In a single row Jaccard meat tenderizer. I never knew these existed until it was brought up in Volume 3 of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.

First I will give you a couple of shots of the Jaccard I bought. Here it is with its safety on.

And here is one with its teeth out.

This little nasty piece of work is quite amazing. One of the key properties of this device is that the cuts in the meat are almost impossible to see after cooking. In fact they are hard to see on the raw meat also. These two chicken breasts have been heavily Jaccarded and I can hardly see any incisions.

It can serve two purposes which I will explore in this recipe.

Moisture:
OK so putting holes in your meat makes it retain more moisture, ya pull the other one…
The blades cut through the collagen fibres in the meat. Collagen shrinks when it cooks so it squeezes the juices out of the meat when the long fibres contract. The Jaccard cuts the long fibres into shorter lengths and thus has less contraction and moisture loss. Also myosin leaks out of the ruptured cells that the cuts produce and binds with the meat juices and thickens it, stopping the juice from running out of the meat. By using the Jaccard you can increases the moisture in the meat by 5-15% during cooking.

Marinating/Rubs/Smoking:
All of these techniques work on the outside of the meat and slowly work there way towards the centre. They are used to impart more intense flavour in the end product, but all work slowly. With lots of channels for the flavour enhancer to get into the meat it can permeate faster and deeper. And if you cook the meat in a vacuum pack in a Sous Vide it works much, much faster.

The kids were over so I decided to have chicken wraps. This time I was going to Jaccard the chicken then take the seasoning from the fajitas kit and rub it into the chicken before Sous Vide cooking them.

I got the other bits together for the fajitas, here are the cold ones.

I really like the Old El Paso trio of guac, sour cream, and salsa in my wraps. Some lettuce, chopped tomatoes and cheese top it all off.

Cut up some shallots and a red pepper

into slices and put it in a frying pan with a little olive oil and cook on low heat for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

After about 1 ½ hours the chicken will be done, so take it out of the bag. PUT THAT KNIFE AWAY! I have had another lesson from a friend of mine. You need to tear the chicken into strips. That way you are not cutting across the grain. Tearing with the grain has little effect on the texture and moisture of the meat. You want your mouth to feel/taste that explosion of juice and flavour when you chew across the grain. Why leave all that on the cutting board?

The wraps go into the microwave in a zip lock bag for 40 seconds and then assembly. Oh ya this is eating and made my son exclaim that this was the best chicken he ever ate yuuuummmm…

Damn – where is my margarita?

I wonder if Snoopy liked chili?

Today was a dark and stormy “Summer” day in the UK and so I thought it was time to crank out Drew’s Soon To Be Famous Chili recipe. This chili requires at least 3 hours to cook, so a Saturday or Sunday afternoon is best for working people. You need a big pot with a lid for this recipe so dig out the biggest one you have.

The dry ingredients are:

2-3 onions roughly chopped
1 large clove garlic crushed and chopped
1 large bay leaf
1 beef stock cube

The spices are:

3 tsp Smoked Paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp chili powder

2 tsp smoked sea salt

The wet ingredients are:

1 tsp Mushroom Ketchup
½ can beer (I wonder what to do with the other half?)
3 tbs honey
400g can of peeled plumb tomatoes
1 jar mild salsa

The meat is:

300g pork
300g beef
Both cut into bite size chunks.

And finally the legumes are:

Put the beans in a strainer and let them drain.

Glug some oil into the pot and brown the onions and meat. Add everything to the pan except the legumes. Bring it up to a boil then put the lid on and turn it all the way down and simmer for at least 1 hour. At this point you can let it cool and freeze it for another day or a week day dinner. I usually simmer it for a couple of hours and then just turn it off until ½ hour before I am ready to eat. Just letting it sit for a couple of hours makes all the flavours meld together.

About half an hour before you are ready to eat add the beans. Bring it up to the boil again and then turn it down to simmer and reduce.

OK this chili is great but we are now going to take it up a level with….

Condiments!!!!! Sour cream, grated mature cheddar cheese and Doritos.

Here it is plated up and ready to trough with ice cold beverage of choice.

Picture a Dorito covered with chili and melted cheese with a dab of sour cream, you picture it I am eatin it and it made me go yuuuummmm!

we are cooking a Modernist Burger.

I came across this the other night while reading book 3, Animals and Plants of the Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking series. Page 86 is How To: Cook the Perfect Hamburger Sous Vide and I had to try it! I already had the perfect ingredient my ground beef.

