Beef

Beef stew

~ nzthermomixmum
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Beef stew 

http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/main-dishes-meat-recipes/beef-stew-buttermilk-dumplings/40182

It’s a sad day, we’ve decommissioned our  pressure cooker  for fear of explosions from recent news reports . The pressure cooker was mostly dragged out for a quick 20 minute beef casserole. Found a very similar one on the recipe community for the thermomix ( link above) except we don’t use tomato paste in our pressure cooker stew ( recipe below )   The thermomix recipe for beef stew had 112 favourable comments, a quick 5 minute prep tmx chops the garlic and onion before it sautes. Even better buy the pre -diced beef too. Cooked a little longer (15 mins) than time on the recipe waited for beef to be soft. Also added celery and substituted the peas for snow peas  and the dumplings for boiled potatoes. Will add mushrooms next time. Easy family food .

For my daughters  , here’s the other recipe we normally use in case safe pressure cookers come back .

Our pressure cooker beef stew

  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1 small onion
  • 900g – 1kg cubed beef stew meat
  • 5 carrots, peeled and diced
  • chopped herbs
  • 8 medium baking potatoes, peeled and cubed
  • 1 Tb chicken stock paste
  • 2cups water
  • 2 teaspoons cornstarch
  • 2teaspoons salt, or to taste
  • pepper to taste

Sauté onions , saute beef separately, then  add stock , water, and carrots to beef and onions . Add any chopped herbs you wish, cook in pressure cooker for 20 minutes, or casserole dish in oven for 1.5 to 2 hours. Boil potatoes on stove while the stew is cooking. Bring stew to boil and add cornstarch to thicken,  salt and pepper to taste.

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Beef casserole 

 

Shepherds Pie

~ nzthermomixmum
Shepherds pie
Shepherds pie

Guided shepherds pie recipe from basic cookbook chip. Mash potato topping super smooth ( guided recipe) and tasty even without parmesan. Tip: make sure potatoes diced 1cm to ensure they are soft before bring whipped into mash. Served with raw broccoli salad. Scrummy, the kids love both these dishes.

Sous Vide Steak

~ nzthermomixmum
image
Sous vide steak

http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/main-dishes-meat-recipes/perfect-sirloin-steak/172669 Whoah, this is super cool. If you’ve ever wanted to try sous vide then this method from Gary Mehigan ( Australia’s Masterchef judge see link above) is a perfect way to start. I used two scotch fillets and put them into a snap lock bag with thyme and olive oil.

Steaks with thyme and olive oil in snap-lock bag
Steaks with thyme and olive oil in snap-lock bag

They are cooked in the steamer basket at 50 c for 45 minutes with a litre of preheated water in the Tm bowl.  ( for Tm5 you will need to put water to just cover the steaks, Gary’s recipe was created for the tm31 which has a smaller bowl size  ) It’s important to make sure the seal is  closed completely so no water can enter the bag. See below for a tip on how to make sure the air is taken out of the snap lock bag. Once finished cooking, take steak out of bags and they’re  ready to pan fry 1- 1 . 5  minutes each side, comes out perfect medium rare steak. So tender and juicy and infused with that wonderful thyme flavour. Simple and amazing.

TIP ( from Thermomix forum pages)

“Sous Vide literally means “Under Vacuum”. If you do not have a vacuum sealing machine you may be able to expell most of the air by using a ziploc bag and submerging it in a bowl of water until only the zip part of the bag is exposed. Zip the bag closed and then remove it from the water.

(Do not allow water to enter the bag)”.

imageServed on cauliflower purée recipe found on the back of a Stevens flyer courtesy of Ben Bayley.  Miss 8 demolished one steak while my back was turned. And it got the big tick from Miss 14 too. I’m thinking this would work perfectly for thai beef salad. Not sure how you would increase the quantity of steaks or a large family but he has some good tips for saving the precooked steaks in the fridge and browning off later. So you could sous vide a few batches ready for the BBQ later.

Cauliflower purée ( Ben Bayley ) 

  • One cauliflower ( in florets )
  • 200 g cream
  • 200 g milk
  • salt and pepper to taste

Add cauliflower to TM bowl, blitz gradually to a paste at speed 8 for a few seconds.  Add rest ingredients, cook 20 mins, 100 C, speed 2. Then blend gradually from speed 1 to speed 10 for a minute until a fine purée. Keep warm. Nb this does make quite a bit of purée  but it’s delicious on it’s own too. Like a light cauliflower soup.

Another cauliflower mash recipe with less cream is this one below from the recipe community

http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/side-dishes-recipes/cauliflower-mash/17520

Article on sous vide:

Why Cook Sous Vide?

Lebanese style meatballs

~ nzthermomixmum
Lebanese style meatballs
Lebanese style meatballs

http://chelseawinter.co.nz/meatballs-recipe-with-yoghurt-dressing/

Another good Chelsea Winter recipe. A  different flavour profile on the old meatballs, lemon zest, cumin, allspice, ginger and feta make them super tasty. Used the thermomix to blend the garlic, onion, lemon peel, slice of bread and herbs at speed 7 for a few seconds, threw in the mince and the spices and feta mix on dough mode for about 30 seconds until combined.  Pan fried meatballs. Served with salad, yoghurt dressing and toasted  pita bread for a fast meal. Delicious .

