Grey Food is not sexy AUDIO
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[00:00:00] So guys, this is one of my favorite topics to discuss, and today's podcast is titled, gray Food is Not Sexy. Now, in particular, when we are cooking things like ground beef or beef mince. And a lot of people blame their butchers for pumping the meat full of liquid to charge them extra per kilo. Now that actually is not the case.
And yes, there are some cuts of meat like bacon or ham where they might actually soak it in a brine to cure it. But when you have put beef mints, um, and stir fries are another one, we're gonna discuss that in another podcast. But when you have put beef mins into a. Pan that is not quite hot and you put it in the pan and then you are a compulsive stir.
What will happen is that meat will have no choice but to drop its liquid. Now, I know that that is gonna upset quite a few people because we love to stir things, and I always say you're a [00:01:00] compulsive stir risottos and soups are fabulous for you, but. When we are cooking something as simple as a beef mince.
And beef mince is fabulous because it is inexpensive and it is very versatile. I can do a hundred dishes, uh, with beef mince and still make them sexy enough to serve at a dinner party. But I'm talking about weeknight meals here, more importantly, and also just fixing your cooking methods. So I literally am gonna save you.
I always say as a joke, 20 years of your natural life, because if you are pouring gray liquid. Which has now come off your meat and you're blaming the butcher and you're pouring that gray liquid down the drain. You are in fact pouring the hope of the dish down the drain. So it's a quick little fix. Most recipes would've told you to brown the onions and the garlic, or saute the garlic and the onions.
In your pan and you would generally have a little bit of oil in there and then you would stir that. And so that's nice and translucent. That's absolutely fine, but when you put your 600 or [00:02:00] 800 grams of ice, cold beef mins, hopefully not frozen. Um, but that's life. Sometimes we have to do that. But when you put that into a medium heat pan.
It is not gonna have that glorious sizzle, um, or enough heat to actually start browning itself. And Browning is very important. And you can hear, I get very excited because Browning is an opportunity for the Mayard reaction to actually occur. And that's when we brown. And caramelize the meat. And that's when we get free flavor.
So what I do when I cook a bolognese or a Mexican mince, or, and I'll take you through some really, um, groovy ideas in a moment, but what I do is I take my non-stick pan. Put it on to the stove top. I get the pan swear word hot. Now when I say swear word hot, I mean swear word hot. So we are not going medium, we are not going low.
I then would grease it out, and this is totally up to you. Grease it out with a canola or a veggie oil or something that [00:03:00] you like to use. However, I would not use. In this instance, when I'm heating the pan, swear word hot. I would not use an extra virgin olive oil. Now extra virgin olive oil is gorgeous. I love to pour it over salads.
I love to make salad dressings out of it, and there's lots of other dishes I would do, but when I'm trying to brown something, extra virgin olive oil is like a little princess. I always say it does not like to get hot and sweaty or do any work. So it does tend to make things stick as well. So if you've ever cooked a piece of fish in a non-stick pan with extra virgin olive oil, it might not be your fault that that stuck, but that's another episode altogether.
I'm back to the beef mince. So when I put mine in the pan is swear word hot, I put that 800 um, or 600 grams of ice cold beef mince in there. What I want to hear is a big sizzle. Now, it's not going to burn unless you have a pan that is like nuclear hot. Your mince is not going to [00:04:00] burn. But what I want you to do is I always say back away from the pan, don't be tempted to stir too quickly.
Because what we do when we stir is we actually smother the heat in the pan. So if you are one of those chefs. That likes to put the mince in the pan and then flatten it. That is when you kill the heat in the pan. So what I do is I actually cook in half the side of the pan and I leave the other side empty or naked so that it is actually keeping its heat up.
Now if you are worried about your beef mints getting lumps. Totally understand that the best way to remove lumps outta your beef mince is either using your like an egg lift, like a plastic egg lift, or I like to use my plastic whisk. Now we've all got that crappy plastic whisk. It is not capable of beating cream, but what it is gonna be great for is if you just use it to actually fluff your beef mince.