So tonight I made 240g of ground beef into a hamburger patty and put it into bag and sealed it.

The Modernist guys said not to vacuum it but just bagged and sealed it because if you vac pack it the texture is not right. Ok I did that, but did not push all the air out so when I put it into the bath it was like a meat bag pool toy floating on the surface of the Sous Vide. Hmmmm cut it open and fold it up and then reseal, there we go now it is a submersed meat bag with a little help from a rack.

Now I put it into a bath for 134F for about an hour. Now this is where I may have made a mistake as the Modernist guys say 133 for ½ hour. But the picture looked a bit too red for me, so I changed it to 134F for an hour (possibly a mistake).

Do some french fries in the Tefal ActiFry about a half hour before the burger is done. Also prepare some of my special sauce which is light mayo and tomato chutney.

Also put the De’Longhi Coolzone Fryer on to maximum temp 190C, seriously hot!
Here is what the burger looks like towelled off and ready for a serious sauna.

take it out of the bag and pat it dry with paper towels. We do not too much of an eruption when it goes into the fryer.

Down it goes for 1 minute

And up it comes totally browned and crunchy

And then on to paper towels to remove excess grease. Out come the fries and the buns are toasted and the relish is put onto the bun and this is what it looks like plated up

Here it is cut open

Conclusion:
The crust on the outside of the burger was great! Crunch in every bit with no bitter or nasty burnt taste – win. The burger was over cooked. I am not sure if it was too high temperature in the Sous Vide or the fact that I left a major step out. In between the Sous Vide and the deep fryer the Modernist guys put the burger into liquid nitrogen for 30 seconds, but my liquid nitrogen vessel is empty so I skipped it.

This was really good and surprisingly light for a ½ pounder. But it was not the epiphany of hamburgerism I was looking for to full fill my life and soul. I will try again with a lower temperature in the Sous Vide and try to source some liquid nitrogen ( if you have any idea where please post a comment).

which was Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE as it is known. It was a terrible time to be a cow for sure, but for an Iowa boy raised on beef it was food hell. I did not want holes in my brain, or at least not any more than I have now so stopped eating beef. Yes, you heard it I stopped eating beef but it was culinary suicide so I came up with this recipe.

Design goals were:
Feel like a steak
Look like a steak
Taste like a steak

Feel like a steak:
It had to be thick and have the muscle fibre of a steak. A little difficult to cut, so you needed a knife. But when it was in your mouth it had to explode with juice and then the chew needs to melt it. Texture is the only difference between a steak and hamburger.

Look like a steak:
Dark with a nice browned outside but a soft and yielding flesh inside. Have a nice cut with a sharp knife.

Taste like a steak:
Deep rich flavour. Juicy and making you want that next bite.

We have the design goals now for a little experimentation, alright a lot. I came up with the meat which was turkey breast steaks (the key is in the name). Costco does a really nice turkey breast steak which is thick and large, it is Costco after all.

Unlike a chicken breast you can see the muscle fibres in a turkey breast so it was going to have the texture. Turkey is a little tougher than chicken so had the feel. The next problem was colour and flavour.

Colour and flavour s is why the “Herb Garden Marinade” was developed, or kind of happened. Not everything I have come up with is by design this one was dumb luck. I went to the herb garden and grabbed a bit of everything.

Chives
Bay leaves
Thyme
Parsley
Rosemary
Marjoram
Sage leaves

Use the kitchen scissors to cut up the chives and then fold the bay leaves up into a package and cut thin shreds from it using the scissors. Clean the stems and bugs out of the rest of the herbs and then scrunch them up into a pile on the cutting board and chop until you have a roughly chopped pile of herbs.

The colour and deep rich flavour was going to be sorted by Mushroom Ketchup.

It stains the turkey meat brown and gives it a deep rich flavour.

Put the chopped herbs into a plastic container and add about ¼ cup each of olive oil, and Mushroom Ketchup and stir with a fork.

In go the turkey breast steaks (this recipe makes 4 Costco style). Put the “tight” fitting lid on the plastic container and give it a good shake and into the fridge over night. When ever you get a beer or something from the fridge give your meat a shake (I am sure there is a joke here somewhere :-). The next day it will look like this.

Heat a grill pan to medium low and cook the turkey for 10 minutes on each side. You just want to just hear it sizzle, just no more.

It does work on the BBQ also on direct heat but again not too hot, otherwise it will burn and not cook through.

Here it plated up with Honey Mustard Slaw and baked beans.

