Food!

[cute fuzzy bunny]

You bet, all of you come on by...theres enough for at least 2 sandwiches after i'm done with it.

Dinners in an hour, right after the wife gets out of the tub. Serving with garlic mashed yukon golds and roasted corn.

[LakeRat]

Let me get the directions straight. Do they still include turning off the paved road?

[Nords]

I don't hate cooking and I'm deemed competent at it, but I have little or no interest in it. If I was living alone I'd be standing over the sink eating a sandwich (think of Howard Hessman in "WKRP Cincinnati").

But I take an engineering approach to this art form. When I cook it's in large volumes (at least double the recipe). If the oven gets turned on then it better be full (including desserts). If it can be done in a crock pot then I start it early in the morning and let it take care of itself. If I run the barbeque (with actual charcoal!) then we'll grill five pounds of hamburger, a dozen drumsticks, and a dozen pieces of fish. I cook a 15-20 lb turkey every few months (they're amazingly cheap the other 10 months of the year) and when we have tacos I mix seasonings by the cup.

But in ER we eat out a lot less-- Costco pizza dinner every Friday and a Thai lunch every week or so. Or maybe that's just a phase; our kid's more interested in hanging out with friends than she is in being whisked away to a sit-down restaurant.

I'm looking for a good spicy tofu recipe. Hopefully without kimchee. Any suggestions?

Originally Posted by Notth

Dinners in an hour, right after the wife gets out of the tub.* Serving with garlic mashed yukon golds and roasted corn.

Hunh, that's interesting, we usually wash our food in the kitchen sink. But then I guess it depends on how much of it you're preparing at one time!

[laurence]

Montreal Steak Seasoning is a staple in our house. It's cook for spicing up home made hamburgers, too.

Edit: oh, and anyone have suggestions for grilling NY steaks? I've decided these are my favorite and I would like to perfect the process.

[HFWR]

I often marinate steaks in beer, soy sauce, and granulated garlic and onion.
Leave for several hours, or overnight.

[laurence]

mmmmm......beer......

I'll give it a whirl!

[MJ]

I love both simple and complicated food but I'm too lazy to cook anything elaborate. For dinner I generally stick to rice, pasta, potatoes, steamed veggies, salads, broiled salmon and chicken with salt, pepper and garlic.
Although I don't do it too often, I eat out to get my non-European meals.

[greg]

Laurence: Most normal people go on beer or milk runs on Saturday nite. I usually have to go on a condiment run. Ketchup . . . ummmmm.

Best price for gas: $.129/gal during the great gas wars (late sixties). Also had a Rambler convertible. Oil: $.15/quart--in bulk with your own container. I think I spent more money on oil than gas for that thing. Life was good. A date was about a buck. Fries w/ ketchup . . . ummmm. Smooching was free in the good old days . . . ummm.

[yakers]

Originally Posted by Apocalypse . . .um . . .SOON

Laurence:* Most normal people go on beer or milk runs on Saturday nite.* I usually have to go on a * Smooching was free in the good old days . . . ummm.

Actually smooching can become remarkably expensive.

Still one of the few things that can be better than food....

[cute fuzzy bunny]

No unpaved roads near my place. Its all high livin' around here.

The brisket and accompaniments were a hit. Even the dogs are happy and there are leftovers.

The better news is that whilst shopping, I found some mispriced briskets to replace this one in the freezer. $3.25 a lb for angus brisket. Works for me.

Laurence...a good NY strip like any top cut requires very little fiddling with Sprinkle with some kosher salt, a little fresh ground pepper, and a hearty rub of fresh crushed garlic. Then grill until it JUST stops mooing.

[laurence]

Thnx! Yeah, I think I'll keep the marinade idea for a tougher cut of meat. I wish I didn't like NY steak, dang stuff is expensive. Anybody do the mail order omaha steaks thing? Like it?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

We get omaha when they're having one of those fatwallet deals where you apply two coupon codes and hack the URL to give your order free shipping, and consider it only a middling deal at that.

The beef is just ok. Cooks Magazine did a taste test of supermarket beef vs the mail order vs kobe beef. Of course Kobe won, followed quite closely by store bought Colemans beef, which is very expensive here (about $16-18 for a rib eye or strip steak). In fact they said if you really want to treat yourself, get a coleman steak and put the other $80 you saved over buying the kobe into your pocket.

Omaha and another fru fru mail order steak company came in dead last...off flavors, watery meat, chewy. Beaten out handily by standard choice quality beef from the stop and shop.

