Beef

Beef / Indonesian / YouCook — View Comments
27
Feb 11

Beef Rendang

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Rating: 5.0/5 (4 votes cast)


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Indonesian food has always been a mystery here in Toronto. Throughout the years several restaurants have opened but none have remained open long. As far as I know, there is only one lonely fast-food joint serving up Indonesian food in the north end, but unfortunately only has perhaps 3 items that I would say are truly Indonesian among the menu that includes Malysian, Chinese and Thai offerings. But, with this recipe you’ll be able to enjoy an Indonesian favorite!

Rendang is a popular Indonesian dish where the beef is simmered for hours in a mixture of spices until you get super tender, melt-in-your-mouth meat in a thick gravy-like sauce. The traditional mixture of spices; including galangal (blue ginger), candlenut, shallots, cloves, star anise, and chili; are the core to this yummy delight. Unfortunately, as with many traditional dishes, hours of prep with a mortar n’ pestle and low n’ slow cooking are required.

There are various resources on the interweb for traditional, from-scratch, beef rendang recipes – what we’ll show you in this article is a simplified version. It will still take time to simmer the beef, but this version reduces the prep!

Summary


Preparation Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 3 hours
Total Time: 3 hours, 15 mins
Servings: 6 portions
Meal type: Entree
Cost: $10

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs cubed stewing beef

    • ingredients

  • 2 medium onions

    • ingredients

  • 2 shallots

    • ingredients

  • 1 can of coconut milk
  • 1 package of Rendang sauce

    • We like to use Munik or Indofood, both brands are imported from Indonesia. It is essentially a paste of the traditional ingredients that allows you to skip a good chunk of prep work and get straight to the stove.
    ingredients

Instructions


1. Slice onions. I like rings, because they look prettier.
onions
2. Dice shallots.
shallots
3. Fry the onions over medium heat for 3 mins.
shallots
4. Add shallots and continue to fry until onions brown.
5. Add the beef. Fry until meat starts to brown.
shallots
shallots
6. Add the rendang paste.
shallots
7. On high heat, add cold water to cover the meat 3/4s and stir well to mix paste. Bring to boil.
shallots
8. Once boiling, reduce heat to low, cover, and let simmer for 1 hour stirring occasionally to ensure the food does not stick to the bottom.
9. Add coconut milk, stir to mix, leave lid partially on and simmer for 2 hours. Stir occasionally. You’re looking to reduce the broth to a thick gravy which coats and clings to the meat.
shallots

Results

black cod curry

Serve on a bed of rice and some fresh vegetables on the side for a complete meal! The longer the stewing beef has to simmer, the more tender it is. Feel free to try other cuts of beef and different brands of the Rendang curry.

Are there other cuisines you’d like to see on YouCook? Let us know in the comments below!

 

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Beef / Recipe / Side Dish / Vancouver Dine Out — View Comments
26
Apr 10

Thai House: Yum Nua

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Veggies

We found some recipes on the Thai House website. There are many restaurants in Vancouver under the Thai House family and many of them are participating in Vancouver Dine Out this week.

Many of the recipes call for getting curry from Thai House which is a major time saver! We decided to try one that didn’t require curry. Here’s a beef salad recipe that was quick and easy to make. Thai House, thanks so much for posting some great recipes on your website.

Summary

Preparation Time: 15 mins (cutting veggies)
Cook Time: 15 mins (preparing the sirloin steak)
Servings: 2 as a full meal, 4 if served as a side
Meal type: salad
Grocery Cost: $10.50

Recipe Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Ingredients

Veggies

  • 1 lb of top sirloin beef ($6.00; I bought slightly more than 1 lb)
  • 1/4 head of lettuce ($0.30)
  • 1/2 cucumber ($0.60)
  • 1/2 onion ($0.50)
  • 2 whole tomatoes ($1.40)
  • 1/2 shallot ($1.00)
  • 3 fresh red chilli peppers ($0.20)
  • 5 mint leaves ($0.10)
  • 1/4 cup fresh cilantro ($0.20)
  • 3 limes ($2.00)
  • 1 tbs white or palm sugar (I used brown sugar because that’s what I had in my cupboard)
  • 4 tbs fish sauce
  • 1 tsp light soy sauce

Instructions

1. Barbeque or grill the beef. The method I always use for making steaks is to pan-fry at high heat on a cast-iron skillet to get the outside browned and then stick the entire pan in the oven at 500F to cook the inside.

