest freezer in the basement. A chest freezer can be a wonderful investment. When my mom is throwing a banquet for a few dozen people, she prepares freezer-friendly dishes ahead of time. Stored in the freezer downstairs, casseroles, pies, and breads patiently await showtime for weeks. When mom’s deadline looms, she has fewer details vying for her attention. Hunters prize chest freezers because they provide a storage solution for an entire deer. But even if you aren’t ever going to pick up a riffle, a chest freezer can help you think like a hunter: when a supermarket offers meat or ice-cream at a heavy discount, you can load up.
There’s one problem. It’s easy to get seduced by the awesome power of the freezer chest. Leftover odds and ends are all too easily sent to sleep with the fish-sticks. Soon a petrified graveyard of your culinary past builds up. It can be daunting to reclaim your space.
Yet freezers benefit from an occasional cleaning. Every once in a while a freezer owner must buck up and empty the chest.
One solution is to buy a large cooler. A huge mass of frozen food packed in an insulated box should keep its chill long enough to defrost, clean, and re-engage a freezer. But such a solution does nothing to prune its contents.
My freezer is due for a cleaning. So today I took an inventory. I divided the frozen goods into six categories: protein, vegetable, pre-made, snacks, miscellaneous, and unidentified.
PROTEIN
- Frozen shrimp (about 1 ½ cups)
- Ground pork
- Ground beef
- Ground meat (unlabeled, presumably beef)
- Beef roast, top round London broil
- 6 oz salmon fillets (2)
- Omaha Steaks gourmet franks (one box)
- Thin-cut ribeye steaks (3)
- Meatless franks, assorted brands (7)
- Meatless bacon (one box)
- Bag of frozen chicken . . . breasts?
VEGETABLE
- Baby lima beans
- Succotash (half a bag)
- White pearl onions
PRE-MADE
- Borscht
- Vegetarian chili
- Shepherd’s pie, personal size (2)
- Vegetarian tortellini casserole
- Stouffer’s five cheese lasagna
- Zucchini-ground-beef-mushroom saute
- Mashed potatoes
SNACKS
- Twinkies (3)
- Skinny-Dipper ice cream pop
- Fruitcake
MISC.
- Yeast
- Refried beans
- Hamburger Buns, homemade (one dozen)
- Raw pumpkin seeds
- Walnuts
- Chicken broth (2 different containers)
- Box philo dough
- Premade pie shells (2)
- Butter (1 pound)
- Shredded coconut
UNIDENTIFIED
- Labeled “for Jan 3rd dinner” (2)
There are two schools of thought on unidentified items. The first says you let them thaw out and let newly unlocked aromas aid in their classification. The second says you unceremoniously pitch them – if it was something wonderful, you’d remember, right? My approach depends on how much courage I can muster up on a given day.
After dealing with the unidentified items, I printed out my list and posted it on the kitchen fridge. As I plan dinner I now have a list of resources at my finger tips. When I deploy frozen goods to the dinner table, I can strike them off the list.
When I get serious about emptying a freezer I have three general strategies: “like attracts like,” “learn something new,” and “cooking game show.”
“Like attracts like” is the simplest stratagem – run down your list and group the items which naturally seem to go together. Hamburger buns and ground beef are a natural for hamburgers. Chicken breasts and chicken broth give you a head start on a chicken noodle soup. Pearl onions make a wonderful accompaniment to a pot roast. Ground beef, a pie shell, and mashed potatoes are the backbone of a shepherd’s pie.
If you include two to three frozen items in a given meal you’ll quickly go a long way towards reclaiming your freezer’s untamed wilds.
“Learn something new” uses a frozen item as a catalyst. It’s an especially useful tool to dispatch items in the miscellaneous category. All you need to do is select a troublesome item and free associate. To my mind “Philo dough” suggests apple tarts and spanakopita. I’ve never made a spanakoptia at home. It’s high time I learned.
When my culinary imagination starts to lag, I simply type an ingredient into google and see what comes up.