Wow this is great! The flavour is so in your face with all the herbs. If you close one eye and cut the meat it is like a lovely medium steak. Medium steak is not optimal but you need to make sure this is cooked through as you do not want to eat rare turkey.

more than the main meal. I like:
Left Over Best Ever Lamb
Left Over Pot Roast
And now we have:
Left Over Open Face Meatball Sandwiches.

Yesterday I made my son’s favourite dinner which is Spaghetti and Meatballs. And I look forward to the next day which is always meatball sanis which are the leftovers from last night ( hope my daughter doesn’t ever decide have more than 2).

Because they need to be cooked again I choose Ciabatta which needs to be finished off in the oven before eating.

I take the leftover meatballs and quarter them to make them bite size. You do not want to unload ¼ of your sani in the first mouthful.

I needed to get the chips into the Tefal ActiFry. You have to make sure they are really dry before putting into the fryer
. I decided to go with chips not fries with skin on cause this is leftovers and I do not want to spend too much time on tea.

I cut up the Ciabatta, and put the quarters of meatballs on the bread.

There is something about the cheese I buy from Costco. It is really nice and dry. It melts and leaves that gooey stringy mozzarella that you get from a good pizza restaurant.

So I dumped a load onto the sani

And put it into the VisiCook SuperChef Multifunction Wave Oven.

After 12 minutes it looked like this.

And here it is ready to trough oh ya!!!

When I was clearing up I grabbed a bit of the other sani and it was even more awesome cold. It is going to work with me tomorrow for lunch as it made me go yuuuuummmm!

Meatballs. This week I was on holiday with my kids and I asked them what they would like me to cook for them. My daughter chose Pulled Pork Sandwiches, and my son chose Spaghetti and Meatballs. These take some time to put together, but it is so worth it! I used to purchase pre-made meatballs from the shop, until we went to an Italian near us called Don Beni’s and my son had his favourite meal which is spaghetti and meatballs. He could not finish all of it so I had a meatball, OMG this was lovely, heaven and the texture was amazing. Much better than the gristle ridden stuff I was buying from the local grocery store. I then went on the search for the ultimate meatball recipe and this is what I came up with.

WARNING: Food toy required to make this recipe. You will need a food processor to make this. You could probably make it without, but it would be really tedious. Anyway now you have an excuse to buy one, as this recipe is worth it. Plus if you buy one that has a blender attachment you can make margaritas, now you have two reasons!

This recipe makes 4 x 1 lb helpings of meatballs. I usually freeze 3 of them and then eat one for tea. First ingredient is a triangle of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.

Put the fine grater on the food processor.

Remove the rind from the cheese and then process the whole triangle.

Put the grated cheese into the largest bowl you have.

Now fit your food processor with the blade. You need 4 slices of crusty bread so I used ½ of a white pave from Sainsbury’s.

Cut this into slices and put into the food processor bowl.

Now it is time to give a fresh parsley pot a haircut. I used about 2/3 of a small pot of fresh parsley and it goes into the food processor bowl.

Normally I would just go to the garden and get some but the heat last week killed mine off because I was not paying attention to the water bit of the growing equation.

Now into the bowl go 4 peeled cloves of garlic and an onion.

ASIDE: I find the best way to get the garlic smell off of my hands is to put some sea salt into my hand before adding the liquid soap, and then rubbing really well before using any water.

4 teaspoons of salt and a sprinkling of black pepper over the top and we are ready to Rock and Roll food processor style.

Make sure you hold onto the processor when you start it because there is a lot of mass in the bowl and it will jump about a bit. When it is finished it has the consistency of stuffing, but oh the smell is heaven (parsley, garlic and onion)!

Put the mixture into the bowl with the grated cheese. Get your meat out of the fridge, we need:

500g ground pork
500g ground lamb
500g ground beef

There is no easy way to do the next step so open the meat packs and put them in the bowl. Now don an apron and wash your hands cause this is going to get messy (and cold). To mix the ingredients thoroughly use your hands to lift from the bottom of the bowl and then squeeze through your fingers. Do this a couple of times and then turn bowl 90 degrees and continue. When it is mixed you are done.

Bag them up into 1 lb freezer bags and put one into the fridge for dinner. I used to make them into balls and then bag them for the freezer, but I always needed to reshape them after defrosting so I thought what is the point. About an hour before you want to eat form the meat into balls. A good size is a ping-pong ball size. They keep there shape in the frying pan and there are not too many to turn. About 12 is a good number to shoot for because 3 are enough for a meal and a pound of meat should feed at least 4 people.