Pan-frying the steak

2. Cut the beef into thin almost bite-size pieces.
Slice the sirloin steak

3. Thinly slice the red chilli peppers. I remove most of the seeds, but you can leave them in if you want.
4. Wash all vegetables and then slice them into bite-size pieces.
5. Add all the vegetables into a mixing bowl along with the sliced steak.
6.In a separate small bowl, mix the fish sauce, soy sauce, and sugar. Add to the mixing bowl.
7.Cut the 3 limes in half and then hand squeeze the juice over the salad. I squeezed the juice in with the other sauce ingredients in the small bowl so I could taste it and adjust accordingly. It turns out that I only needed 1 decent-size lime and it was enough to balance out the saltiness of the fish sauce and soy sauce. I think 3 would have been too much for me, so you can experiment and see how much lime juice and sugar you need to balance everything out.
Making the dressing
8.Toss everything together and enjoy!
Combine

Results

Yum Nua

WOW, I was kind of surprised how easy it was to make this salad! I’ve ordered it before at two different thai restaurants in Victoria and Vancouver and enjoyed the combination of flavours. I think the mint and cilantro are really important in giving this dish it’s distinct taste. Although the recipe only asks for 5 mint leaves, I actually added more like 12 and it was good. I think 5 would have been too little for this much salad. I may have also added a bit more cilantro than called for! As a variation, I actually put half of the chopped red onion and shallot on the skillet for a bit as well to cut down on the sharp red onion and shallot flavour, which I find overpowering sometimes.

This salad is easy to make and a really good switch from your regular everyday salad. I would definitely make this again!

Thai House (Robson) on Urbanspoon

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Beef / Chef / Susur / Winterlicious — View Comments
10
Feb 10

Winterlicious Recipe: Susur’s Braised Beef with Pappardelle

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This Braised Beef Recipe from Susur’s newest Toronto restaurant, Madeline’s, incorporates many interesting flavours but is surprisingly simple to make. In light of the upcoming Chinese New Year celebrations, I would highly recommend you try this one out. The flavours are very Asian, with a bit of a twist. You can pair this with some rice for a more traditional Chinese dish.

Summary

Preparation Time: 15 min
Cook Time: 6 hrs 30 min
Servings: 2 servings
Meal type: Main
Grocery Cost: $11.75 (or $5.88 per person)

Recipe Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Ingredients

    For the braised beef:

  • 1 lb beef cheeks ~ $3.00
  • flour for dredging
  • 1 1/2 L dark/beef stock ~ $2.00
  • 1/2 L canned tomato (pureed) ~ $1.00
  • 200 g chili bean paste ~ $0.75
  • 1/2 cup oyster sauce ~ $0.50
  • 2 bunches fresh coriander (roots left on) ~ $0.75
  • 300 ml Chinese cooking wine ~ $1.00
  • 3 pieces each of:
  • dried licorice ~ $0.50
  • star anise ~ $0.50
  • cinnamon sticks ~ $0.50
  • Chinese coriander seeds ~ $0.25
    For the pasta:

  • pappardelle or preferred pasta
  • A handful of button mushrooms ~ $1.00
  • oil

Instructions

1. Trim excess fat from beef cheeks but do not remove the membrane (silver skin).
2. Dredge in flour and pat to remove excess.
3. Brown the beef cheeks on all sides in 1/4” of oil.
4. Combine remaining ingredients for the beef and braise the beef by baking it in the oven in a covered oven-proof pan at 250 F for 6 hours or until fork tender.
5. Remove the beef and strain your braising liquid.
6. Cook pappardelle until al dente.

