Meat – FoodWatcher

Steak Street Tacos with Chipotle Lime Coleslaw

Here’s a satisfying street taco recipe that comes together in a flash. It’s topped with a tangy chipotle-lime coleslaw that provides flavor, spice and crunch to these satisfyingly savory street tacos. When Aristotle said the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, he was talking about tacos, right? Because these tacos are made […]

When Aristotle said the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, he was talking about tacos, right? Because these tacos are made up of some seriously good parts: thin slices of savory seared steak, toasted flour tortillas, a tangy chipotle-lime slaw, and a sprinkle of pickled jalapeños and fresh cilantro.

Four steak street tacos on a black rectangular plate, with limes, pickled jalapenos and chipotle slaw

The perfect taco hits all the right notes, combining spicy and sweet, soft and crunchy, salty and tangy.

And these steak street tacos do just that, with thin slices of steak browned to perfection, and topped with a bright and crunchy slaw made with a mix of Duke’s Mayonnaise, smoky chipotle, and fresh squeezed lime juice.

Closeup of the filling of a steak street taco, topped with micro cilantro leaves and pickled jalapenos

What makes it a street taco and not just a regular taco? The size, essentially.

Street tacos are generally smaller, about 4-5″ in diameter versus a more typical 6″ corn tortilla or 8″ flour tortilla. The handheld size makes them easy to eat standing in the street. We’ve found both corn and flour tortillas labeled ‘street taco size’ recently, and although we opted to use flour here, you could really use either.

Even better… warm the tortillas in the same skillet with all the flavorful fat and brown bits leftover from cooking the steak. Inspired in part by a drool-worthy binge-watch of the Taco Chronicles series (which I highly recommend checking out), specifically the episode on Suadero tacos. This particular kind of taco is made with seasoned beef cooked long and slow in a bath of its own fat (beef confit, essentially); the tortillas are also drenched in fat and toasted prior to being loaded up with the juicy, flavorful meat and simple toppings.

While our steak tacos are not even close to authentic Suadero tacos (the thin slices of steak cook in mere minutes, rather than slow cooking for hours as is traditional), we were certainly inspired by the preparation and especially the brilliant step of fat-soaking the tortillas.

Since we can’t exactly travel to Mexico right now to enjoy the real thing, this will have to do.

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Is Mortadella the Best Cold Cut? (Is That Even a Question?)

Mortadella is having a moment.

As a cured meat obsessive, I’ve always vaguely known about it—mainly as an element of certain sandwiches, like the muffuletta. But it wasn’t until recently that I started encountering it almost every time I went out to e…

Mortadella is having a moment.

Freeze-Dried Fruit Makes Any Meat Taste Better

Fruit and meat is a timeless combination. Cantaloupe and prosciutto, mango and chicken, cranberry and turkey, apricot and lamb—I could go on.

And while nothing beats the magic that is, say, a peak-season fig enrobed in salty, cured ham, there’s a pant…

Fruit and meat is a timeless combination. Cantaloupe and prosciutto, mango and chicken, cranberry and turkey, apricot and lamb—I could go on.

And while nothing beats the magic that is, say, a peak-season fig enrobed in salty, cured ham, there’s a pantry-friendly alternative to channel the fruit-and-meat concept year-round: freeze-dried fruit.

How Hunting My Own Food Taught Me to Cook Mindfully

Welcome to Living Wild by Danielle Prewett, a wild game cook and contributing editor at MeatEater. In this series, she explores what it means to eat consciously and live mindfully. For Danielle, that way of life relies on hunting, fishing, foraging, an…

Welcome to Living Wild by Danielle Prewett, a wild game cook and contributing editor at MeatEater. In this series, she explores what it means to eat consciously and live mindfully. For Danielle, that way of life relies on hunting, fishing, foraging, and gardening. Her stories aim to inspire you to live a life more closely connected to the earth and to celebrate its natural bounty in your kitchen.

It’s midsummer here in Texas, but I’m finding myself thinking back to spring, when the temperatures were steadily rising and the growing season was in full swing. It was time to pull the radishes from my garden, the first of many vegetables to mature. With my hands covered in dirt, I gripped the bundle of vibrant pink roots and smiled. My heart was filled with content over this simple joy in life—harvesting food directly from the earth.

simple, essential bolognese

The very first thing I cooked in our Inside Days was ragú bolognese. Previous to having all of the time in the world, I didn’t make it very often; we were too busy during the week and on the weekend, I preferred to be away from the stove. But that weekend! Our apartment smelled phenomenal as it gently bubbled on the back burner all afternoon, and I realized it had been way too long since we’d had the luxury of a multi-hour buildup to an anticipated meal.

