Confessions of a Butcher

Have you bagged a buffalo burger yet?  John managed to bring home a couple of packs of ground buffalo that had ballooned (pack had filled with air) and were unattractive.   He was so excited to try and see what the big deal was. Everyone who’s tried buffalo that we’ve talked to had really enjoyed it.

Buffalo burger

I zipped off to the store to quickly grab some buns and veggies for pictures, while John heated up the deep fryer to add crispy tots to our dinner menu.   Whadda ya know! Ben even tried a tot and ate a burger

Vickie
PS: John said it tasted like really great hamburger. However ground sirloin would also make great burgers cheaper.  Would we try it again? YES but only if the price was right!

There is nothing quite like a mess of barbecued beef ribs except they take time and are awful messy. The other day I brought home some boneless country style ribs that I cut from the flatiron. Now the flatiron is a very flavorful part of the cross rib and when cross rib roasts are on sale you should be able to purchase one at the same price. You might even find some out in the meat case already marked up as cross ribs. Just ask the butcher and then ask him if he will cut them into country style ribs, that is if you want to save time and money and forego all the mess.

Anyhow I took the boneless beef country style ribs and placed them in a crock pot with my favorite barbecue sauce (my own recipe of course) and let them simmer for about eight hours. Every now and then I would turn the lid sideways to allow some of the moisture to cook off. The sauce turned really dark and rich and the meat was falling apart. I poured a generous amount of sauce over each serving of ribs.

With the ribs we had a nice, freshly made, room temperature (has to be room temperature, and the potatoes have to be gently simmered until completely tender and with the skins on) potato salad with hot homemade biscuits from the oven and a tossed salad for a little green. Man was that a good meal.

I don’t know what it is but If I have a nice potato dish and a tasty hunk of beef I’m pretty darn happy. Then throw in a bread item and something green and I’m in heaven. I’ll eat the pasta dishes that the wife and daughters come up with but they just don’t hit the spot like meat and potatoes do.

I’ve often wondered why it is that most men prefer meat and potatoes but a lot of women like to slip in a little soup and salad or pasta dishes and the like. There must be something in women’s genetic make up that requires them to punish their men folk by serving them frilly dishes without any substance. Or maybe they are just trying to civilize us. Probably goes back to a more primitive time when the men would drag home a dead carcass of some kind, slam it down in the kitchen and ask when dinner would be ready. Actually that doesn’t sound like all that long ago, but that’s beside the point.

I think women are trying to wean us from our meat and potatoes. It’s some sick idea from a deep seeded resentment just because we don’t always wipe our feet and we like to put the game on when we get home from a hard day at work. It just might be a conspiracy. Add one more to the list. I’d put it right up there with the black helicopters and area 57.

You just can’t trust them. Why the other day I came home from a hard day at work hoping for a little something I could sink my teeth into and there to my horror on the dinning room table was a pot of homemade chicken soup. Now what am I supposed to do with that? And then when I asked where dinner was you would have thought that I had just shot the cat.

It’s a good thing that I am sensitive to my wife’s feelings. Instead of grousing around about having hot water with chunks in it for dinner I politely made a couple of peanut butter and jam sandwiches to go with the soup, after of course, crushing mass quantities of crackers into it in order to soak up all the moisture. Yes It could have been a real rumble in the jungle if I hadn’t decided to take the high road and simply make do.

Anyhow the boneless beef rib dinner was a big hit. The kids loved it. In fact one of them requested it for their next birthday dinner. So for you women out there who want a nice and easy beef and potato dinner for your man, that isn’t messy, give the boneless flatiron country style ribs in a crock pot a try. And don’t forget to boil the potatoes with the skins on and serve potato salad at room temperature after removing the skins of course and the biscuits are a nice touch and something green is always good. Now, remember that we love you and stop all this conspiracy and resentment stuff.

John

Sirloin tips are rarely as cheap as they were at my store the other day so I bought one. They were $1.99 a pound. That’s a nice price for a nice roast.

Actually the proper name for the sirloin tip roast is round tip roast. A few years back the names of many of the cuts were changed so as to be more descriptive and proper. Sirloin must have seemed a little bit uppity for a modest type chunk of beef that comes from the round so “they” changed it to round tip roast. Whatever you call it it can be a very nice oven roast if you are careful.

I remember way back when I was a young buck still running my mobile butcher truck, I came home one early evening to a sirloin tip roast that my wife, who shall go nameless, had placed in the oven that very morning at about 250 degrees without any water or covering or anything. It had sat in that oven for over eight hours.