7. Saute button mushrooms with 1tbsp oil, add pappardelle and coriander and saute some more.

8. Plate your pasta, and pour the braising liquid over it. Serve with braised beef.

Learn how Susur does it in this video:

Variations

During Winterlicious, Susur served this dish with pappardelle pasta. You can really use any starch that you enjoy. I recently had a great Beef Bourguignon at Biff’s Bistro in Toronto and they served it with semoule (also known as semolina).
You can also serve this on a potato puree. The sauce will just melt into it… Yum!

Results

Having been braised slowly and for such a long time, the beef is now extremely tender and the flavours have melded into each other perfectly. This is perfect for making in the winter, when you’re spending the day snuggled in at home. Just prepare it and let your oven do all the work. 6 hours later, you have a beautifully gourmet meal!

If you had this at Madeline’s, please comment and tell us how you liked it! Also remember to vote for it on our Winterlicous app if you liked this dish!

Happy Chinese New Year from YouCook!!

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Beef / Vietnamese — View Comments
8
Jan 10

Vietnamese Shaking Beef (Thit Bo Luc Lac)

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Pho is by far the most popular Vietnamese dish to spread around the world – but it is fast food. The most popular Vietnamese dish that I’ve seen appear in all fine dining Vietnamese places in the Bay area is indeed Bo Luc Lac.

In Vancouver, actually I haven’t found an upscale Vietnamese restaurant yet! (If you know of one that services Bo Luc Lac, let me know). I did see this dish at the Red Door Pan Asian Grill.

I think partly this dish is a novelty for it’s name – I always wondered why it was called shaking beef and realized it was the act of shaking the wok to move the beef around. I never got a chance to ask my family how to make this when I was craving it so I found two recipes which I followed – one was fromChef Phan at Slanted Door and one was from the VietKitchen blog.

Summary

Preparation Time: 10 min to prepare the beef to marinate. Marinate for 2 hours.
Cook Time: 4-5 minutes
Servings: 4 servings.
Meal type: Main / Side dish
Grocery Cost: $10 ($2.50/person vs $15-$20 for the meal outside!!)

Recipe Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 pound of tri tip beef ($7.00) cut into 3/4 inch cubes.

    Honestly, the way the beef is marinated and seasoned in this dish, the crappiest cut of beef (tri tip, bottom sirloin) tastes pretty good (and more authentic). Slanted Door uses Filet Mignon and I’m also pretty sure that grain fed beef would taste even better so you can decide how much you want to spend on the beef.

Marinade:

The great thing about the marinade for the beef is that it’s every single staple ingredient inside of an asian household. If I were to guess how much it costs for the marinade just for this cooking – it’d probably be around $1. These bottles of soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce never seem to finish!

  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
  • 1 teaspoon fish sauce
  • 1 tablespoon regular (light) soy sauce, or 2 teaspoons regular (light) and 1 teaspoon dark soy sauce

Dressing/Side

  • 1 shallot, thinly sliced (1/4 cup total) @0.50
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 or 2 pinches salt
  • 3 to 5 cracks black pepper
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons water
  • 4 cups watercress, use only the tender leafy parts ($2.00)
  • 2 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions

1. Cut off excess fat on the beef and split into 3/4-1 inch cubes.

2. In a bowl mix all ingredients of the marinade.
3. Soak the beef with the marinade. Set aside for at least 20 min but preferably 2 hours.
4. In bowl, combine the sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar and water. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Add the shallot. Put the watercress on top but hold off on tossing.

5. Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add the beef and spread it out in one layer.
6. Let the beef sear for about 1 minute, before shaking the wok or skillet to sear another side.
7. Cook for another 30 seconds or so and shake. Cook the beef for about 4 minutes total, until nicely browned and medium rare.
8. Serve with the watercress and dressing.

