Get More Bang for Your Food Budget Buck Series Part III: Turning Cheap Cuts of Meat Into Stellar Meals.

The Art of Braising

Meat is usually the most important expensive part of an entire meal. However, you don't have to live off ground chuck and bulk boneless, skinless chicken breasts to save a few bucks on meat. We've already talked about turning your single chicken breast piece into 2 portions by making cutlets, but we can do better. Let's talk a little about braising.

Braising is a fancy term that basically means cooking a piece of meat at a low temperature for a long period of time. (Low and Slow). Braising is not the technique you want to use when you are trying to whip out dinner in thirty minutes. However, if you are going to be working around the house all day, say on a weekend, putting a hunk of meat in the oven to braise all day will result in an awesome meal by dinner time. What's also cool as this big effort will likely produce leftovers you can eat on a couple days, or freeze for another time. You also don't have to constantly be checking on these meals. Check on them every hour or two only! Here's the low down.

Braising was developed as a method for cooking cheap, otherwise unpalatable cuts of meat. Some cuts of meat that are commonly braised are roasts, briskets, pork butt (which is really the shoulder by the way), stews, dark meats on birds, or meats that have lots of connective tissue. These meats are tough because they are big muscles that the animal uses a lot. Think of a man with 6 pack abs, if you punched it really hard, it would be really tough. Same concept. 

So how does braising work? Think of braising as similar to a hot sauna. When you first walk in you are totally shocked by the heat and you tense all up, but after awhile your muscles relax and you just turn to putty. That's basically braising.

So what special tools do you need to braise? Truth be told, you don't need any fancy equipment to braise; however, there are a variety of ways to do it if you do have gadgets gathering dust. You can braise in a cast iron dutch oven, corning ware (ceramic dishes), earthen ware pots with lids, and a crock pot. Lost the lid? We can work with that, too.

Okay, I am not going to do any specific recipes for this post. Don't be scared though, I will provide you with the basic steps that will get you through any braising process.

10 Steps for Braising:
1.  Don't even THINK about doing this technique if you only have an hour to cook. Just a friendly reminder.

2.  Season the meat with a dry spice combo that you enjoy. Don't know much about spices? Use salt and pepper. Cover the whole dang thing really well.

3. Heat a few tablespoons of oil or butter in a heavy pan or your Dutch oven.

4. Sear your meat in the pan on medium-high heat until the meat browns on the outside only. Make sure to brown all sides. DO NOT freak out if it sticks a little. That crusty crud is important for later!

5. After your meat is seared, move it in your braising pot or crock pot. If you seared it in your dutch oven, disregard this step.

6. This sounds fancy but don't panic! You are going to deglace the pan. WTH does that mean? You are simply going to get the crusty crud off the bottom of the pan by pouring broth, beef stock, wine, water, or juice and scraping with a spatula. Why? Because brown food is delicious and that crust = flavor, flavor, flavor.

7. If you notice a bunch of oil floating to the top, don't worry, we can skim that off later. Pour the liquid and crusty bits into your braising pot, careful not to rinse off all your meat's seasonings.

8. Add a cooking liquid (water, stock, wine, juice or some combination) to the half-way point of the main ingredient.

9. Add some chunky cut, aromatic veggies to the pot. Perhaps an 1-2 quartered onions and 3-4 rough cut celery stalks. Cover and place the meat on the middle of a rack in an oven that has been pre-heated to 200-300 degrees Fahrenheit. Lost the lid to that pot? Simply wrap the top tightly with foil. Remember, we want a sauna!

10. Cook until completely tender. This can range from 1 hour to 6 hours, depending on the type of meat you are using. Check on the meal every hour or two. If the liquid has boiled out, turn down the heat and add more. It will be tough and dry without the liquid. Feel free to spoon some liquid over the top of the meat when you check it, just for fun. Beef takes the longest to cook, followed by pork, then birds.

Here are 2 braised meals I made one day Chopped style because I was at Jon's parents. (Chopped contestants have to plan and cook an meal with the basket of mystery ingredients). The meal fed 13 people for only $30. The sides were rice and mashed potatoes. In The bulk of the cost was 10 chicken thighs with legs. The remaining was for the celery and a sack of potatoes. Everything else, I thought on my feet and pulled from their pantry. No recipes, just thinking on my feet. Total cost per person: Less than $3.