“Cooking game show” is the most daring of the freezer emptying strategies. I select three different ingredients and vow to combine them in once dish. Shrimp, salmon and walnuts might turn into an interesting dinner. Shrimp and flaked salmon tossed with toasted walnuts over pasta. Top with a good olive oil and some parmesan cheese, or a light cream sauce. Or walnut crusted salmon with shrimp kabobs on the side.
Some combinations set you up for failure, so don’t be afraid to roll again. Coconut, refried beans, and gourmet franks do not strike me as a solid foundation. (An inventive fusion cook might prove me wrong.)
Some of my freezer adventures will no doubt turn into leftover theatre articles. Now you know what half-baked outlines guide my quest to turn yesterday’s dinners and bargains into today’s delicacy.
Sunday Dinner: Roast Pork Loin with Asparagus and Curried Rice.
On Saturday I went to Baltimore’s 32nd Street Farmer’s Market. I made out pretty well – I picked up a head of Boston Lettuce, a pound of Russian red kale, asparagus, and some strawberries so sweet you could smell them half a block away.
Asparagus is best when young; its stalks grow thicker and stringier as they age. Young stalks are thin and tender. The market had the thinnest asparagus I have ever seen.
I had a pork loin resting in the fridge in Alton Brown’s lime-chili marinade. Asparagus and pork play well together. (Bacon-wrapped asparagus is an hors devours classic.) Throw in some curried rice to provide a starch and dinner is served.
I started by tying and drying my pork. A butterflied pork loin presents more surface area to the marinade. And the added step of tying the meat back into a roast takes only a few seconds. And since oil helps transfer heat into the pork during a sear, I patted the roast dry with paper towels.
Next I seared the roast over high heat in a skilled with a tablespoon of olive oil. Once I had a golden brown exterior, I put the roast into a 350 degree oven with a probe thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the meat.
Sear your meat to get the most flavor out of your investment.
While I was waiting for my pork to reach 135 degrees, I deglazed my skillet with some sherry. I tossed my asparagus in the pan to coat with the resulting flavorful liquid.
Never neglect pan drippings: they offer supper-concentrated flavor. I used mine to coat the asparagus.
I transferred the asparagus and liquid into a microwave safe container for steaming.
Curried rice requires comes together easily – just make a normal batch of rice, but add two tablespoons of curry powder right to the water.
I had a little time left before my roast was ready. I decided to fry some bacon. I wanted to toss crumbled bacon over my asparagus in homage to the classic appetizer. When the bacon was crisp I softened some minced onion in the drippings.
When my pork hit 135 degrees, I let it rest for five minutes. While resting, it reached the desired 140 thanks to carry-over heat. I steamed my asparagus in the microwave on high for three minutes. When it was done I tossed it with the onion and crumbled some bacon on top.
Then I was done – roast pork with steamed asparagus with curried rice. Simple and delicious. I highly recommend Alton Brown’s marinade — the pork was juicy, tender, and just tart enough to make your mouth water.
Dinner is served.
Cooking with Micah
My friend Micah gave me a call – we were going to make dinner. It was going to be fancy, creative and adventurous.
I love cooking with Micah. He has the dive-right-in, never-say-die attitude essential to making exciting things happen in the kitchen. So many of my friends say “I don’t know how to cook,” and resign themselves to a lifetime instant macaroni and cheese topped with chopped up hot dog pieces. Micah realizes that the best way to learn how to cook is to start making foods you’ve never made before. Sometimes you wind up with a sub-par meal. Sometimes you even wind up with charcoal. But no matter what, you won’t wind up with decades of food out of a box.
Micah and I planned to approach the supermarket like a playground; we came up with a rough outline of our meal, and then would refine it based on what looked enticing. We wanted to make a salad out of cucumber cut into long, thin “noodles.” Maybe some julienned jicama for textural contrast. And an Asian dressing to play well with the subtle flavor of cucumber. We wanted to make fish encrusted with something. Macadamia nuts and pistachios had been done to death. Almonds were in. And we needed a starch component. We decided on mini falafels with a yogurt sauce.