Quick Notes

Definitely glad I listened to Viet World Kitchen about using the cheapest cut of beef. The taste of it was still delicious as ever. I shook the beef often and didn’t let any of it sit still. Now I can’t help but imagine what it’d taste like with filet mignon or kobe :)

Variations

Watercress is an acquired taste that I detested back when I was growing up. You can easily use any other greens like spinach and lettuce to accompany the beef. Also, eating rice or rice noodles works well with this dish. I opted for rice noodles.

I added onion and green onion in the dressing because I had some! It complimented the beef rather well.

Results


I’m really happy that I was able to finally see how shaking beef is made! And pleasantly surprised that I have all the ready ingredients 90% of the time and only need to buy the beef.

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Beef / Main / Recipe / Restaurant / Vietnamese — View Comments
3
Jan 10

Thit Bo La Lot (Beef in Wild Betel Leaf)

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While in San Jose, I enjoyed showing people there was a whole variety of Vietnamese food aside from Pho. My personal favourite place for any celebration was Anh Hong for their 7 courses of beef (Bo 7 Mon). It is beef made 7 different ways – a salad, a soup, beef dipped in hot pot water, and a few different ground beef variances to be rolled in rice paper. It’s my personal favourite way of introducing friends to Vietnamese food because the experience is interactive and tasty!

My favourite dish in the 7 courses of beef has always been Thit Bo La Lot – beef wrapped in this extremely flavourful and tasty leaf. I’ve never made it before and stumbled upon this great Viet food blog and followed her clear well written steps. What an awesome blog and what an awesome recipe!!!! It was an instant hit with my friends! I’m on a mission to learn how to make the remaining 6 dishes and have a 7 course of beef dinner within a few months!!

Summary

Preparation Time: 10 min to prepare the beef. 30 min to roll 30-45 rolls.
Cook Time: 8 min broil for each tray of beef
Servings: 40 rolls
Meal type: Main / Side dish
Grocery Cost: $6.50

Recipe Rating: ★★★★★ 

Ingredients


I slightly modified VietKitchen’s recipe for the meat seasoning.

  • 1 pound ground beef, chuck preferred ($4.00)
  • ¼ cup minced scallion (about 3 stalks of green onion) ($0.50)
  • 2 teaspoons fish sauce
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¾ teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1 tablespoon Madras curry powder
  • 2 tablespoons finely minced lemongrass (about 1 medium-small stalk) ($0.50)
  • 1 teaspoon cornstarch
  • 1 bag of la lot leaves with stems (4 ounces that yield 30 large leaves) ($1.50)
  • 1 tablespoon neutral flavored oil (I used olive oil)

Instructions

1. In a bowl combine the beef, scallions, fish sauce, curry powder, salt, pepper, lemongrass and cornstarch.

2. Mix well with your hands and set aside.
3. Wash the leaves thoroughly and remove the leaves from the main (bigger) center stem but keep the leaf stem).

4. Scoop some meat onto the leaf and roll. Use the stem to seal up the roll. See the VietKitchen blog for more detailed pictures.

5. Brush a bit of olive oil on each roll. Place on aluminum baking sheet.

6. Set the oven on broil (high) and set the baking sheet on the top 1/3 of the oven.
7.I kept checking on it from 7min to about 9 min. Once the leaves look slightly shriveled and charred, its done!

8.To serve this dish as part of the 7 courses of beef, you eat it with rice paper, rice noodles, lettuce and of course nuoc mam (fish sauce dipping sauce!) I’ll write more about how to do this in another post!

Quick Notes

I made this twice this week. The first batch, I used 1 lb of lean ground beef and we ended up with many extra betel leaves in the package! So the next batch, I used double portions of everything and ended up making too big of rolls even though I used all the leaves. I’d probably say go with 1.5 lbs of ground beef for the packages of betel leaves that I bought.

