Whats On The Menu

[k31th]

1 hour ago, Mrs Jeturbo said:

how to you do the grill lines? 
Pan or open flame? 

It's a barbeque grill, an outdoor flat-pan one:

[biddie_fiddler]

Anyone ever made beef cheeks before?

Giving it a crack this week, any pointers and/or tips would be greatly appreciated 😅🤣

My plan so far, because I have no dutch oven or slow cooker at home yet  

I've covered the cheeks in healthy amounts of s&p and leaving to "dry age" (uncovered in the fridge for 24hrs or so).

Following this recipe I discovered last night, browning the cheeks, making a sauce, sealing the cheeks with some sauce and sous vide-ing (is that even a word) for 9ish hours at 83C.

 

Some thoughts on the cut so far, it smells extremely beefy! Way stronger than your more traditional cuts of beef.

 

Will be serving with mash, dutch carrots, and maybe beans too if I'm feeling spicy.

[Mrs Jeturbo]

I haven't ever cooked beef cheeks, but I ate them as one of the meals paired with a wine tasting once... I don't like beef very much but oh boy they were yummy AF!!!

 

Let us know how you go!

[biddie_fiddler]

Pretty much same story for me. Went out for dinner with the Mrs, had beef cheeks with red wine and it was absolutely amazing!

I don't even like wine and there I was smashing down some sort of red wine whose name I couldn't even pronounce.

Really keen to see how this turns out! Parents are coming round for dinner tomorrow. Will definitely take some snaps of the process to show you all how it turns out  

[biddie_fiddler]

Update on the sous vide beef cheeks!

Letting them dry age for 24hrs wasn't enough time, but not the end of the world. They're getting slow cooked for over 8 hours anyways

 

Seared all the cheeks to get that sweet maillard reaction happening (browning the meat). In the same pan I put in 2 cloves of garlic, 2 onions, 2 carrots, and some sticks of celery all diced. 

Let those cook for a bit to get some colour into them and then dumped just over a cup of red wine into the pan. I let that cook off for a bit while scraping all the fond off the bottom of the pan. I added some stock to the mix too and let it reduce for a bit. I realised after that I didn't put nearly enough wine and stock into the pan for the amount of cheeks I have. So I'm going to have to make some more once I get home. Basically redoing the whole veggies and wine steps again to double the amount of sauce I have.

 

I vac sealed two cheeks into each bag along with the sauce all evenly spread between the three bags - this is where I realised I didn't have enough sauce mixture.

The three bags barely fit into the biggest pot we have atm, kinda stuffed in there like stacked pancakes and the pot is just about filled to the brim with water 🤣🤣

 

Sous vide is set to 81c for 12 hrs, I'll be home before its finished and I'll probably turn it off before the 12hrs has be completed. The recipes I've found in my research has shown that anything over 9hrs is fine. I.e. min time recommended is 9hrs.

 

Will give another update later tonight or tomorrow on how the dish goes 😋

 

 

 

[Mrs Jeturbo]

Let us know how it goes!!! 
Im keen to get my hands on one of those machines. 

 

Well today I got in the cooking mood after working (from home)... 

Firstly decided to make Baklava but more the Arabic version... 

 

Firstly make up a syrup with honey, sugar, lime juice and vanilla. 
Then make the baklava filling, I stuffed it with pistachios and almonds, then make then and bake them  

 

 

 

Then made some kourabiethes (Greek almond biscuits)... the dots are almond. 
 

 

Then for dinner made a roast chicken with mash and mushroom gravy. 
 

[biddie_fiddler]

@Mrs Jeturbo Those biscuits looks soo good 🤤

Chicken looks decent to lol

 

The beef cheeks were good overall! Had a few issues though that's for sure.

 

Most sh*t of the issues was that all the vac sealed bags broke 🙃

One burst about 10min before I turned the sous vide off, the other two started to burst as I lifted them out of the pot. Really frustrating! 
Will do some research and see if there are better bags made for sous vide-ing.

 

Anyways, onwards and upwards - all salvageable, just lost some of the juices. I needed to make more sauce anyways.

 

I cut up more onion, carrot, and celery and chucked it in the biggest saute pan I had. cooked it for about 10min then added a healthy amount of red wine. Reduced that then added some stock and started to reduce that too. After about 10-15min of reducing was when I took the meat out the pot and discovered the burst bags.

I put all the saved juices from the bags into the pans liquid and then put the beef cheeks onto a wire rack and chucked them under the grille in the oven for 5ish min just to get some colour on them. I added all of them into the saute pan - not sure how the f*ck I managed to make them all fit but I did and I won't question it.

 

Chucked the pan (yes its oven safe) into the oven with some dutch carrots I chopped in half (to cook a bit faster) on a baking tray. Let that simmer away in the oven for about 30-40min and took the saute pan out. I didn't want a super chunky sauce (never been a fan) so I took the cheeks out of the sauce and put them aside while I blitzed the sauce a bit.

 

During the simmering process I made creamy mash - lots of cream and butter. The only way to eat mash imo lol.

 

Each plate got a mound of mash, a beef cheek, some carrots, and a drizzle of the sauce.

 

I didn't take any photos of the process sadly, I had my parents over for dinner so was already pre-occupied and we all know men can't do more than one thing at a time so I was already struggling.

 

The one photo I took of the final result looks, to put it bluntly, f*cking terrible. You'd think that I'd be able to take half decent photos being that photography is a big passion of mine. I'll blame it on the 4 or 5 rum and ginger ale's I had throughout the process.

 

 

The Verdict

The cheeks we soooo good! They definitely could have been left in the sous for way longer though. They weren't tough by any means, but I was expecting them to just that little bit more soft.

The sauce came out freaking amazing, the only issue I had with it was that it wasn't as dark as I'd liked, and I should have blitzed it more. I'm guessing the sauce would end up much darker if this was all done in a slow cooker or dutch oven. The mash was so smooth, rich and creamy; and the carrots were great too! Definitely worth all the time and effort

 

If I was to do it all again, which I most definitely am, I'd sous vide the cheeks much longer to get them a bit more soft, and maybe reduce the sauce for a lot longer to get a more deep colour.

Edited 23/07/21 12:28 AM by biddie_fiddler

[Mrs Jeturbo]

Okay you’ve convinced me!!! 
I need a sous vide machine and I wanna try all that!!! I know the photo didn’t do it justice but it still looks awesome! 
well done  mate solid effort! 

[Mrs Jeturbo]

Did a fresh gnocchi Ragu tonight... well all of today... 

 

Cooked it as per my own made up recipe... it included: 

- 2 whole chicken breasts 

- 1 large pork chop bone in 

- 1 piece of rump steak 

Cooked it over a period of about 4-5 hours while I was pottering around in the kitchen anyway. 
 

I ended up with nearly 3L of sauce I think and it’s 50% meat I’d say lol.  

 

 

 

Then I did a chewy triple chock brownie for j@a desert also. (and some vanilla cupcakes for the kids) 

 

 

Edited 24/07/21 08:58 AM by Mrs Jeturbo

[k31th]

I don't think it's a Ragu anymore once you do that, but looks and I'm sure is delicious haha