Seasoned with rosemary, salt, pepper, and butter, seared in butter, and braised at 300 with celery carrots and onion. Covered with foil. Total cook time: 2 hours. Results: A rich buttery flavor and velvety texture.

Seasoned with salt, pepper, and brown sugar. Seared in olive oil. Covered with onion, BBQ Sauce and Bacon bits!!!! Braised at 3oo degrees covered in foil. Total cook time 2 hours. Result: A sweet and salty BBQ flavor, tender and moist.

Get More Bang for Your Food Budget Buck Part II: Menu Planning and Plan Ahead Prep

If you are like most of Americans, you rush home after work and have about 10 seconds of private bathroom time before the kids are banging on the door screaming “What’s for dinner!?” Again, like the majority of us, you draw a blank. You open your fridge and see a hodge podge of ingredients and think, “What can I make with that?” Have no fear; we are going to turn a little bit of this in that into a few staple meals. Let’s get crackin’!


Let’s start with a little planning. Remember the notepad from your fast food favorites list? Pull that sucker out. Turn it to a clean page and gather the family around the table. Ask everyone at the table if they could choose dinner tonight, what would they want to eat? I’m going to give you 5 days worth of dinners that you can make on the spot if you plan and prep ahead just a little. This will help you when you are going to the grocery store, because you know what you are going to cook for the week and you can stick to a list of those items. This cuts back on wasted food, time searching for items, and impulse shopping. Let’s see some common favorites:

• Spaghetti and Meat Sauce

• Tacos/Fajitas

• Meatloaf

• Chicken (strips/nuggets/breasts)

• Chicken Pot Pie

Believe it or not, you can crank most of these meals out in about 30 minutes if you plan ahead and have the prep work knocked out ahead of time. When you think about how these meals are more similar than different:

Okay now. You’re probably still freaking out about this, but now let’s talk about prepping these meals in advance so that all you have to do is throw the ingredients together and go.

Let’s start with the meat. As you can see from the diagram, we have six of the meals where half require ground meat (beef or turkey) and the other half requires chicken breasts. When you go to the store, buy a big container of ground beef and a bag of frozen chicken breasts. You will need ½ to ¾ of a pound of ground meat per person, per meal and 1/2 to 1 whole chicken breast piece per person. You will also need sandwich or quart size Ziploc bags. I do all my shopping on Saturday, and do all my prep when I get home. If I were going to make those 6 meals this week, here is how I would begin the prep:

1. Plan Which Day to Cook What Meal: Select which day I want to have each meal and write it on a notepad on the fridge. Mondays are my busy day, so I pick the meal that is quickest to prepare (spaghetti). I don’t like eating beef three days in a row, so I decide I’m going to have beef meal alternated with chicken meals. That way everyone know which dinner is coming up.

2. Prepping Bulk Ground Meat: I crack open my beef and I put enough meat per person for one meal in each bag. For our household of 2, we put in 1 lb or a good fistful approximation of ground beef per bag. Push the meat flat in the bag so it stacks nicely, and thaws quickly after being removed from freezer. When you have divided up all your beef, you will know how many meals you can get out of it. We have found that we actually use a lot less meat this way. $$$!

3. Prepping Bulk Chicken Breasts: Next, go after the chicken. Decide how you want to prepare your chicken. The pot pie and chicken nuggets require smaller pieces, so I cube up the chicken into small pieces, putting those in a bag. Some chicken breasts are mutant large and you can get away with making two cutlets out of them. To make a cutlet, cut the breast in half lengthwise, then mash it a little flatter with your palm. Put a cutlet for each person needing a meal, per bag. Cutlets are how restaurants get their chicken breasts to go farther. Chicken Parmesan, Chicken Fried Chicken, Chicken Teriyaki, etc. are all made with chicken cutlets. Tacos/Fajitas/ Chicken strips will require you to cut your chicken into strips. Cut accordingly.

