Guinness Corned Beef

I was smarter this year then last year and bought my corned beef earlier then a couple of days before St Patrick's Day. Also with the way Mike has been working lately I decided to make our corned beef dinner on Sunday so we can all enjoy it together.

I usually make the recipe that is in the cookbook How to Cook Everything on page 439 for Corn Beef. It always comes out great and really the way I always have thought corn beef should come out. This year I found another recipe while I was searching for other Irish recipes and decided to give it a try.


Guinness Corned Beef
allrecipes.com

Ingredients
4 pounds corned beef brisket
1 cup brown sugar
1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle Irish stout beer (e.g. Guinness®)

Directions

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Rinse the beef completely and pat dry.

Place the brisket on rack in a roasting pan or Dutch oven. Rub the brown sugar on the corned beef to coat entire beef, including the bottom. Pour the bottle of stout beer around, and gently over the beef to wet the sugar.

Cover, and place in preheated oven. Bake for 2 1/2 hours. Allow to rest 5 minutes before slicing.

Note: During the last hour, you may put vegetables in the roasting pan as well. Try a wedge of cabbage, new potatoes, onion, carrots, etc. You may need to add a little more beer with your vegetables

Review: Oh my goodness this was THE best corned beef I have ever had or ever made! Like Mike said what gets more Irish then cooking meat in beer. I don't know why I never thought of it before but it makes perfect sense in a way. I did what a lot of people said in their reviews and cooked it in my crock pot. Most people seemed to have cooked it on low for 8-10 hours. I didn't have the time to do that so I cooked it on High for 4 hours and then added an extra 1/2 hour because I tossed in some carrots and potatoes. I also used larger cans of Guinness because I always buy the 4 pack that they sell at the supermarket. Another thing that most people stated in their recipes is that they used at least 2 cans when they put it in the crock pot (you need enough to cover the beef). I think I might have been able to get away with one but using two gives you a lot of leftover liquid which is better if you want to cook the veggies at the end. This is definitely a keeper and I sort of want to make it again but I will be good and keep it for that once a year treat.

Slow Cooker Beef Stew

Sometimes I just don't know what to make for dinner. I feel like I make the same stuff all the time which isn't a bad thing. It is just sometimes I like to make something different or something I haven't made in a long time. If I ask Mike what he would like to eat it has lately been beef stew every time I ask him. Most of the time he tells me this when I really don't have the time to make it.

He also wants me to make Heidi's Guinness beef stew...which is excellent but I did not feel like buying the beer to make it this time. I found another slow cooker recipe on all recipes that came out great!



Slow Cooker Beef Stew
allrecipes.com

2 pounds beef stew meat, cut into 1 inch cubes
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups beef broth
3 potatoes, diced
4 carrots, sliced
1 stalk celery, chopped

Place meat in slow cooker. In a small bowl mix together the flour, salt, and pepper; pour over meat, and stir to coat meat with flour mixture. Stir in the garlic, bay leaf, paprika, Worcestershire sauce, onion, beef broth, potatoes, carrots, and celery.

Cover, and cook on Low setting for 10 to 12 hours, or on High setting for 4 to 6 hours.

Review: Just the type of slow cooker recipe I like...super easy and not much extra work to it. It really is a pet peeve of mine when a slow cooker recipe calls for about an hour of work which I feel I can cook a whole meal in to begin with. I can talk about this pet peeve for a while so I won't start. The only thing I did different was to add some frozen peas to the pot about 45 minutes before it was done just because that was when I remembered to do it. I also cooked it on high for about 4 hours and then cooked it on low for about 2 hours. I know this is a keeper when Mike takes it for lunch the next day.

I have to say beef stew does not take the best looking pictures...

Chicago Style - Tribute to John Hughes

This month's Flavor of the Month theme is...A Tribute to John Hughes. If you don't know who he was, he was the writer/director of films like Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day off, Breakfast Club, National Lampoon's Vacation , and a lot more. He passed a way recently so what better way to make a tribute to someone, but with food. So the search began for ideas. I knew I didn't want to make something pink or something for breakfast, so I started to look through some of the movie trivia to see if I could find some fun fact to play with. What I discovered was that some of the films had a common location. Chicago!! Did you know that Chevy Chase wore the same Chicago Cubs hat in all the vacation movies?!? So I started to looking for things from Chicago.

The one thing I knew for sure that Chicago was known for was their Deep dish Pizza, but than I also came across Chicago style hot dogs and Italian Style Beef sandwiches. I make pizza all the time so I that was out, but the more I read about the Chicago style hot dog, the more it sounded good. So I decided to invite some family over for the first football game for some ball and dogs. But once the word got out more people said they would come over so I also made the Italian Beef as well.