Now that gets rid of all the lumps, [00:05:00] but we need to manage the heat. So I always say cooking is like having a relationship. So when there's a sizzle in your relationship and when they're talking to you, you know things are going well. So try keep the pan sizzling the whole time you are browning your beef mince.
And this goes for steaks and stir fries. But like I said, that's a different um, episode altogether. However, back to the relationship, if you are a compulsive stir, and this might be called nagging in a relationship, so say you. Stir and stir and you nag or nag, they are literally going to go quiet on you.
So that's exactly when your mince will, um, the pan will go quiet and generally that's when it starts crying. So. The liquid has now come out of the, uh, beef mitts because the beef was cold and all the liquid came out. Now, generally, if you are pouring that gray liquid down the drain, and I said earlier, that's pouring the hope of the dish, um, down the drain as well, but it's not that serious.
What we can [00:06:00] do is we can get it back like a relationship. You can always get them back. So we are scooping all the food to the side. One side of the pan. So use half the side of your pan, you are gonna put your heat up, swear word hot. So I want all that liquid to now have a chance to evaporate out of your pan and for that flavor and the moisture and the personality and all that gorgeous, um, stuff to actually cook back into, uh, beef min.
So I would actually then, and there was enough. Fish in even a lean or a four star, definitely in a three star beef mints, for you to actually use the heat of the pan to render all that very valuable fat, which is flavor out of that beef mi, no matter how lean it is. So I don't like to use a lot of oil when I'm cooking beef mints because generally if you've ever made a.
Um, bolognese or you know, any of those minced dishes and you've used a little bit of oil in the beginning with your onions and your garlic. You will find [00:07:00] that at the end you are spooning that oil off and I'm too lazy, far too lazy to do all that extra work later. So I also don't like to put extra oil.
Into my beef mins. I'm quite happy to have as many calories as possible in a dessert, but floaty fat coming outta beef mins, it's just not my thing, and I just don't like it. So I'm, I'm cooking quite lean because I'm rendering the fat out of the beef mins. Like I said, regardless of. Whether it's a three star or a four star, or a completely lean beef mins.
Um, so once I've done that and you, you're going, well, where's the flavor? So once I've done that and I've browned off that meat and it's gonna smell like roast beef, so already you will have valuable flavor in there without having to work to hard. Now we can add are finely chopped. Garlic and onion, and if you chop them fine, they cook quickly.
So don't worry about your onion not cooking through, I promise you that the onion with a little bit of heat, [00:08:00] with a little bit of stirring and with a little bit of time will be just as glorious as if it had had all the attention way back in the beginning. So trust me on this, it's gonna change the way you cook.
It's gonna save you heaps of time and heaps of stress. We wanna take the stress. Outta cooking. So now once the beef is beautiful and brown, scooch everything to the side on your empty part of the pan, the naked side, that is where we are gonna put our garlic and our onion. I'm then going to stir that through.
Get it nice and translucent, just like you would've done, um, in the beginning. And then when that's nice and cooked, I can stir it all through. I can add my spices, and then you can start adding, uh, things like your tomato pisata or your chopped fresh tomatoes. You can add, um, diced carrots or grated carrots.
Um, and then. I'm cooking at a lower temperature, so you don't need to go swear where hot the whole time. Um, but at this stage, when you brand it all off, we can now [00:09:00] start cooking at a lower temperature now. Um, I hope that helps you because, um, I just wanted to highlight that you are missing out on the flavor if you are cooking your mince at a low temperature because you are missing out on that beautiful browning that that happens now, um, with the beef mince, uh, we cook beef mi.
At home at least once a week, and it might be even a two week type thing because obviously beef mints, I can push that into burgers, I can do meatballs, I can do all that kind of thing. But beef mints, I always say I like to take it around the world, so my family never knows that I'm using the same cooking method.
Again and again, and once you have success, that first time with your Beef mints, you are literally gonna get excited and live happily ever after. With the Beef Mints, we can then take it around the world. So I'm talking about adding Mexican spices. So if you add a FTA mix or one of those other packets. Um, [00:10:00] Mexican spices, and then you serve your beautiful mince on corn chips or in a with tortilla, or in in tacos, however you want.
