beef

Slow Cooker Barbacoa Tacos

March 27, 2017

This barbacoa recipe has quickly become one of our favorites! The first time I made it, I used the recipe straight out of the Fed and Fit cookbook (which is awesome, b.t.dubs). While the recipe was great, I am never one to settle with a recipe straight out of the cookbook. I have to tweak it until I love it!

I have probably tweaked this recipe 5 different times. Photographing it twice for the blog, ultimately deciding that it wasn’t right yet. This last time, my husband basically told me to stop. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200 dollars. It was perfect!

Honestly, the difference in all the recipes in pretty minimal, in terms of the ratio of spices. The big difference in the last recipe that I used 100% Savory Spice Shop spices*. About 75% of my spice cabinet is already filled with Savory Spices, but earlier that day I picked up a few more and used them to round out the spice blend for this recipe.

And boy is this spice blend packed with a ton of flavor: chili powder, chipotle chili powder, cayenne pepper, cumin, Mexican oregano, and cloves to be exact.

It just makes such a difference when you use fresh, good quality spices, like the ones at Savory Spice. I wanted to pick uSp a new jar of chili powder to replace my bulk sized jar that was probably two year old. (Come on, what kind of food blogger am I using such poor quality spices? It’s embarrassing, really.) And now only do they have just dozens of different types of chilies, they have three different varieties of plain ol’ chili powder! I didn’t realize there could be more than one.

We picked up the medium just to be on the safe side.

So to get this bad boy cooking, start by covering the beef very generously in that delicious spice blend so that there is barely any meat showing through. If you have the time, I recommend letting it sit for a bit so the meat has a chance to absorb all those flavors. But if you are running short on time, you can immediately sear the beef on all sides so that they get a nice crust.

Then just transfer them over to your slow cooker and add in a couple cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, apple cider vinegar, and stock and let your slow cooker go to work.

Just before you are ready to serve this, maybe 30 minutes before, squeeze over the juice of a lime, then shred it up into pieces.

All that’s left is to plate it up in some tortillas and top it with your favorite taco toppings! I love to top my barbacoa with a bit of queso fresco or cotija cheese. Maybe a little onion and cilantro. My husband likes to sneak on some jalapeno. But truly, this barbacoa is good all on it’s own. Be prepared to eat the left overs straight out of the slow cooker.

The best part (maybe?) is that this recipe can easily be made into a Paleo meal by serving it in lettuce wraps! The first two times I made this recipe, that’s exactly what I did. It’s fantastic!

*Full disclosure, my local Savory Spice shop did provide some of the spices used in the recipe. But to be fair, I already had (and purchased) 4 of the 6 spices used in the recipe. I highly recommend using good quality and fresh spices in all your recipes, which is why I love Savory Spice. Not to mention they are right up the road and have hundreds of different spices, so I have no excuse but to stop in and pick up a new spice to play with in the kitchen!

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:145]

Healthy Beef and Broccoli Rollups

March 1, 2017

What is your favorite Chinese take-out dish? Mine? It’s got to be beef and broccoli. Yummy beef drowning in an even yummier sauce (I would like to remain blissfully ignorant about what’s actually in that sauce, thanks)? The best part about it is that I can pretend it’s healthy since it contains broccoli.

I love making beef and broccoli at home. And after making my chicken fajita rolls ups, I immediately knew that recipe would be a good candidate to be “roll-up-ified”….you know what I mean.

I started with some lovely marbled beef. I then pounded them into nice thin pieces and let them soak in a the marinade.

In hindsight, I should have trimmed off the fat before marinated them, but we all make mistakes.

After the beef had soaked up all that flavor, I sliced them into strips just wide enough to fit one step of broccolini. Now broccolini is just a longer thinner version of broccoli (if you want to actually learn about broccolini, go to Wikipedia), but it works perfectly for these beef and broccoli roll ups.

I just rolled the thin slice of beef around the broccoli. Since the broccoli is so thin and sticky from the marinade, it just sticks to itself, so you don’t need a toothpick to hold it together. However, I you want to make sure that it stays together, by all means…use a toothpick.

To cook these bad boys, I just placed them all in one single layer in a hot skillet, turning every few minutes. Once all sides were browned and maybe a little charred, I covered the pan to make sure the beef cooked most of the way through. If you like your beef on the bloodier side, you can skip that step.

Then we just served it up with a side of brown rice instead of yummy fried rice. Have I mentioned this recipe is WAY healthier that the take out version? Have I also mentioned that it’s also just as good? No? Well, I thought both were implied, but incase you missed it, this recipe is both way healthier (like WAY healthier) and super tasty. So tasty I may never eat take out again.

Just kidding. A little MSG every once and a while never hurt anyone!

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:135]

Smokey Sloppy Joes

September 7, 2016

Does anyone else have fond memories of eating sloppy Joes when they were a kid? Is it just me? I loved sloppy joe day in elementary school. It was probably the only good food that came out of our cafeteria.

It’s been a while since I have had a sloppy joe, although I have definitely had one since elementary school. And for some reason I just got a hankering for them the other week. But instead of making your basic, Wednesday-lunch-special sloppy joe, I made a smokey and slightly spicy sloppy joe that any adult would enjoy.

To get that smokiness, I relied on my old friend, bacon. I diced up a couple strips of bacon and mixed it in with the ground beef. Because of the extra fat from the bacon, I made sure I used lean ground beef to balance it out.

But what makes a sloppy joe sloppy is the tomato paste and spices. A typical sloppy joe is spiced with chili powder, garlic, onion, mustard. I also added some minced chipotle peppers which adds it’s own smokey flavor. It also makes it a bit spicy, so if you don’t like a lot of spicy, you can reduce or eliminate the chipotle.

