cjsmith: (Default)
cjsmith ([personal profile] cjsmith) wrote2008-06-26 12:52 pm

Successful Recipes

1. Onion roast. Slice onions (kinda thick slices) to fill about 2/3 of your crock pot. Take a hunk of chuck small enough to fit on top of that, stick salt pork and whole cloves into it, and set it on the onions. Don't add anything else. Turn it on low for eight hours.

This is amazing. Every time I eat it, people come around twitching their noses and asking what smells so fabulous. I am eating my last unit of it right now, and sorry, Rob, but I'm going to make it again. (The entire house smells like onion soup for about 24 hours on this one.)

2. Frittata, mentioned elsewhere. Also scrumptious. I'm out of that now, too, and will be making it again.

Less amazing:

3. Seared beef with zucchini, onion, tomato, garlic, and basil. Brown a pound of ground beef for a couple minutes. Add chopped onion (about 1/2 an onion), sliced zucchini (1 zucchini), and chopped garlic (3 cloves). (I squooshed the garlic in my new garlic press instead.) Cook 'til veggies start to brown. Add a chopped-up tomato and a pile of chopped-up basil and cook until the tomato starts to dissolve. Add salt & pepper to taste.

I found this one to be sort of blah, but I admit it makes a nice change of pace. I have two servings of this one left.

Next up: mashed cauliflower.

[identity profile] exvapi.livejournal.com 2008-06-26 08:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Due to some health issues (very long story) I am a stay at home husband with a working wife. I also have NO clue how to cook and, being a tech guy, can't parse "some".

Your chuck roast looks like something I could do for my wife so she wouldn't have to cook for us when she got home. I grill stuff and can back a potato, but this would be a real change of pace from that every night. It would also help the food budget as grill quality meat is past being high in price.

By salt pork you mean bacon? By sticking, do you mean use tooth picks? How much, cover the chuck with strips of bacon and put cloves every inch?
brooksmoses: (Default)

[personal profile] brooksmoses 2008-06-26 08:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Salt pork is a different thing than bacon, and a thing unto itself. It's sort of like bacon, except with more lots fat, more salt, and comes in chunks rather than thin slices.

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2008-06-26 08:49 pm (UTC)(link)
That chuck roast is a perfect recipe for someone who is not all that confident in the kitchen. I am definitely in that category. You could easily do this recipe! So, let me make it specific.

I have a 4-quart crock pot, so these amounts are going to fit well in one of those. (It's a Rival brand, $20 at Target, best kitchen-related $20 I ever spent.)

Salt pork is a separate thing, sold in the butcher area, often next to sausage. If you ask I'm sure they'll point you at some. I found mine in pre-wrapped 12oz chunks. It is mainly fat!

3 large or 4 medium-large onions
2-3 pound chuck roast - something with some fat marbled through it, not lean meat
Whole cloves
About 4oz. salt pork

Peel the onions and slice them into rings about the width of your thumb. Dump all that into the crock pot. In my case it filled up about 2/3 of the crock, with of course a lot of air in between all the onion chunks.

Chop the salt pork into long thin bits about the length of your thumb and about as big around as, oh, a little bigger than a drinking straw. I came out with probably eight strips. Take a knife and stab holes into the chuck roast. In each hole, wedge a piece of salt pork. It is okay if they stick out a bit. These will add flavor as it cooks.

Take whole cloves, three or four of them per pound of chuck roast, and stab their pointy ends into the meat. I wound up with a clove per, hmm, four square inches or so.

Lay this meat assembly atop the onions. There is no need to add liquid; the fat from the meat and the liquid from the onions will create a soup. If you like, you can pull a few onions out from under the meat and plonk them on top.

Put the crock pot lid on, turn it on low for eight hours, and voila!

If you like, when it is done, you can try to fish out the cloves and/or the squished remaining bits of the salt pork. I did this. Apparently there is no need. You can happily eat the whole mess.

[identity profile] exvapi.livejournal.com 2008-06-26 09:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Thanks. This I will do soon.

And I know what salt pork is, but folks not of the south sometimes think bacon and salt pork are interchangable.

Interesting to stick it into the chuck instead of puttting strips on top.

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2008-06-26 09:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, gotcha.

I would not be surprised at all if omitting the salt pork and instead putting strips of bacon on or around the beef would come out just as scrumptious. In fact, I may try that at some point, because I don't have many other uses for salt pork in my kitchen but I do have bacon lying around pretty much all the time.

[identity profile] billeyler.livejournal.com 2008-06-26 08:10 pm (UTC)(link)
"People" come around sniffing it? I sure hope you're not crock potting at work! I'd go nuts if someone was cooking up here! :-)

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2008-06-26 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh no, I'm just reheating a food-unit in the microwave and eating it at work. It smells scrumptious and definitely gets attention.

[identity profile] mnhwy11.livejournal.com 2008-06-26 10:57 pm (UTC)(link)
It sounds wonderful to me. We grow our own beef and have it butchered, so I have a bunch of roasts in the freezer I need to figure out how to use. I personally will try the seared beef first though. Mmmmm.

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2008-06-27 05:12 pm (UTC)(link)
I suspect the seared beef one would have been better if I had added more veggies and possibly more garlic. On the other hand, if you have better beef to begin with, that might help too!

[identity profile] hitchhiker.livejournal.com 2008-06-27 06:56 am (UTC)(link)
sounds good!

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2008-06-27 05:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Weird oddity for your amusement: I scrolled up to the original post to see which one you might have been thinking sounded good. I saw the last line about mashed cauliflower -- and BAM, I suddenly remembered that my vague memories of having tried it and thought that it wasn't too bad were in a dream. My mind is a strange place to live, sometimes!
nosrednayduj: pink hair (Default)

[personal profile] nosrednayduj 2008-06-28 02:13 am (UTC)(link)
You might try my mother's simple veggie and meat meatballs, modifying by ditching the milk and bread crumbs. I'm pretty sure that they'll hold together with just the eggs and cheese; maybe add another egg. I often modify it by shredding and sauteing some vegetables like zucchini until most of the water's gone instead of using frozen spinach. I don't make them quite as large as described either.

Mini-eatballs might be an option for party food, too, though these might not work for a much smaller ball. No doubt any prepared stuff will contain contraband.
nosrednayduj: pink hair (Default)

[personal profile] nosrednayduj 2008-06-28 03:13 am (UTC)(link)
[So, like, I meant "mini-meatballs", of course.]