I also remembered I’d been cheating on this site’s bolognese recipe for many years, and it was time to come clean. Previously, my go-to recipe was embedded in the lasagna bolognese, and to echo that recipe’s caveat: I think there are as many interpretations of Bologna’s famous braise there are people who make it — if you’ve found yours, I see no reason to veer from it. Marcella Hazan’s in The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking has long been what you could call an industry leader, but I loved Anne Burrell’s, a milk-free, red wine-forward version that put the utmost care into building base layers of flavors.

Spicy Korean Egg Roll Bowls with Kimchi

Bowls over rolls—everything you love in an egg roll, now in an easy-peasy bowl form! These satisfying egg roll bowls provide all the fantastic flavors of egg rolls without the hassle of wrapping and frying. Sautéed cabbage, carrot and ground pork with a punch of spicy kimchi, served over a bed of rice. For all […]

Bowls over rolls—everything you love in an egg roll, now in an easy-peasy bowl form!

These satisfying egg roll bowls provide all the fantastic flavors of egg rolls without the hassle of wrapping and frying. Sautéed cabbage, carrot and ground pork with a punch of spicy kimchi, served over a bed of rice.

Spicy Korean Egg Roll Bowls with a bowl of rice, pinch bowl of sesame seeds, and whole purple radishes on a dark background.

For all the chaos in the world right now, food is proving to be a safe haven for a lot of us. I’m trying to see a silver lining to all of this, and I have to say that seeing so many people staying at home for the good of their communities, and cooking food for their families is heartwarming. If we all come out of this with a little more confidence in the kitchen, and a more conscientious approach to food waste, I think we’ll all be better for it in the end.

In the coming weeks we’re going to try to keep sharing recipes as best as we can, focusing on practical recipes utilizing pantry ingredients and incorporating fresh produce whenever we can (because while one can feasibly live on dried beans and pasta, it’s certainly not satisfying).

In these bowls, for example, both cabbage and carrots will keep quite well in the fridge for weeks, as does kimchi. Paired with some steamed rice and frozen pork from the freezer (you could also use ground turkey or chicken), it’s a practical recipe that doesn’t sacrifice on flavor.

Closeup of Spicy Korean Egg Roll Bowls with rice and thinly sliced green onion

This particular recipe was inspired by our most recent CSA box from Caney Fork Farms, which arrived with a whole head of napa cabbage, beautiful fresh carrots, gigantic green onions and the most beautiful purple daikon radishes I’ve ever seen.

We sort of threw this together on a whim, stir frying that lovely produce with some ground pork and all the spicy condiments we happened to have in our fridge. The result was so good, so deliciously spicy, that we had to make it again to share with you. Served atop a bed of steamed rice it really makes for one heck of a meal.

(And, if you’re in the Nashville area and interested in getting your own CSA delivered right to your front door, check out Caney Fork Farms. And psst! Use coupon code LOVEANDOLIVEOIL to save $25 off your first share!)

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Is the Meat of the Future Grown in a Lab? This Startup Thinks So.

The Fate of Food by Amanda Little is one of the most eye-opening books we’ve read in years. An award-winning journalist and professor at Vanderbilt University, Little spent three years traveling across the United States—and all over the world—chasing a…

The Fate of Food by Amanda Little is one of the most eye-opening books we've read in years. An award-winning journalist and professor at Vanderbilt University, Little spent three years traveling across the United States—and all over the world—chasing after one question: How are we going to feed a growing population amid an also-growing climate crisis? Her research led her everywhere from GMO corn farms in Kenya to a monsoon cloud above Mumbai. In the excerpt below, she visits Memphis Meats, a Berkeley-based startup that just received $161 million in new funding, has been invested in by the likes of Bill Gates and Richard Branson, and is now planning its first pilot production facility. Unlike other meatless-meat competitors (think Beyond Meat and Impossible), Memphis Meats is actually meat. You just don't need to slaughter any animals in the process.