Cutting a breast lengthwise will make two cutlets

4. Freezer Organization: If you have extra plastic baskets laying around, consider labeling them as beef or chicken, etc. so your mini bags of meat are quickly identified in their buckets. It will help keep all your bags organized, give you a good visual about how much meat you have left, and can help little ones who want (need to) help identify different types of meat. Example: beef is in a red bucket, chicken is in white. "Jenny, open the freezer and pull out one bag from white bucket and put it in the fridge for mommy."

(c) Jem from Dog Food Forum

An alternative approach care of "Crazy Cake Lady"

Now let’s talk a little about prepping veg. Most meals require some aromatics. What is an aromatic? A vegetable used as a flavor base for cooking, usually by sweating or sautéeing. Carrots, onions, garlic, peppers, and celery are all aromatics. All the meals we listed will require aromatics in different sizes. I like to buy garlic that is pre-diced in a jar, but all the rest I will cut myself. Guess what, they rarely go bad because I only pull out what I intend to use right away. Yes, you can buy pre-diced onions, celery, carrots, etc. If you are in a big time crunch and don't mind spending the extra money go for it and buy the pre-chopped stuff. You can save a lot more by doing it yourself though. If you feel more comfortable starting out with the pre-cut stuff and then moving to chopping yourself, it's a good baby step to getting started cooking at home. No judgment.

Onions are a must for all these meals, whether in sliced or diced forms. Sliced onions are the kinds you use for fajitas where diced is the small little cubes. Now because there are plenty of videos on how to dice an onion, and because I am not yet a domestic goddess when it comes to dicing, I am just going to refer you here to watch a video on how to do it here. This takes practice, but you will get faster each time you do it. It's important to take your time and make uniformish pieces so that they will cook at the same rate. I put the diced onion in a Ziploc and slap in the freezer. It will quickly thaw so defrosting is no biggie. (Feel free to make a sliced onion and bell pepper medley bag for tacos/fajitas if that suits your fancy.) Chop some celery into smaller, bite sized pieces and bag. Ditto with the carrots.

The hard work is done now. All your big prep for each meal is ready to go when you are. So let's talk about the next step we delayed earlier: Getting your family involved! Rituals, rituals, rituals.

1. First Person Home Pulls Out the Meat: Starting when I was about 8 years old, my mom would call me after when my school bus arrived home and asked me to pull out a package of whatever meat was on the menu for that night. The first person home checks the week's menu on the fridge, and pulls out one bag of meat that is required for that meal. Put the whole bag on a plate to thaw on the counter, out of sunlight. Because you have prepped all these little bags, it will defrost faster than the whole big container, and you will only use what you need. No kids to do this step? Before you go to bed, check the menu the night before, and place that meat in the fridge to defrost. It will be waiting for you when you get home.

2. Mise en place: What the heck does that mean!? Mise en place is simply French for "everything in place". Since you already know what meal you are going to cook because you have it all right there on the fridge, you have all your ingredients put together on your counter ready to go before you start cooking. This is a great step to do with kids 6 and up. Ask them what they think goes in spaghetti, what do they need? Have them go to the pantry and fridge to pull those out.

3. Starches take the longest to cook, start them first: How many times have you started a meal, only for one part of it to be getting cold while the rest is still cooking. It's a common problem, I still do it myself. The thing to remember is that starches like potatoes, biscuits, etc. take the longest and should be started first, followed by your meats, and your veg last.

Mise en place for lemonade syrup.

With these simple steps, the time it takes to make dinner will be cut back significantly. You'll be proud of your results when you see a week's worth a meal prep ready to go for the next week. As children get older, they can start taking on more tasks in the cooking department until they are cooking a meal a week independently. This is an important life skill that will help build confidence and self esteem. Good luck!

Are you making any changes you that you have read about? What did you do, how much did you save, and what did you learn? Tell me about it in the comments!

Next in the “Get More Bang for Your Food Budget Buck” Series: The Art of Braising, Turning Cheap Cuts of Meats Into Stellar Meals With Very Little Effort.