It is very convenient though, the packages I usually get have some burgers, some pork, couple of kinds of steak, their hash-browns, some stuffed fish filets, etc. Pull a few packages out of the freezer in the morning and theres your quick dinner. But this is when i'm paying ~$35 for 6 small steaks, 6 burgers, 4 pork chops, 4 stuffed fish filets, 10 hash brows, hot dogs and a bunch of other stuff.

Although the thickwall foam cooler it comes in is VERY handy, and the dry ice is fun to play with. Dry ice in a bucket with water is very mystifying to a dog.

I had a HUGE omaha order my girlfriends mom bought us about 10 years ago, came in a cooler big enough to hold a case of beer with ice and it was about 3" thick in the sidewalls. You could sit on it.

Heres the package I usually get, although I wont pay $59 for it like these guys did...omaha appears to have gotten wise to people pulling the multiple coupon deals on them

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/mess...keyword1=omaha

About the best beef I get? I go to sams or costco, and buy the whole strip, whole rib eye or whole filet. Honestly i'm not that big a fan of filet mignon...tender but not very beefy. Not big on the strip either. Rib eyes, top sirloin and chuck all have better flavor. The sirloin and chuck have a very beefy flavor and are quite tender if you dont over cook them, plus they're inexpensive.

These are boneless slabs o' beef. I leave them in the heavy plastic sleeve they come in. Take your biggest sharpest knife and cut about 4-5" off one end right through the sleeve...thats a roast, and the sleeve keeps holding the rest of the slab together. Then cut every 1-2" through the sleeve to make steaks and leave the last 4-5" as another roast. Bag 'em in freezer ziplocs, squeeze out the air and freeze what you arent eating.

Its AMAZING how fresh and beefy these whole cuts smell and how good the meat is, given that it hasnt been cut and left in a styrofoam plate for a week in the supermarket cooler, or sprayed with reddening agents.

Most of the sleeves I get are stamped "USDA choice" although I occasionally find one labeled "USDA prime". It may be a mistake but I'm thinking its a major no-no to put non-prime beef in a prime package like that. One sleeve of rib eyes labeled 'prime' were absolutely the best steaks I ever ate.

Your knife will need sharpening after cutting through that heavy plastic, but its really helpful to hold the whole thing together while cutting so the steaks are nicely even. I use the end caps as roasts because they're usually a little rounded at the ends and would make a 'half dome' steak if cut as such.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

A review of mail order steaks...

Mail-Order Steaks

Can you buy a better steak through the mail?

To connoisseurs, steaks are the stars of the beef world, and strip steaks are the divas. Long and lean, with a heartier chew and a lot more flavor, strip steaks put their more popular brethren, filets mignons, to shame. Beef is a tricky business, however, and too often you can find your steak more dud than stud. To guarantee quality, more and more people are looking beyond the confines of their local supermarket butcher case and buying their steaks through mail-order sources. These outlets promise all-star beef with a price tag to match. But do the mail-order steaks really outshine the ones you can get around the corner?

We gathered seven widely available mail-order strip steaks and two from local supermarkets (Coleman Natural, which is hormone- and antibiotic-free, from our local Whole Foods Market, and choice steak from the regular market). The mail-order steaks included candidates from Niman Ranch, a high-end, all-natural, restaurant favorite; Peter Luger, a New York steakhouse that many consider to be the best in the country; Omaha, probably the best-known mail-order steak company, with two steaks in the running (its "private reserve" as well as its standard steak); Allen Brothers, a Chicago-based company that supplies many of this country's steakhouses; and Lobel's, a New York butcher shop. In addition to Lobel's boneless strip steak, we included Lobel's Wagyu steak from Oakleigh Ranch in Australia. Wagyu steak comes from cattle raised according to the specifications dictated in Kobe, Japan, for its Kobe beef. Considered the foie gras of beef, Kobe steak is extremely well-marbled, tender, and rich. Wagyu is the more generic name for the same type of beef, although it is not raised in Japan. Though few of us could afford the hefty $68 per pound price tag for Wagyu beef, we wanted to see if the beef was indeed worth the cost.

It was. After pan-searing three dozen steaks (four of each type for perhaps the largest tasting turnout in America's Test Kitchen), we found that money can buy you happiness, if happiness for you is the best steak you ever ate.

"Wow," wrote one happy taster of our first-place Wagyu steak. "This is unlike any strip that I've had." Others deemed the Wagyu steak "tender like a filet" and "very rich and meaty." The overwhelming richness, however, which one taster likened to "foie gras-infused beef," was not everyone's cup of tea. A minority of tasters agreed with the one who wrote, "This doesn?t taste like beef at all."