Do you know what happens to a small hunk of beef when you cook it for a bout nine hours without any moisture? It turns into a round ball of jerky. Needless to say I was not overly excited about dinner that night. Even the gravy was dry.

I don’t want to come down on my wife, oven roasts can be tricky. I remember the oven roasts we used to cook in the Marine Corps. They never came out very good. Black on the outside and dry as a bone.

The last few times I have attempted to cook an oven roast I tried to pull them out of the oven early and earlier but they still turned out overcooked and dry. This time I was going to get it right. I knew that if the roast would come out medium rare it would be good but for some reason I could not pull that meat out of the oven early enough.

I think I must have been programmed to cremate all roasts from my mom. She liked to make sure that nothing was moving when she pulled it from the oven. Whatever the reason I had to get it right so I asked all the guys at work how they cooked oven roasts. Every one of them gave me a different answer. Some cooked them slow some cooked them fast and some of them cooked them half fast.

So I got with one of the guys who had worked as a chef with some of the finer restaurants in Jackson hole. He told me to take the roast and sear it in my cast iron skillet and then place it in the oven at 375 and pull it out when the internal temperature hit 120. So I did. Well actually my wife Vickie did. I was still at work.

So she took the approximately 6 pound sirloin tip or round tip roast and placed it into a very hot fry pan with a little olive oil and let it sit and sear on all sides for a bout one minute each side. Then she placed the whole thing, cast iron skillet and all into the 375 oven. I came home in time to keep track of the internal temperature. When the internal temperature hit 140 I pulled it and let it set for about twenty minutes while I fixed the gravy and mashed the potatoes.

Once the rolls were out of the oven I began to slice the roast. I should have pulled it out sooner. It was medium and I wanted medium rare. My buddy told me to pull it at 120 but I wouldn’t listen. He said it will continue to cook outside of the oven for several minutes raising the internal temperature. It still turned out good though. It was nice and juicy and made great sandwiches the next several days.

All in all a great meal. Hot roast beef sliced thin with a nice rich brown gravy, mashed potatoes, salad, peas and homemade oven fresh rolls.

Next time though I’m going to pull the roast out at 130 degrees. Not that I don’t believe my buddy the chef but something inside of me just won’t let me do it.

John

The other day I was enjoying a double Swiss cheese burger with sautéed mushroom and onions at one of my favorite hamburger joints. It was delicious. The meat patties were thick and juicy and the Swiss cheese was all melted and oozing down the sides of the burger. The onions and mushrooms made it difficult to keep the whole thing together while I was eating it. The freshly cut and fried French fries were a nice addition. I had a large chocolate milkshake to wash everything down.

I watched the young teenage girl make the milkshake while I was waiting for my meal. She took a large stainless steel cylinder and filled it with chocolate ice cream and added some milk and then mixed it all up. That was it. No specially flavored fluid for shakes, no chocolate syrup or anything, just ice cream and milk.

Do you know what a milk shake tastes like with just ice cream and milk? It taste like watered down ice cream.

Now I’m no expert on milkshakes but I have made a few and when I make them I always compensate for the watering down effect of the milk by adding something to boost the flavor back up to an acceptable level.

For example, occasionally I stop by one of those smorgasbord type buffet restaurants where they serve just about everything. Man I love a good buffet. For some reason the wife likes to sit down and have a nice little meal at a regular type restaurant, where they ration out everything, to make sure you’re not getting too much, like it’s any of their business anyway. But at the buffet you can just grab a plate and fill it to overflowing and then do it again. Nobody cares and nobody is keeping track. Just load up and go and then load up again.

Well anyway at those wonderful buffet type restaurants they often serve milk. The finer ones will have chocolate milk as well. Once I’ve loaded up my first plate of goodies I go back and grab two glasses and promptly fill each of them about 2/3 full with chocolate milk. Then I head over to the ice cream dispenser and fill them almost all the way to the top with chocolate ice cream. Then I side step to the topping table which is usually right next to the ice cream dispenser, where I add a couple of generous squirts of chocolate syrup. Then I go back to my seat. With several deft stirs of the spoon the chocolate milk shake is ready. I’ll tell you what, that is one good milk shake.

You can do the same thing at home. Every now and then the kids will request a milkshake for a family treat. Of course I oblige them. I grab a couple of half gallons of ice cream and whatever else I need and go to work.