We hit the store. They didn’t have any jicama. We picked up some zucchini and carrots instead. The tuna was the best looking fish in the joint, so that’s what we got. We walked by some gorgonzola. Now we had a new flavor to introduce to the yogurt sauce.
A quick note – the first almonds I grabbed didn’t meet Micah’s needs. He has a peanut allergy, and the almonds I had picked out were processed at a facility alongside peanuts. I was able to grab some acceptable almonds, but only because Micah was vigilant.
Whenever you are cooking for someone else, ask about food allergies or other dietary restrictions. When I’m invited to a potluck, it’s my first question. If someone has a food allergy, they have to avoid food that is even potentially tainted. Odds are it won’t ruin someone’s evening if you make a dish they can’t eat. A good host will be able to improvise and keep a guest fed. But when a guest can’t eat a dish you made, they won’t get a full sense of how awesome you are. Stay informed, and you stay as impressive as possible.
First we knocked out our cucumber salad. We fed the cucumber through a mandoline. A mandoline is a fairly specialized tool. It’s a blade mounted on a slide with an aperture of adjustable thickness. When you run a vegetable across the mandolin and you get perfectly even slices. Most have a julienne attachment, perfect for making cucumber “noodles.” It takes years of training to match mandoline results with a chef’s knife; if you are going to do a lot of work that requires meticulous precision, get in the market. If you’re unsure, pick up an adjustable Kyocera slicer. It can’t julienne. It is handheld, rather than free-standing. It only has four settings. But it’s about twenty bucks. If you think you might have a taste for homemade potato chips, it will pay for itself in no time.
A mandoline does this to a cucumber in under 20 seconds.
The cucumber salad took two cucumbers, julliened, two carrots, julliened, and one zucchini, julienned. We improvised an Asian dressing with rice wine vinegar, salt, pepper, red-pepper flakes, honey, lime juice, and scallions. I decided to let the salad soak in its dressing, hoping to simulate the cucumber salads I so enjoy at Japanese restaurants. But my cucumbers got soggy. Next time I’ll dress the salad just before serving.
Next came the falafel. I know I knocked food-from-a-box at the start of this article. But Falafel from a box is pretty tasty. And, well, I’ve never made falafel from scratch. Sigh. Someday.
I made the dough from the instructions on the box. But instead of making large patties, I made a bunch of bite-size cylinders. Then a dip in hot oil until golden brown. Group consensus declared that falafel-tots will be the next big thing. Coming soon to a hipster bar or diner near you. They are small, so they fry up quick. A lot of little falafels have more surface area than a few large ones – that means more crunchy, browned bits in the final dish. And mini things are just adorable and fun to eat.
It was a bit tedious forming the falafel-tots, but they were a hit.
To make the yogurt sauce I took Greek yogurt, and stirred in handfuls of crumbled gorgonzola until I had a pleasing, cheesy flavor. Because it has been strained, Greek yogurt is richer and tangier than domestic stuff – it has a robust flavor profile that can stand up to a bold player like blue cheese. I finished with a pinch of lemon zest to add some bright flavor notes, and added just enough cream to get a pour-able texture.
With starch and vegetable components locked down, it was time for the protein. Micah and I ground up the almonds and pressed them into the flesh of our tuna. Most crusted fish recipes recommend a 30 minute rest between crusting and cooking. Protein-rich liquids soak into the ground nuts, forming a paste that sticks to the fish and sears up firm. But Micah and I were hungry – we settled for ten a ten minute rest and then put the fish to the pan.
Tuna is a perfect fish for a crust. It’s best served rare. That means crusted tuna is a stratified symphony of color, flavor and texture. The outermost layer is dark, crispy and caramelized. Immediately underneath lies creamy white nut flesh. Then a bold shock of red, buttery tuna.
Pretty!
We attempted a wine cherry reduction to serve with the fish. But when your reduction smells done, it needs to be pulled off the heat immediately. I was across the room, so I wound up with a pot of charcoal. I improvised a cherry lime salsa, instead.
It was time to eat.