Variations

The VietKitchen blog offered varieties on how to marinate the meat. I distinctly remember lemongrass for this meat everytime I’ve eaten it in the past so I was determine to use this in my cooking! However, I didn’t want to add oyster sauce as the Seasoning option 2 suggested since I felt it would take away from the basic Vietnamese taste. So I essentially just added lemon grass to Seasoning option 1.

Actually traditionally, this is made on the BBQ so I was quite impressed the broiling worked so well ! I’d love to try this on the BBQ in the summer.

Results


DELICIOUS!!! I feel this recipe yielded exactly what I’ve been missing from not having Anh Hong in my neighborhood and eating in Vietnam. It’s one of my favourite Vietnamese dishes of all time and am so happy that it took less than an hour! Try it out, you won’t be disappointed!

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Beef / Cookbook / Main — View Comments
29
Dec 09

Mushroom and Peppercorn Crusted Beef Tenderloin

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This particular recipe, I have actually been making for several years now, but when I found a very similar version in Thomas Keller’s book (ad hoc at home), I modified my own recipe a little bit in terms of technique. This one is always a crowd pleaser. Who doesn’t enjoy a beautiful cut of beef once in a while? So here it is…

Summary

Preparation Time: 20 min
Cook Time: 45 min
Servings: 6
Meal type: Dinner
Grocery Cost: $58 ($9.67/person)

Recipe Rating: ★★★★★ 

Ingredients

  • 6 pieces Beef Tenderloin, 8 oz each (about 2” thick) ~ $50
  • 28 grams Dried Mushrooms (I like porcini) ~ $8
  • 1 tsp whole Black Peppercorns
  • 1/4 cup Olive Oil

Instructions for Mushroom and Peppercorn Crusted Beef Tenderloin

1. Using a food processor, pulse the dried mushrooms and whole peppercorns into very small pieces. You will normally end up with some of your mixture in powder form and the rest in slightly larger bits. Pour this out onto a flat dish.
IMG_5840
2. Pat each piece of beef tenderloin dry with a paper towel. Then crust it with your dried mushroom and peppercorn mixture. You only need to crust it around its edges. If you can, do this the night before and saran wrap each piece tightly and refrigerate.
IMG_5841
3. The next day, take your tenderloins out of the refrigerator several hours before cooking. It is best to sear them at room temperature.
4. Preheat your oven to 350°F.
5. Coat the tops and bottoms (i.e. your sear surfaces) with olive oil. I like to coat the meat with oil before searing rather than heating oil in the pan and then adding the meat to it because it reduces splatter.
6. Heat your pan on high. It needs to be very hot to sear properly. When a drop of water rolls across the surface of your pan, you know it’s ready. Sear each side of your tenderloins for 1.5 to 2 minutes. Be careful not to crowd them or they will steam rather than sear. You should sear in batches if your pan is not large enough.
7. Bake them in the oven for 18 minutes. Remove them from the oven and allow them to rest for 12 minutes on their baking sheet or pan.

Result

IMG_5882
If you follow the timing above, the tenderloins will be just medium. They will be very pink in the centres with no blood. You can also do a squish test if you have enough experience with cooking beef. The meat should have some give when you squish them with your tongs or press down on them with your finger.

I served this dish with Roasted Asparagus, and Thomas Keller’s Honey Glazed Cipollini Onions and Saffron Rice. See my previous post for my menu and other recipes.

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Beef / Main / Restaurant — View Comments
7
Dec 09

23′s Delmonico Steak

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Even though I’ve never been to Michael Jordon’s steakhouse, 23, in Chicago, I decided to try making its Delmonico steak. I found the recipe online and it looked good, especially since it utilizes a ribeye steak. A lot of steak gets cooked in our home because we love it. However, after moving back to Toronto, we’ve found the steak quality a bit lacking compared to New York. For some reason, a porterhouse steak bought at the typical supermarket in New York tastes way better than ones bought in specialty butcher shops at St. Lawrence Market or Kensington in Toronto. We did recently find that Longo’s carries a good quality ribeye steak at a decent price ($29.99 / kg), so this seemed to be our best bet for a nice home-cooked steak without breaking the bank (email me if you want to chat about where to buy better quality steaks in Toronto). The recipe we used, with very few substitutions, can be found here: http://bbq.about.com/od/steakrecipes/r/bln0434a.htm . I have added my own instructions for preparing and grilling steak on your stovetop.