Over the years I have found that the easiest way to make a large batch of milk shakes is to use a large bowl and the electric hand mixer. If I’m making chocolate milk shakes I will throw a half gallon of chocolate ice cream into the bowl and add a generous amount of evaporated milk. If you use regular milk it won’t be as rich. You can use cream but that gets kind of expensive. Then I pour in some chocolate syrup. I just kind of eye ball it. I add enough syrup to make it a little darker than the original ice cream. Then I shake a few ounces of powdered malt into it. The malt is purely optional but sure makes it good. Then I mix it all up with the mixer.

I like my milk shakes thick but not so thick that you can’t drink it. If I want to eat my milkshake with a spoon then I will just have ice cream and save myself a lot of trouble.

There you have it. It’s not so hard. If you want something other than chocolate just use vanilla and add your flavorings. At Christmas we make a delicious eggnog milk shake just by adding eggnog to vanilla ice cream. Just remember if you add milk you have got to compensate for the watering down effect and pump it up with some type of sweet and rich flavoring.

John

Trying to think of something that my kindergarten boy will eat is quite a challenge. He eats peanut butter and jelly on only white bread, hot dogs, cereal, most kinds of meat and most kinds of desert. That’s about it. I’ll whip us something that the rest of the kids will just woof down and he won’t touch it. We have to have a complete separate list of choices for him at each meal because chances are he won’t eat anything.. He’ll just run off and play.

Now I know what you are thinking. You think that we have let our kindergarten boy take over. He’s calling all the shots. Right? Well you are right. Since we don’t want him to starve we have given in. We just want him to eat, something, anything. Cause if it ain’t good he ain’t eatin it.

I’ve tried the firm approach. This is where I make him sit at the table until he eats something. This never works. Probably because I’m not willing to sit there all night watching him. So the next thing I know he’s running around the house with the rest of the kids and I’m right in the middle of an important television show or something.

I’ve also tried the “eat or no dessert” routine but he doesn’t care. He would rather go without dessert than have to try something that doesn’t look right.

I heard about a dad that just let his boy starve until he was ready to eat what they were serving. After three or four days he was ready to eat anything. I have a tough time with that one. Besides he knows where the peanut butter and jam are and the other kids would just feed him under the table like they do the cat.

Yesterday I was off from work so I fixed a bunch of bacon and sausage and whipped up some pancakes from scratch. My kindergarten boy just tore into it. He loves bacon and sausage and pancakes. At one point he had gathered up all his bacon and sausage in one hand and was using his other to shove pancake into his mouth. I think he was trying to keep the syrup off of the meat. He wouldn’t mind having that for every meal.

I also had planned a dinner that he would eat. I was going to make homemade pizza pockets. Every kid loves pizza pockets right? Well I was hoping.

So I got all the ingredients together. First I browned off about three pounds of hamburger with a chopped onion and some green pepper that I pulverized in the blender. If he doesn’t see it he won’t know it’s there. After the meat was browned I added 2 small 6 oz cans of tomato paste and 2 small cans of tomato sauce and two spaghetti seasoning packets. I jazzed it up with a little garlic powder, Italian seasoning, salt and a little Tabasco. Then I grated some mozzarella and cheddar cheese (about 1 1/2 pounds).

While I was fixing the meat my wife Vickie was making the dough. She mixed 12 cups of flour, 2 tablespoons of salt, 4 cups evaporated milk, and 2 cups water. Then let it sit for 15 minutes. Makes about 36 pizza pockets.

Once the dough was ready Vickie rolled out these flat little oblong circles of dough where I placed about a tablespoon or so of the meat mixture, some cheese and 2 little pepperoni slices and then folded it over and sealed the edges with a floured up fork. Then I dropped 2 or 3 of them into the fat fryer for about 3 minutes or until the pizza pockets were beginning to brown.

They turned out great. Of course Ben my little kindergartner wouldn’t touch his. I don’t know what was wrong with it. I’m not sure what he ended up eating last night. I’m off this morning, as of this very writing, and I suppose I’ll cook up some bacon, sausage and pancakes before he goes off to school.

I Think I’ll Stay at Home and Fix it the Way I like It!

The other day my wife and I were driving back from the Salt Lake area. We had just dropped off one of our older girls who will be staying down there at school for the next seven months or so. Of course we had to stop and get something to eat. The food was pretty good I guess but it got me to thinking about what it cost for a nice meal at home versus whatever at a restaurant.