The cucumber salad turned out to be a fairly convincing faux-seaweed salad. The texture wasn’t perfect, but it was close. And given the relative supermarket availability of cucumber versus seaweed, I know what I’ll grab the next time I have a seaweed salad craving. As mentioned, the falafel tots were a hit. Of course, it’s hard to loose with fried food. And the tuna didn’t disappoint. The cut was previously frozen – normally not much of a problem. However, seared tuna is traditionally cut on the bias, thin. More surface area means more beautiful red on the plate. Freezing and thawing slightly changes the texture of a fish. The thin slices were a little crumbly. But still delicious.
Treat food as an adventure, and you’ll avoid hotdog-mac-n-cheese.
Beef Back Ribs
The first step was research. I typed “Beef Ribs” into Google, and started reading. It turns out that hard-core beef-rib-enthusiasts smoke their ribs. I don’t own a smoker. So I turned to braising.
Smoking delivers a long, low-temperature cooking process. Low and slow cooking allows the connective tissues in the meat to dissolve, producing gelatin, turning a tough piece of meat into a tender one. In general, bone-in cuts have more connective tissue. So ribs have a lot to gain from low, slow cooking. And the easiest way to get low and slow in the home kitchen is braising.
Braising is just roasting with a small amount of liquid. Liquid is denser than air, making it a more efficient medium for thermodynamic transfer. And since most cooking liquids are mostly water, they turn to steam at 212 degrees. That means the liquid next to the meat stays at a low temperature. The result is a slow, steady heat transfer – ideal for producing gelatin.
Now that I had a plan, it was time to thaw the ribs. I put them in a sink filled with cold water. Again, water, being denser than air, moves heat around more efficiently than the ambient atmosphere. So meat in a bath will warm up far faster than meat on the counter. I had 9.35 pounds of meat, and it was good to go in just about two hours.
Thaw your ribs in the sink
I set my oven to 225, the temperature called for by the smoker recipes. Home ovens aren’t at their best at low temperatures. An oven thermometer will help you make sure your ribs are in the right ballpark.
It was time to brown the ribs. Braising doesn’t deliver the high temperatures required to brown meat. So in order to get those tasty, caramelized flavors into the final dish, I needed to sear the outside of the ribs.
I cut the ribs into small enough racks to fit in my cast iron skillet, and got my pan hot enough to deliver a quick burst of heat.
Cut your ribs into pan-sized pieces.
Unfortunately the curved shape of the ribs makes them difficult to brown. I just winged it. I didn’t get a terribly even sear. But the final dish didn’t seem to suffer.
Getting a sear on the ribs proved difficult due to their large size and curved shape. Next time I'll try pinning the ribs to the pan with weights.I put the browned ribs into my biggest baking pan. Next I needed a braising liquid. I grabbed honey-mustard-barbeque-sauce, steak sauce, chipotle Tabasco sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and liquid smoke. I was just improvising with what I had on hand; any barbeque sauce would work. I also made three cups of beef bullion and cut up the spare onion-half I had in the fridge.Put your ribs in a pan and add a flavorful liquid of your choice.
In the end, the liquid came up about halfway up the ribs. I covered the pan with aluminum foil, and I left them to braise for five hours.
Cover and cook at a low heat for up to six hours.
When the ribs came out they were falling off the bone. Good news: they were super tender. Bad news: had I checked on them more vigilantly, I might have pulled them out of the oven while the meat was still attached. Full beef ribs cut an impressive figure on the plate. If my meat still clung firmly to the ribs, I would’ve finished them on the grill and then served two-to-three ribs per person.
Falling-off-the-bone tender.
I removed the meat from the bones, and tossed the resulting beef with barbeque sauce to coat. A dash of liquid smoke simulated the grilling I had intended. The end result: a mess of pulled delicious, tender pulled-beef.
If your ribs are too tender to serve on the bone, go for pulled-beef.
Serve with corn on the cob and your favorite cole slaw recipe, and you have a perfect summertime meal.
- A delicious meal.
If you’re willing to do a little research and experimentation, a grocery store super-sale can become a dinner that will stay in your repertoire forever. I’ll post future explorations here as they happen.