Three steaks shared the spot for second place: Niman Ranch, praised for its "good flavor" and "nice texture"; Coleman Natural, deemed "very robust"; and Peter Luger, which had "strong beef flavor" and "great juiciness."

The brand most people turn to when ordering steak through the mail -- Omaha -- took the last two spots in our tasting. The Omaha strip steak had "off flavors" and was described as "grainy tasting," while the Omaha Private Reserve (at almost twice the price; see chart) finished last, with tasters finding it "a little chewy,"and "very dry."

The good news is that you don?t have to spend a small fortune (or pay for shipping) to get a great steak. Coleman Natural steak, available at natural food supermarkets, tied for second place and was a comparative bargain at $14/lb. (just four dollars more than the low-ranked Stop & Shop beef). For true steak greatness, however, we recommend splurging on Wagyu beef . . . at least once.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

LOBEL'S WAGYU (KOBE-STYLE) BONELESS STRIP STEAK (FROM OAKLEIGH RANCH, AUSTRALIA) $68/lb
"Incredibly tender," "awesome."

NIMAN RANCH NEW YORK STEAK $22/lb
"Good flavor," "very tender."

COLEMAN NATURAL BONELESS STRIP STEAK $14/lb
"Great flavor," "rich, meaty."

PETER LUGER STRIP STEAK $29/lb
"Extremely tender," "mild."

RECOMMENDED

LOBEL'S BONELESS STRIP STEAK $34/lb
"Juicy," "chewy."

ALLEN BROTHERS DRY-AGED BONELESS SIRLOIN STRIP STEAK $35/lb
"Very tender," "kind of bland."

STOP & SHOP CHOICE BONELESS STRIP STEAK $10/lb
"Very juicy," "not much flavor."

NOT RECOMMENDED

OMAHA BONELESS STRIP STEAK $25/lb
"Beefy but generic," "too thin."

OMAHA PRIVATE RESERVE BONELESS STRIP STEAK $45/lb
"A little chewy," "tough and stringy."

squeeze out the air

Have you tried the straw in the ziploc bag trick?* Insert the straw, close the ziploc all the way except for the straw, suck out the air, then quickly pull the straw out and close the ziploc bag in one motion.*

I'm sure some of you will be very good at that.*

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Confession...I do that, but I dont use a straw...

Actually I have one of those bag sealer things. Got it on one of those auction sites...I think ubid? Black and decker. Completely sucks at sucking, but it will take most of the air out of a bag and its worth 10x the cost for sealing chip and cereal bags or frozen food bags that werent equipped with a zipper. I think I got if for ~$35. Amazon has one for sale for about the same price right now.

Go to amazon, search for FoodSaver Vac 300 Vacuum Sealing Kit...$39 with free ship. I'm not recommending this one, as I dont own it. Reviews are mixed although almost all of the bad reviews have to do with the vacuum not being good enough or the unit breaking after a year or two. I save more than $39 in chips and cereal alone a year that dont go stale on me.

[laurence]

Definitely agree that filet mignons are over rated. Tender but without flavor. I used to eat them all the time, but it was just because "it's the best!". I love Top Sirloin, Costco is where I buy all my beef now, but I think their NY strips are just awesome. I'll have to try the big slab thing. But first I need a real set of knives. Costco has a henkle set on sale for a couple hundred....

[cute fuzzy bunny]

AIYEEE! We'll never teach you about that LBYM thing, will we?

Best bet? Find yourself a nice single santoku knife that isnt overpriced, and a small parer/boner (no jokes please) and leave it at that. Those are the only two knives I ever use.

I have one like this, although its a henckels and I only paid $18 for it on a crazy sale at penneys.

Best knife I've ever owned, and after the first time my wife used it, she hasnt picked up another one either.

[laurence]

Originally Posted by Notth

AIYEEE! We'll never teach you about that LBYM thing, will we?

Hey, I'm still learning!

Originally Posted by Notth

Best bet? Find yourself a nice single santoku knife that isnt overpriced, and a small parer/boner (no jokes please) and leave it at that. Those are the only two knives I ever use.

I have one like this, although its a henckels and I only paid $18 for it on a crazy sale at penneys.

Best knife I've ever owned, and after the first time my wife used it, she hasnt picked up another one either.

Hmmm, I'm on it! We need something, our $10 set of knifes from pic and save/big lots that we bought 7 years ago is started to really dull!


and a small parer/boner
Butthead: "Huh, huh, you said....huh, huh!"

Beavis: "He-ahhh heh heh, BOIOIOING!!!"