The meatballs need to be browned so a medium low heat on your smallest burner. Let the pan get to heat and then brown them on all sides in a good quantity of olive oil. I use a set of tongs to turn them but you can also use a fork and spoon.

If you served them now they would be ok, but a little too crunchy on the outside. The browning was to add flavour but not really cook them through. To soften them up which really makes them to die for, we need to nestle them into a sauce pan.

Cover with a jar of Dolmio and a lid. Then let them bloop – bloop in the saucepan over low heat for half hour or so. Serve over pasta with some tearing bread smothered with garlic butter.

This made my son go yuuuummmm (but that was given since it is his favourite meal).

cupcake. My daughter and I have been watching a new food show called: Kid in a Candy Store. Also while on holiday we bought a bunch of lollypops from Costco, and one of the favourite ones is called a drumstick. Well at least these are the first to go.

Here is a description:
Matlow’s drumstick lollies original raspberry and milk flavour. The lollie is a pink and white colour under the wrapper.

We decided to come up with a new cupcake based on the Drumstick. They are toffee so not really going to be good cooked. They are also very chewy so we really did not know how to incorporate them into the cupcake that was until my daughter dipped it in her cold drink and then clinked it on the side of the glass. The cold had made the toffee hard. I had seen a picture in Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking of a piece of soft cheese that had been dipped in liquid nitrogen and then broken into pieces in a process called cryoshattering. I had a hammer but totally out of liquid nitrogen for some reason, so the freezer had to do. After a couple of hours in the freezer we double bagged the lollies and smashed them up with a hammer which worked really well, as they shattered into small pieces. These would be put into the frosting for the cupcakes.

It is raspberry season in the UK so we purchased some from Sainsburys.

I had given my daughter a cupcake making kit for Christmas which had a cookbook and a silicon cupcake tin. The one she chose to go with the raspberries is Vanilla Butter.

3 eggs
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup caster sugar
½ cup buttermilk
1.5 cups self-raising flour, sifted
1 tsp vanilla extract
Raspberries

Topping
1 cup icing (powdered) sugar
1 cup butter, room temperature
6 drops vanilla extract
Drumstick bits

In a small bowl beat the eggs until smooth. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Then add the eggs to the creamed butter and sugar and mix until light and fluffy. Add buttermilk, flour and vanilla and stir. Beat with an electric mixer for two minutes, until light and creamy. Then fold in the raspberries.

Fill cupcake cups until almost full. Bake for 25 minutes at 160C or 320F and test with a toothpick until it comes out clean.

Topping
Mix half of the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon to combine. Then add the vanilla and the other half of the butter and sugar, beat until fluffy. Then add the drumstick bits and mix.

Here is the finished product with its cupcake paper.

If you look closely in the frosting you can see light pink specs which are the drumstick shards.

I removed the paper so you could see the raspberry’s incorporated into the cupcake.

They tasted amazing, and each mouthful finished with chewy drumstick bits. My son said yuuuummmm these are probably the best cupcakes I have ever tasted. This was quite amazing as it was a compliment to his sister.

In preparation for the pork being done, took some Pink Lady apples and cut them up.

Into a saucepan that has a tight fitting lid, along with a tablespoon of sugar and 3 tablespoons of water. Give it a stir and then put on the lowest heat you have. Every 10 minutes for ½ hour give it another stir. After 30 minutes smash them up with the back of the spoon and this is what you get.

It has been about 26 hours so it was time to take the pork out of its long hot bath. Hmmmmm looks kind of strange.

I cut a corner out of the bag in the sink and turned the water on softly. I then cut a slit in the top for air and all juice came out. Not sure if you have ever used liquid smoke but the smell is really, really strong. A few paper towels later this is what it looked like.

Looked kind of like a fake comedy rubber piece of meat, and felt like it too. I was now having my doubts about all of this. Well out to BBQ where I had oiled the grates and turned it up to maximum.

After about 10 minutes, turning every two or so, this is the finished article and it looks much better now with a little colour.

Took some slices and chopped it up. It was still a bit too rubbery to pull with a fork, but boy was it moist and succulent.

I cut up some shallots and got out the BBQ sauce and the home made apple sauce, and here is dinner.

Both my daughter and son went yuuuummmm. I said you can have another one if you want and they both raced to the kitchen. My son kept going back into the kitchen and picking up another couple of bits as he said the meat without any sauce or bun was delicious!