Hearty Beef Stew

I just got my crockpot this month. So I figured I would try making one of the easiest dishes: beef stew.


The main ingredient: chuck roast (about 3 lb's):

Cut into small pieces, large pieces of fat removed:

Pat it dry a little bit (not sure why, but that's what the recipe said...)


With a little salt and pepper:

Now we're going to brown the meat a little bit before putting it in the crock pot.


We just need it a little brown. I'm not sure if this is really necessary. Next time I might just try throwing it into the crockpot.


This is good enough.

Now onions. If you haven't figured out, two of my favorite ingredients are onions and garlic.

Chop of the top and bottom first.

Diced into relatively large pieces.

With a little more vegetable oil, we brown the onions in the same pot the beef was browned in.


Now for some garlic.


After the onions are browned a little (like 6 minutes), we throw in the garlic for about 30 seconds.


Then we add 3 tablespoons of flour to make it thicker.

Then slowly add 2 cups of chicken broth.


We also were supposed to throw in a cup of red wine. Unfortunately, I didn't have red wine on hand. Since I didn't want to get rid of the wine, I added some white wine we had and some beef broth and Worcestershire sauce to give it a little more flavor.


Need to stir and make sure to scrape the bottom of the pan to get all those good bits of extra beef.


Then add two bay leaves (I added 3 since one was small). There's a difference between dried bay leaves and fresh ones. I think 1 dried bay leaf equals 2 fresh ones. We also throw in one tablespoon of dried thyme.


Now throw it into the crockpot.


Four red potatoes.


Peeled and cut up into smaller chunks.


Now for the carrots. It was a little intimidating using real carrots b/c I've never used them, and I think my mom's always used baby carrots.


Gotta peel them first (was pretty easy).

And then chopping them up -- again not hard at all.


The recipe didn't really call for celery, but I figured why not.


Chopped up.


The recipe also didn't call for canned tomatoes, but I really like stews this way. In fact next time, I'm going to add more than one can.


And in to the crockpot everything goes.

After a few stirs:

I set it for 5 hours on high. If I had more time, I would've done 10 hours on low, but I didn't. I actually came home at lunch time and made the meal. In all it took about 1:30 minutes to get all the stuff ready (with pictures taken, of course) and into the crockpot.


And here is how I left the kitchen after lunch. It's actually quite messy, and it's a good thing I came home and cleaned it up before Satyan got back.

Anyways, turn the clock 5 hours later, the kitchen is cleaned, and out comes beef stew.


With rice, here's what it looks like.


So overall I was pretty pleased with the dish. I have plenty left in my freezer, and it's quite easy to defrost and reheat. I thought the beef was a little dry (still very tender), which is weird since it was cooked in so much juice and in a crockpot. Maybe I should try preparing it earlier and using low heat? Also, i think I'm going to add more of a tomato base, rather than chicken stock/wine.

Valentine's Day 2008

Even though this will primarily be a blog about my poor cooking skills, this will also be my personal blog. I probably won't post much here -- only when I do exciting things and want to look cool :-)

Anyways, Valentine's day has come and past. For a single in the city, it wasn't too bad.

The only card I got was this one:

And open inside:


And if you don't know, it's from my dog, who still loves me...

We also went to a huge pillow fight in San Francisco. The video at the bottom does it the most justice, but here are some pics as well.

Picking up Jean who bought 6 pillows from Ross for us.


People getting ready:

Through the night:

Little kids as well:


Chiedo and Jessica:
The rest of us:


It looks like it's snowing, but it's just the feathers:


Some guy outfitted his bike to roast marshmallows:


No need for explanation:


And finally the video, which is just awesome. Paul helped edit it a lot:

For Valentine's day, I was supposed to cook some Korean food on behalf of my Korean lover who's in Pittsburgh. However, because the pillow fight took so long, I postponed it until the day after. I'll be posting pics from that dinner soon...

My First Dinner

All right, so I've cooked before, but this is my first blog post about cooking. I tried the follow the format set in www.thepioneerwomancooks.com, which is an awesome blog. Somehow she was reading my mind and what I wanted for Valentine's day (besides a girl) and posted the same meal on her blog today, but it's all good. Mine may not be as good, but I cooked it, so that counts for something.

The meal: ribeye steak, garlic mashed potatoes, and balsamic glazed asparagus.