Going to a restaurant, in my mind, is kind of like playing Russian Roulette except there is usually more than just one bullet in the gun. I don’t have a lot of luck when it comes to getting a good meal out.

It seems there are oh so many restaurants out there that are not giving it the old college try. So I’m a little reluctant to put down good money for something to eat when I can often do better and for a lot less myself at home.

When I first got out of the Marine Corps My brother gave me a job working in his small locker plant. I learned to cut meat and to go out on the farms with our mobile slaughter truck and take the live animals in the fields and pens and bring them back to hang in the cooler for further processing. It was hard work. We would start before sun up and wouldn’t be done till long after the sun went down.

Working hard like that made a guy hungry and my brother and I ate really well. There was this little restaurant just across the street from our locker plant which just happened to be in downtown Camas Washington. The locker plant was right next to a flower shop on one side and there was a bank or something on the other. Not really a very good location for a meat processing plant. We used to get a lot of complaints whenever we would roll the hot carcasses across the side walk and into our small locker plant. But that’s another story.

Quite often my brother and I would be right over to that little restaurant first thing in the morning before heading out with the truck for a long day of mobile butchering. We would grab two or four of the still warm and delicious donuts sitting there on a large serve yourself platter set up with easy access for the morning diners. Man they were good. Next would be a double chili cheese burger smothered in onions and shredded cheddar cheese with hash browns and four over easy eggs and toast or English muffin. Of course we would top it all off with a short stack of pancakes (two plate size beauties) and a quart of milk. We worked hard and we ate even harder.

In those days I didn’t think twice about the money I spent on a meal but times have changed. There weren’t as many of those fancy shmancy type restaurants with the shiny menus and million dollar ambience and the prices to match. When I go out I want a nice meal and not a lot of fuss. You know we pay for all that fuss.

The restaurant we chose on our trip back from Salt Lake was a fancy Mexican place where there were at least five different people who waited on us. One that sat us down, one that brought the chips and water, one that took our order, one that brought us the food and one that took our money. I felt like I had to tip the entire staff.

I like to go out but if I want a steak or something on the expensive side I’ll just fix it at home. My favorite steak is a large choice porterhouse. I’ll pick one out at work, when they are on sale, that has lots of marble and take it home and fix it the way I like it. If I bought a two pound choice porterhouse in a restaurant I would have to sell a kidney to pay for it.

Some day I would like to open my own restaurant where I would serve nothing but good stuff with generous portions and without any excessive frills. In the mean time I think I’ll eat at home more and save my money for an occasional Porterhouse fixed the way I like it.

This time of year I often look back at Christmas when I was a youngster. We had some pretty lean ones. I remember one Christmas in particular where my mom had to take a job at American Junior standing on a production line packaging pieces of balsa wood airplanes. You know those little gliders that you put together and the kids toss and they glide right out into traffic and then they want another one. Today they are made out of Styrofoam in China or somewhere like that. Anyhow my mom wasn’t making much money in those days and there was only one present under the tree with my name on it.

I still remember that Christmas morning quite clearly. There were just the three younger kids at home my oldest brother and my two older sisters were out on their own by that time. The three of us got up real early and woke up my mom so we could open our presents. Once she arrived in the living room we very carefully peeled back the scotch tape holding the wrapping paper on so my mom could use it again. That is not an easy task for a kid who just wants to get at whatever is inside.

I finally got the wrapper off and in my hands I held one of those deluxe gliders from my mom’s work. It was one of the larger balsa wood airplanes that came with a propeller and a rubber band that you wind up and then toss into the air. I always wanted one and so anxiously I began to put it together.

I broke it. Before it had taken one flight into the air, before I could even wind up the rubber band it was nothing but a sad memory.

But you know what? Even though I broke my only present we still had a good Christmas. In those days my mom would save her pennies and she would buy a nice big ham or turkey and make lots of pies and cookies and the big kids would sometimes come home and some of our cousins would come over with my mom’s sister and we would have a great time.

Every year I try and make sure my kids have lots of presents under the tree. Every year I forget what Christmas is all about until the toys and sweaters and wrapping paper are scattered all over the living room and the little ones are playing with the boxes and the brightly colored paper and the older ones are taking inventory to make sure one of their siblings didn’t get more than they did.