By changing the spices and the accompaniments, you can actually change the whole dish. So yes, it's just beef mince. Yes, we've cooked it perfectly. Yes, it's bursting with flavor. We can then change the personality as well. And this will make you very handy and very lazy, but very confident and happy in the kitchen as well.
So once you've done Mexican mince one too many times, you might decide to do a Spanish mi. So when I do a Spanish mince, I might take, um, chorizo sausage, so I even take frozen chorizo sausage. I put it into a food processor. And then what I might do is actually blend that chorizo sausage into a chorizo gravel.
Now that sounds, um, quite chefy, but what I'm talking about is we've had chorizo sausage before where it's been a slice. Now [00:11:00] a slice is gorgeous, but it's quite a. Robust flavor and the flavor is sort of concentrated just in that slice. What I like to do is pop that into the food processor, get it into a mince or into a gravel.
Now when we are cooking the beef mince and we are gonna call it Spanish, I'm gonna actually put that chorizo sausage in probably first 'cause I wanna render the fat out of there. Remember, FA is flavor. I can then add my. Minced beef. And then when the chorizo and the mince on ice and brown and you've, um, separated and fluffed it up with your, um, plastic whisk or your egg, um.
Egg lift, you can then add, um, beautiful smoked paprika. And obviously if you wanted to add some moisture, then I'm using chopped tomatoes or maybe a pisata, and then it's what we serve it with as well, which will make it more Spanish. So, um, if I'm wanting to go all the way with the Spanish pen, Spanish theme, um.
So if I'm wanting to go all the way with the Spanish [00:12:00] theme, what I would then do is serve it on a, uh, butter bean or a alini and garlic bean mash, which is straight out of the tin. Heat it up, blend it up. They have beautiful texture, those tin beans, so don't be ashamed to use them. And it makes a very velvety puree so very chefy indeed.
Once you've made the Spanish mins a few times, of course nothing beats, um, you know, using your Italian herbs, you know, beautiful bezel and sweet marum and those kind of things. That's one of my favorite, my family's favorite. Um, but also then maybe going. An Indian curry powder or even a North African or Moroccan spice blend called Ra nu.
Now ra nu is very easy to make yourself. You do need, um, fresh spices to, uh, blend it up so it would be cu and um. So it would be, uh, cumin and, uh, coriander, turmeric, fre, uh, there's about [00:13:00] 23 black pepper. You can buy them, of course. And I've got one in my range as well. And I call it a culinary spray tan because of that beautiful, um, percentage in there of the turmeric, um, or turmeric, as some people might say.
It actually does. Give your mince or whatever you're, you're cooking a little bit more personality and color and of course flavor. So when I'm doing, um, the Moroccan style with the rosel Nu, I might open and drain a ton of chickpeas and throw them in there, um, and serve it either, you know, on, like I said.
Um, either on the bean puree or if it's going Moroccan with those chickpeas through there. It's actually quite a substantial meal. And of course you can always serve it with a side salad or anything that you need. So, um, mince or beef mince or, um, ground beef has got. A bad reputation because it is economical.
But I promise you, if you are cooking it, [00:14:00] um, with flavor, it is gonna be, um, a dish that you can definitely use at a dinner party because, you know, if you think about lasagnas and um. Even if you're doing a lamb mince dinner, it would be like a masaka or something like that, but we can definitely pimp up our meat dishes and get away with it.
So don't feel bad about serving mince at a dinner party or at a weeknight meal, you know, if you've cooked it properly and if you're using maybe a Wagyu beef or something like that, well, of course, um, it would sound and taste a lot more expensive, but. Let me know how you do and if this cooking method has indeed given you some time back in the kitchen.
Because my mission is to help you live happily ever after in the kitchen. And in order for me to do that, I need to teach you all my little lazy shortcuts and hacks and tricks so that you can live happily ever after in your kitchen too. So guys, try [00:15:00] that with your next time that you cook. Uh, beef mince.
And let me know how you do and remember, grapefruit is not sexy. Step away from the pan. If there is a compulsive stir in your house, you have permission to smack them on the hands. And, um, uh, just tell them why you are trying to do what you're trying to do. It's supposed to be fun guys. And have a good time cooking in the kitchen.
Signing off from the Happy Chef.