We also decided to cook creamed spinach as the side, which is covered in my Ruth Chris Steakhouse :: Creamed Spinach post.

Summary

Preparation Time: 30 min
Cook Time: 15 min
Servings: 4
Meal type: Dinner
Grocery Cost: $30.35 ($ 7.50 each)

Recipe Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

Ingredients

  • 4 14 ounce rib-eye steak ~ $ 27.36
  • 8 gourmet mushrooms ~ $ 1.50
  • 12 sun-dried tomatoes ~ $ 0.45
  • 4 fresh rosemary sprigs ~ $0.42
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • olive oil
  • Steak Sauce:
  • 1 cup beef stock
  • 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
  • 1/4 cup fresh ginger, finely chopped ~ $ 0.68
  • 1/4 cup shallots, finely chopped ~ $ 0.19
  • 1/4 cup carrots, finely chopped ~ $0.13
  • 1/4 cup celery, finely chopped ~ $0.18
  • salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Dry steaks with a paper towel to absorb any excess water. Marinate steaks with pepper and olive oil. Leave out so they are at room temperature.
2. Combine ginger, shallots, carrots and celery in a saucepan over a medium high heat. Caramelize (that means sauté until browned slightly).
3. Slowly pour in balsamic vinegar, stirring.Reduce by 1/2 and add beef broth. Bring to a boil. Season to taste.

4. Heat a pan on high heat and add olive oil.
5. Cook steaks in pan. The timing for a medium rare steak, about an inch thick are as follows: 1 min on each side on high heat. Turn down heat to medium. Cook steak about 30 seconds on each side on medium heat.

6. Remove steaks and put on a sheet of tin foil. Wrap steaks tightly in tinfoil so it is sealed. Keep it in tin foil for about a minute. The steaks will continue cooking in tinfoil, even after it’s been removed from heat.

7. Season mushrooms with salt and pepper and place on frying pan and cook.

8. Once mushrooms are done, remove from pan and skewer mushrooms pieces with sun-dried tomatoes on to rosemary sprigs.

9. Ladle steak sauce over steak, and top with skewered rosemary sprigs. Serve and enjoy!

Quick Notes

Read instructions on sundried tomatoes. Our package indicated that you need to blanch the sundried tomatoes by putting it in boiling water for 2 minutes before serving.

We found the ginger a bit strong in the sauce. Next time we will try grating it rather than just chopping finely with a knife.

When skewering the mushrooms and sundried tomatoes, start at the root end of the rosemary and pull through slowly.

Variations

This recipe could be used for any type of steak. We also tried it with striploin and it turned out well. Since the rosemary sprigs are really for decoration, you can try skewering other types of mushrooms on it, such as portabello.

Result

The result was a delicious, medium rare steak with an attractive rosemary sprig garnish! The sauce tasted strong when I tasted it in the pan, but was fairly subtle when poured over the steak. The sundried tomatoes went surprisingly well with the steak, which was a bit unexpected. For the amount of work in chopping up the veggies (I don’t own a food processor), I found the sauce a bit too much work. Thanks Karen for doing such a great job finely chopping everything for the sauce! I actually prefer my steaks naturally meat-tasting, so I’m not sure if I would make this sauce again. I didn’t find it added too much to the taste of the steak. The rosemary sprigs looks very attractive, and wasn’t too much work, so I think I may do this again if I am serving up steak for company as it looks very impressive. As usual, the cost of the steak at home is much cheaper than at the restaurant, and, cooked properly, I find just as good. I think I would make this again without the steak sauce.

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