Cofounded in 2015 by Uma Valeti, an Indian-born cardiologist, and Nicholas Genovese, a stem cell biologist, Memphis Meats is the world’s first start-up to grow meat in a laboratory using tiny samples of muscle, fat, and connective tissues taken from living animals. “We are a meat, poultry, and seafood company that makes end products no different than conventional meat, while eliminating the need for animal slaughter,” Valeti tells me in a phone call before my visit. He adds that the cells that are grown, or “cultured,” in his laboratories are “alive,” even though they’re not attached to the animal. They’re so alive, in fact, that the mature muscle tissue he produces actually responds—as in flexes, or spasms—when stimulated.

Tourtiere

I’m not going to beat around the bush here: The new Joy of Cooking is huge. When I first heard about it, I wondered, “Do we need a new Joy of Cooking?” First published in 1931, the book went through several revisions over the years, to become what has the most enduring of all American cookbooks. Yet I wondered if the book would (or could)…

I’m not going to beat around the bush here: The new Joy of Cooking is huge. When I first heard about it, I wondered, “Do we need a new Joy of Cooking?” First published in 1931, the book went through several revisions over the years, to become what has the most enduring of all American cookbooks. Yet I wondered if the book would (or could) still be relevant, in the age of the internet, and as several other books had come along through the year, that could also be considered “encyclopedias” of cooking. I had some doubts.

Continue Reading Tourtiere...

Slow Cooker Hanukkah Beef Brisket

This tender and flavorful slow cooker beef brisket is cooked low and slow until it practically falls apart, served with a sweet and tangy sauce that you’ll simply adore! Your new favorite beef brisket recipe is here! It’s really at its best the second day, making it the perfect make-ahead dish for your Hanukkah dinner […]

This tender and flavorful slow cooker beef brisket is cooked low and slow until it practically falls apart, served with a sweet and tangy sauce that you’ll simply adore!

Your new favorite beef brisket recipe is here! It’s really at its best the second day, making it the perfect make-ahead dish for your Hanukkah dinner party.

Modern white baking dish with sliced beef brisket and sauce poured over top

This brisket recipe is a culmination of a few years’ worth of trial and error.

(I don’t know why but I always want to spell brisket like biscuit… briscuit. My brain is weird…)

Anyway. Brisket. Why did it take so long to perfect this recipe? Well, we really only make brisket once a year: for our annual Hanukkah dinner party. So it’s taken us a few tries… and a few years… to get it right.

But let me just say that all that time has been well worth it… because this one’s a keeper!

Maybe you’re more like a twice-a-year brisket maker, for Hanukkah AND Passover (and, assuming you track down all Kosher-for-passover ingredients like soy sauce, this recipe works for both!) And really, who needs a holiday as an excuse? You could certainly make this for any occasion (or non-occasion even, this recipe would make a lovely Sunday night supper for your family).

Slow cooker beef brisket sliced and arranged in a white baking dish, sauce pouring over top.

Most Hanukkah brisket recipes call for braising the brisket in the oven at 350 for 3 to 4 hours. The first time we made brisket we followed one of these recipes, and the result was less than ideal.

To really get that ultra tender, fall-apart, melt-in-your-mouth brisket, you need to go way lower and way slower.

And the easiest way to do that? A slow cooker of course.

In the case of this brisket, 10 hours on low is just about perfect, resulting in a ridiculously tender piece of meat. Just how tender? Practically-fall-apart-when-you-try-to-serve it tender (tip: ditch the tongs for a thin, wide spatula).

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stuffed eggplant parmesan

I might be deeply ambivalent about:
* fall (less the weather cooling off and more how long it insists up staying cooled off for; doesn’t 8 months seem excessive?),
* stuffed vegetables (the good ones are great but the bad ones a very und…

I might be deeply ambivalent about:
* fall (less the weather cooling off and more how long it insists up staying cooled off for; doesn’t 8 months seem excessive?),
* stuffed vegetables (the good ones are great but the bad ones a very underseasoned-rice-in-green-peppers-cooked-until-soggy-and-gray, you know?),
* and eggplant parmesan (mostly the staggering amount of effort made to fry and crisp rounds of eggplant only to burrow it in crisp-cancelling sauce and cheese, why)

… but this dish manages to enlist parts of all three and it exceeded every expectation. I first spied a version of this on The Kitchn. I liked that you get all the flavors of a great eggplant parmesan including a crunch on top but with a lot less work. You could actually make this on a weeknight. The ingredient list is pretty short. Plus, we’re at that perfect cooking point in the year, when almost everything is not just in season but bountiful at the markets but it (occasionally) cools off enough that baking things in the oven is appealing again. It never lasts long enough and this is such a fun way to celebrate it.