All right, so let's start with the steaks. I'm a believer in some form of marinade unless it's a prime cut of meat, and I usually find Italian dressing works out well, so that's what I used. However, I just got some of Duke's BBQ sauce from back home so I mixed that in as well. It's a sweet, mustard based BBQ sauce,and is something I'll showcase later on when I make some pulled pork sandwiches. I let them marinade overnight.

Living in the city, it's hard to make a good steak. I'm used to a grill, but since I've been here a while I've tried a few different techniques (pan, oven, broiler). From them, I like the broiler the best; however, next time I'm going to give the pan method another try. Anyways, here they are:


And in they go:




After about 8 minutes, they look a little charred, and they're ready to be flipped. I'll flip and rotate them around since nothing cooks perfectly even:


After another 8 minutes and using my handy-dandy, brand new thermapen:


So let's check them out:

All right, so it's 115 degrees now -- not quite ready. I actually learned this isn't the best way to insert the thermometer -- we should going through the side to the center. It's more accurate that way. After this little lesson, I managed not to overcook or undercook the steaks, flipping and rotating to evenly cook them in the broiler. I cooked them to about 130, and after about 10 minutes of resting, I cut the bad boys open to check 'em out.


All right, now on to the garlic mashed potatoes. So after doing this yesterday and reading the pioneer woman's rendition, I've decided her way is much easier. For one, roasting the garlic looks easier and turned out better and the potatoes are easier to deal with (try peeling hot potatoes while your hungry friends are waiting anxiously...). So from now on, I'll use her method, but here's what I did.

First, the candidate spuds.


All right, so first we get some water, throw those potatoes in there, turn it up high, and let it boil.


When it finally boils, turn it down a bit and wait about 20 minutes or so until the potatoes are tender (stick a fork in it).

While we're waiting, let's roast some garlic. One head of garlic is about right. We'll use a saute pan to brown it.

Breaking the head apart into the bulbs, we'll heat it on low heat with the cover on for about 20 minutes, making sure to shake them around a lot so they don't burn.


About 20 minutes later, they've got some brown spots and they're ready to go.

I let them cool and soften a bit in the pan for about 20 minutes. Then I took them out, peeled them, and cut off the hard ends. As you can see, I burned mine a little. I'll try roasting garlic in the oven next time...


Our potatoes are done, so take them out, and start peeling with a small knife.

Taking the peeled spuds, I threw them back into the pot.

Throw those mushy, roasted garlic bulbs in there and take out the masher and get to work.

Last time I made these, I didn't have a masher....much easier this way.

Now, we need to add some butter. One stick is good for the amount of potatoes I took out. To make it easier to add in, let's melt it first.

Throwing that in there, we'll work it around a bit


We're not quite done with the liquid fat. Let's take some half-and-half.


It works a little easier if you warm up the half-and-half first, so I took about 8 ounces and put it in the microwave. Then, we add it a little bit at a time and mix it into the potatoes. I found out that about 6 ounces was all we needed.


Lastly, a little salt and pepper for flavor. Since it's garlic mashed potatoes, why not garlic salt.

While you weren't looking, I also added some chives I had to give them a bit of color.


And there you have it, garlic mashed potatoes. Quite garlicy and tasty too.

Now for the greens. I know some don't like asparagus, but I do, so I figured I'd give it a try. I figured tonight was cooking with the broiler so that's how I prepared the asparagus. Let's meet the bunch.

Grab each piece and just bend until it snaps. This gets rid of the hard, inedible part.


Lining them up on the sheet. I threw on some olive oil and some salt and pepper. Then into the broiler they go for about 8 minutes, flipping them in the middle.

As you can see, I think mine went in a bit too long, but just barely. Anyways, onto our sauce.


Take 3/4 cup of balsamic vinegar.


Put it into a pan over medium-high heat and let it boil.


After about 20 minutes, we get something much thicker. If we try to move it around, you'll see it sticks together.


Pouring it back out, you'll see it's been reduced to about 1/4 cup.

We also want 1/4 cup of olive oil. I decided to add it to the same measuring cup, rather than just drizzle them separately onto the asparagus. They don't mix very well and it made the drizzling a little harder, but in the end it worked out just fine.

One day, I'll try to make some homemade rolls. For now, crescents out of the can work just fine (probably better). I did my best to roll them up well:


But in the end it doesn't really matter :-)



All right, so that's it. Overall the food was quite good. I thought the steaks were a tad sweet (italian dressing + sweet bbq sauce), so next time I'll change it up or won't marinade as long. The mashed potatoes were delicious and the asparagus not too bad for such a green veggie :-)



Hopefully I'll continue to blog about my food posts. Let me know what you guys think.