Cottage Pie

~ nzthermomixmum
Cottage Pie
Cottage Pie

http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/main-dishes-meat-recipes/cottage-pie/44741

Our Friday afternoon snack, we were off for a spot of late night shopping. The photo is poor, clearly no food styling. The kids took it out of the oven and helped themselves while I was preoccupied and slapped this piece on a plate for me, the rest was not fit to be photographed because it looked like a dog’s breakfast after they started helping themselves.

Its a super easy, tasty recipe from the community ( link above) , took note of a few comments and reduced liquid to 100g so I didn’t have to thicken it later. Add some vegetables to make it a one dish meal. Mash potato topping uses  the guided recipe for mash potato.

From Wikipedia : what is difference between cottage pie and shepherds pie ( always thought they were the same thing )

….. The term “shepherd’s pie” did not appear until 1877,and since then it has been used synonymously with “cottage pie”, regardless of whether the principal ingredient was beef or mutton. More recently, some people have used the term “shepherd’s pie” when the meat is lamb, the theory being that shepherds are concerned with sheep and not cattle……

Spaghetti with Meatballs

~ nzthermomixmum
Spaghetti with meatballs
Spaghetti with meatballs

Very keen to get back into the kitchen today. We’ve had a few days away on family vacation and after a six hour drive home, we wanted quick simple food. Even though we had some lovely restaurant meals,  we were all looking forward to home food.  I was super touched when Miss 8 said “Are you cooking tonight?  I said yes,  she said “yah, just what I feel like “. Meatballs  in tomato sauce has been posted before but I can’t resist reposting it tonight. What we love about this guided meatball in tomato sauce recipe is the steamed meatballs are so light and the sauce has a very clear clean taste and because nothing is fried, there’s hardly any oil used at all. You’d never believe steamed meatballs could taste so delicious. The meatballs are just made from bread ( just used one old bun from the cupboard)  soaked in milk, two eggs, mince, onion and garlic and the tomato sauce is just 2 tins of crushed tomatoes sautéed in onion and garlic. So simple but absolutely so good and exactly what we all felt like on a cold, wet , windy night.  Boiled pasta in the thermomix and dinner is ready in the time it takes to unpack our bags, which is literally what we did while the thermomix cooked our dinner. image

Crumbed Beef Schnitzel

~ nzthermomixmum
Crumbed beef schnitzel
Crumbed beef schnitzel

http://chelseawinter.co.nz/crumbed-schnitzel/

Yummy schnitzel, working through Chelsea Winter’s blog recipes and next on the list to try was crumbed Beef Schnitzel. 

It’s a lot more effort to make crumbed beef schnitzel. The thermomix doesn’t help much with this one. But wanted to make two nights meals and lunches in one night and it helps when you have a teenager on hand who’s keen to bash,  crumb and fry the schnitzels  while mum cleans up. The thermomix was used to blitz the herbs and old bread to make panko. Blended bread  speed 9/10 until sound changes.

Panko made from bread ends.
Panko made from bread ends.

We sprinkled salt onto each schnitzel as it cooked and these were great wrapped in lettuce. Didn’t need the Parmesan sauce.  Another goodie to be saved to favourites.

Swedish style meatballs

~ nzthermomixmum
Swedish style meatballs
Swedish style meatballs

Swedish meatballs

Another winner Chelsea Winter recipe from her blog, link above. Made her Swedish style meatballs tonight and they are delicious. The sauce has a beef stock, cream and mustard base which makes a nice change from a tomato based sauce. Used the thermomix to prepare the mince. Chopped onion and herbs at speed 8, added all other meatball ingredients and mixed for 2 minutes on dough mode. Then followed Chelsea’s recipe from there to roll meatballs and make sauce. Miss 8 raved about the sauce, “if you put it in a drink bottle I would drink it!”  The recipe makes a large amount of meatballs, froze half for another day, and only cooked half the sauce tonight. To save time in the evening, you could prepare meatballs ahead, refrigerate, and then make sauce later and reheat meatballs in sauce. Yummy recipe!

Creamy Beef Curry

~ nzthermomixmum
Creamy Beef Curry
Creamy Beef Curry

http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/main-dishes-meat-recipes/creamy-beef-curry/78535

Oh my goodness, this beef curry from the recipe community  is sooooooo good. Everyone loved it and it’s definately worth the 5 stars and 200 favourable comments. Miss 8 usually can’t eat curry but couldn’t get enough and even ate it on it’s own without rice. Left out the chillies and used fresh tomatoes because we didn’t have tin tomatoes (blitzed a few seconds at speed 5 after adding them) and just added a tablespoon of tomato paste instead.  Substituted coconut milk for the small amount of cream. Served with stir fry vegetables was a huge hit  tonight and will be definately be a family favourite. Would be awesome with lamb too.

PS The turmeric unfortunately does stain the lid but I’ve been told placing in sunlight will break down the colour. PSS And it does work! A couple days later the colour  has faded away. Still slightly discoloured but not noticeably.