What I love about these is that they are easy to make and more or less fool proof. I pretty much just toss everything into a skillet, mix everything up a bit, then once the beef is completely cooked it’s good to go.

And it was the perfect way to use the hamburger buns! Even though most of the sloppy joe ends up on the plate and not in the bun. That’s what a sloppy joe is all about!

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:75]

Slow Cooker Ropa Vieja

April 11, 2016

Like so many of my cooking experiments, this dish was inspired by something I recently saw on Food Network. The chef on TV was slaving over a delicious looking piece of meat, then transformed it into this wonderful stew mixed with peppers, onions, peas, and other vegetables. It was mouthwatering. I had to make for myself!

So I turned to the Internet to find a similar looking Ropa Vieja recipe. As usual, Epicurious came through. Although, as sometimes Epicurious tends to do, the recipe seemed a little over complicated as did the list of ingredients. I knew I would have to simplify and cut a few corners if I were going to make this recipe. To simplify the braising part of the recipe, I turned to my trusty slow cooker.

I let the slow cooker “braise” the flank steak while I was at work. To the slow cooker I added the beef, stock, mirepoix, and some spices. And because I am extra lazy, I let Trader Joes chop up the mirepoix veggies for me. I told you I was going to cut some corners. I wasn’t lying.

Then, once I got home all I had to do was sauté the vegetables and add in the beef. First, I sautéed the peppers and onions until they were soft, then I added the corn and peas. I shredded the beef and added it to the veggies. To the meat and vegetables, I poured in some tomatoes, a little tomato sauce, and added a healthy dusting of spices. This was another departure from the Epicurious recipe that calls for the actual dried chili peppers that I supposed I am to then grind up into a powder. Well, someone has already done that for me. I will appreciate all their hard work and just use chili powder.

To go with the Ropa Vieja, I made a big batch of Mexican style rice. I have actually never made this style of rice before, and after making it (so easy!), I can’t imagine what took me so long.

I used this recipe as a reference, but I used tomato sauce instead of pureeing the tomatoes, and I left out the onion and pepper since I already has so much going on in the stew. Cutting corners can truly be the theme of this post.

The Ropa Vieja ended up being wonderful. It had so many layers of flavor, from the beef to the vegetables to the rice. And since the beef had been cooking all day, it basically melted in our mouths.

I knew when I saw this dish on Food Network it was going to be good, but this totally exceeded my expectations. And since I cut lots of corners and used my slow cooker and some pre-cut, pre-blended, and pre-ground veggies and spices, it was so much easier than I anticipated. This has been added to our list of regular week-night meals!

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:17]

Authentic Carne Asada

March 16, 2016

Carne-Asada-4-title

In case I haven’t mentioned it enough, I will say it again for the millionth time – I miss good, authentic Mexican food. Since I grew up in Southern California, I was so spoiled with all the delicious food at my disposal. In my opinion, the mark of truly good Mexican food is the carne asada. If they can do carne asada well, then they can probably do everything else well, too. Well, here in North Carolina, I have yet to find anyone that does a good carne asada. Which is why I took matters into my own hands.

I researched a lot of recipes, trying to find one that was authentic but not too complicated. I also called upon memories of sitting at the beach eating a carne asada burrito, trying to remember what I loved most about my favorite carne asada meals (Yes I realize how cliche that sounds. My high school also had a surf team. Deal with it.)

What I learned was my perfect carne asada is prefect balance of spicy and tangy. To accomplish this, I marinated a flank steak in a mixture of citrus juice with a variety of chili powders and spices.

Carne Asada-1

I really wanted to the flavors to seep into the meat, so I let this marinate overnight. But that isn’t necessary. You probably only need about 8 hours for it to really work it’s magic.

Carne Asada-2

Finally, my perfect carne asada should have a little char on the outside and a juicy center. Since I knew exactly (exactly what store, at least) where my meat came from, I cooked mine to medium/medium rare. But you can cook yours to whatever temperature you prefer. Also, a trick to perfectly tender steak that you can bite right into is to gut it against the grain. In the picture above, you can see the little creases and cracks in the meat, and I made my cuts perpendicular to those.

Carne Asada-3

Of course, my favorite way to eat the delicious Mexican meat is to wrap it in a big flour tortilla with some french fries, guacamole, and salsa in what we in California like to call a California Burrito. But since I am not a total glutton, I settled for a healthier option in corn tortillas, avocado, salsa, and chopped onion.

Carne-Asada-5hp

These carne asada tacos were like a little bite of home for me. Now I know I don’t have to try to search out a place here in Charlotte that makes a good carne asada, I can just make my own at home. Of course, I will keep on looking. There’s nothing wrong with even the most mediocre Mexican food, in my opinion.

Enjoy!

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:7]

Korean Beef Lettuce Wraps

September 10, 2014

I have recently gotten back on the diet wagon which means that we have been doing lots of chicken and vegetables for dinner. Needless to say, that can get old quickly. Especially for my husband. So for the sake of the my marriage as well as my figure, I wanted to try something that was tasty and healthy.Inspired by the trendy Asian-fusion taco trend, Korean beef tacos, I decided to ditch the tortillas for lettuce, resulting in Korean beef lettuce wraps. I found a recipe for Bulgogi, traditional Korean beef, and altered it to fit what I had in our pantry.

I marinaded a thin cut sirloin steak over night then cut into strips and sauteed the beef in a smoking hot pan with chopped up scallions.

From there, we just put a couple strips of beef in a lettuce cup and topped it with kimchi. Since both my husband and I are wusses when it comes to spicy foods, we opted for mild kimchi, which doesn’t have as much chili paste in it like traditional kimchi.

Both my husband and I were happy with our food-truck inspired healthy meal. We both were satisfied and neither of us (especially me) felt guilty about it.

[yumprint-recipe id=’48’]