This year will be different. We are keeping it real simple. After all it isn’t our birthday we are celebrating. So I hope that we are successful this year in keeping our focus on the things that really matter. Like making good memories, memories of sharing and caring and reaching out to others, with the ones we love.

Something that I have done right over the years is to establish a couple of nice traditions. My favorite Christmas tradition here in the Smith household is our Christmas breakfast. After all the presents are open and the wrappers have been picked up my wife Vickie and I go to work in the kitchen preparing a special breakfast. I start the link sausages and one of the kids makes up a bunch of orange juice while Vickie makes her world famous (at least in our world) Dutch Babies or German Pancakes. They are really outstanding and make our Christmas complete. Here’s the recipe:

Beat 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, 1/2 tsp sugar (optional) with 4 eggs until mixed thoroughly. Place two glass pie pans into 425 oven with a Tbsp of butter in each one. Heat pie pan until thoroughly hot and butter is melted. Pour half the batter into each heated pie pan and bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until Dutch baby is firm. Dust with powder sugar and serve with whipped cream and fruit or syrup or whatever turns you on. I prefer real maple syrup and whipped cream but Vickie likes fruit syrups or Wilderness pie filling and whipped cream. Good stuff, good memories. Merry Christmas!

The twelve days before Christmas are almost upon us and I haven’t lost the ten pounds I promised myself I would lose in preparation for all the holiday goodies that will be thrust in front of me. If I had some will power and if I didn’t mind hurting people’s feelings I would just say “no thank you”.

“No thank you” at Christmas time? That just doesn’t sound right. How do you say no thank you when Christmas is the time for giving and allowing others to give and experiencing the joy in the eyes of so many who have worked so hard to make their dearly departed Aunt Mable’s blue ribbon fudge or their Great Grandma Ethel’s special holiday cookies just for you?

Then there is the twelve days of Christmas where we, as a family, choose another family, make a little delicious treat of some kind each night for twelve nights, and leave it on a their doorstep, ring the bell and run. It’s a lot of fun and we get to experience the gift of giving along with the leftovers waiting for us at home. “No thank you” to all the leftover fudge and cookies and what have you littering the kitchen table at home every night for twelve nights?

Also there is my wife who likes to experiment with new recipes this time of year. One Christmas for about three weeks prior she tried a new cheese cake recipe every day. I would come home from work and there would be at least three beautiful cheese cakes of one kind or another waiting for me to taste test. “No thank you dear”, right. I gained an easy ten pounds that year.

No, “no thank you” doesn’t have a place at Christmas. Even if I did manage a “no thank you” no one would believe me. They would just smile like I was playing hard to get and wave that plate of goodies all piled high on top of one of those decorated Christmas plates under my nose until I caved. Which wouldn’t take too long. I’m weak. Besides like I said it’s Christmas. It’s not the time for saying no.

So that’s where losing the ten pounds come in. I figure If I lose the ten pounds before Christmas then I can enjoy myself during the holidays and make a lot of people happy. It’s almost my civic duty.

Last night I fixed dinner and for some reason I forgot about the ten pounds I was trying to lose. I didn’t fix anything too rich or fattening just a nice fresh pork shoulder picnic roast with mashed potatoes, a very tasty gravy from the drippings, some festive baked pumpkin served with just butter and a batch of wonderful hot from the oven rolls that the wife whipped up while I was mashing the potatoes. A very nice meal but not exactly diet food.

Oh well. The fresh picnic roast turned out very nice. Normally when I want a pork roast for dinner I grab a shoulder butt roast but I had a couple of fresh picnic roasts in the freezer.

I place the thawed out picnic in my large roasting pan and dumped three cans of cream of chicken soup and one can of cream of mushroom soup on top of it. I rubbed it all around and then sloshed a little bit of chicken stock in there as well for some moisture. Then I shook a generous amount of onion and garlic powder over everything and some ground pepper. Then I added about four tablespoons of red wine vinegar. I covered and baked for 4 1/2 hours at 300F. The roast turned out very tender and nice. I drained off the liquid form the roasting pan into a sauce pan and simple thickened with cornstarch for gravy. The meal was delicious. But it wasn’t low cal. It was however inexpensive. Fresh picnics are usually the cheapest item in the meat case. There is a fair amount of bone and fat that is discarded but still a pretty darn good value.

I guess if I can’t lose weight before Christmas maybe I can save money. Saving money at Christmas can be a good thing. Yeah, I’ll just say no thank you to spending money. I think I’m on to something here I’ll keep you posted.