Chicago Style Hot Dog

Ingredients (in order of assembly)

Poppy Seed Bun (see below)
All Beef Hot Dog
Yellow Mustard
Bright Green Relish

Fresh Chopped Onions

Two Tomato Wedges

Pickle Spear or Slice

Two Sport Peppers

Celery Salt


It's funny how certain items are regional. I had trouble finding two of the items needed to make a Chicago Style Hot Dog. One was the bright green relish and the other was sport peppers. I found a website I could have ordered them from, but I decided to just find similar products and no one knew the difference. Everyone thought the Chicago Style Hot Dogs were tasty, but not something they would eat all the time.

Since assembling a hot dog wasn't really a challenge I decided to try to make the Poppy Seed Buns. I was in luck when I found a recipe on King Arthur's website. I don't think they came out exactly the way they were suppose to, but the guys thought that the crunch of the buns really added an extra special touch to the whole experience.

Poppy Seed Buns

The recipe is kind of long so I linked the recipe above to bring you to King Arthur's site.

Italian Beef Sandwiches

So, the hot dogs were for the earlier games and for the later games I made the Italian Beef. It couldn't have worked out better. Since the beef was done in the slower cooker I was able to enjoy the day without having to stay in the kitchen. With this recipe you have the option to cook it on high for 4-5 hours or on low for 10-12. I started on high for a few hours and than turned it to low. Things always taste better when it's low and slow.


Ingredients

3 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon onion salt
1 teaspoon dried parsely
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 bay leaf
1 (.7 ounce) package dry Italian-style salad dressing mix
1 (5lb) rump roast

DIRECTIONS

- Combine water with salt, ground black pepper, oregano, basil, onion salt, parsley, garlic powder, bay leaf, and salad dressing mix in a saucepan. Stir well, and bring to a boil.
- Place roast in slow cooker, and pour salad dressing mixture over the meat.
-Cover, and cook on Low for 10 to 12 hours, or on High for 4 to 5 hours. When done, remove bay leaf, and shred meat with a fork.

Everyone really enjoyed the beef. It was tasty and something difference. I usually make pulled pork for large crowds, but the beef was a nice change.

Enjoy!!

An Apple A Day...

Since I can remember my family has always gone apple picking each fall. We would make a day of it and just have a great time. Which is a tradition I am excited to pass on to my family. We weren't able to go last year because we were in CA and they didn't have any orchards near where we were living (we went pumpkin in Half Moon Bay).

This year is a completely different story because we are back in NY after about 6 years and very close to my favorite place to go apple picking...Lawrence Farms. This trip was also Jacob's first time going apple picking so we made a day of it. Heidi was coming over to spend the day with us and we called up my in-laws (which I also found out that my in-laws have never ever before gone apple picking)...and headed out to the orchards.


I thought to myself what would make this day perfect...Pulled Pork for dinner from the slow cooker. I heard from other neighbors that my neighbor Cathy had an awesome recipe for it...so I asked for it.

Dave's Pulled Pork Sandwiches

4-5lb Pork Shoulder/Butt Roast
Rub
3 Tbls Chili Powder
2 Tbls Onion Powder
2 Tbls Garlic Powder
2 Tbls Brown Sugar
1 Tbls Ground Mustard
1 Tbls Paprika
1 Tbls Cayenne Pepper
1 Tbls Salt
2 cans Coca Cola
1 bottle Barbeque Sauce ( I used KC Masters)
Rolls ( I used "Martin's Potato Rolls")

Combine rub ingredients and coat outside of the pork roast. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate a few hours or overnight.

Preheat dutch oven on stove on high and preheat oven to 300 degrees (or put slow cooker on high). Brown pork roast in dutch over (or in slow cooker) on all sides. Turn off stove (or turn slow cooker down to 300 degrees/low). Add enough Coca Cola so that the liquid comes up 1/2 way up the roast. Cover dutch oven and place in oven (or cover slow cooker). Braise pork roast until it's tender enough that it can be completely pulled apart by a fork - this will take several hours. Shred entire roast into small pieces using forks. Add bottle of barbeque sauce and mix together. Serve on rolls.

My Review: I AM IN LOVE...with this pulled pork recipe. Clearly the best I have ever made or had in my life. The rub adds a nice layer of spice to the meat. The rub has a little kick to it but it isn't so spicy that you can't eat a ton of it. Adding the bbq sauce to the cola sauce really makes it taste great. I will defiantly make this recipe again and I am excited that I have leftovers. This recipe is a keeper!