Kick Ass Shepherd's Pie

Hey guys! I am so excited to tell you about this recipe and how I pulled it off flawlessly by "thinking like a chef" and bypassing some goof-ups I made early on and turning out an excellent meal. 

I am proud to say even the leftovers are now gone, which says a lot in this house. Jon was very sweet with his compliments: "This is so good that not only would I eat it again if you made it, I would feed it to other people." That's my man, forever the charmer. 

Let's rock out some Shepherd's Pie, kids! 

First things first, Shepherd's Pie is traditionally made with ground lamb or cubed lamb shoulder. Not only is mutton a little difficult and pricey to get our hands on here in Houston, we aren't the biggest lamb eaters. Instead, I used ground beef. It was magnificent. I imagine if you want to use beef stew meat diced into very small cubes (like 1/4") you could use that as well. 

I made my Shepard's Pie off of Chef Anne Burrell's Shepherd's Pie. If you want her recipe, click her name. How I made mine is listed below:

• Olive oil, as needed
• 1 pound ground beef
• Salt
• 3-4 heaping Tablespoons of flour
• 1-2 ribs celery, cut into 1/4-inch dice
• 3 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch dice
• 1 quarter to 1/2 of a large onion
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed and finely chopped. (Garlic powder got me through because I just ran out of fresh)
• 1/4 cup tomato sauce
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 3 to 4 cups chicken stock
• 1 fat pinch of thyme
• 2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch dices
• 3/4 to 1 cup milk (warm if you have the time)
• 2 to 3 tablespoons butter
• 1/2-1 cup frozen peas

You'll notice that mine will make a smaller portion, feeds 2 starving, college frat boys, or 4 people eating moderate portions with a dinner roll or something. As previously mentioned, mine is made with beef instead of lamb. In addition, I added a bit of onion because, hey, why not? Also, my Shepherd's Pie is differing from Chef Anne's because it is missing leeks, tomato paste and bay leaves. Why? I didn't have them and had to make do (due?). 

Haha. I just said doodoo. *crickets* Ahem, moving on.

I also didn't have fresh thyme, so I think like a chef and improvise. I used a pinch of the dry stuff instead. As far as the tomato paste goes, thought I had it but I didn't. It was tomato sauce. I used a quarter cup of it instead and slipped the remainder into a half used jar of pasta sauce that was hiding out in the fridge. No one was the wiser.

Enough stalling, let's get to the heavy lifting.

Distructions:

Coat a wide pan, like a sauce pan, with olive oil and bring to a medium-high heat. Season the beef with salt and toss with the flour. Add the beef to the pan and brown well. Remove the beef from the pan and reserve in a bowl you have lying around. Ditch the oil in the pan and add a splash new olive oil.

Add the celery, carrots, and onion to the pan. Season the mixture with salt and cook, stirring frequently until the vegetables are soft and very aromatic, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 2 to 3 minutes more. Add the beef back to the pan and stir to combine.

Add the tomato sauce and cook until the tomato sauce starts to brown, about 2 to 3 minutes. Then, add the wine and cook until it reduces by half.

I love cooking with wine. Sometimes it actually makes it into the dish.

Add enough stock to just cover the surface of the beef mixture. Taste and season with salt and pepper, if needed. Sprinkle in the thyme. Bring the stock to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Partially cover and simmer for at least 30 minutes to an hour, or until the kids start complaining that they are starving. If you are using the stew meat, you will need to continue cooking until the meat is tender. When the stock level reduces replace with more to keep the meat just submerged.

In the mean time, we have to make the mashed potato topping. Place the potatoes in a medium saucepan and cover by 1-inch with tap water. Season the water with salt and bring the water to a boil. Boil the potatoes until they are fork tender, about 15 minutes. Drain the water from the potatoes They don't have to be soupy or super creamy. They need a little heft to them to stay on the top of the pie and form a hardy "crust".  Get one of the kids to mash them with a hand tool or mixer while slowly adding the butter and milk. Taste and season with salt, if needed.

Remove the lid from the beef and add the peas. Simmer for 15 minutes more to allow the stock level to reduce. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if needed. When done, the beef mixture should be thick and stew-like. Not soupy.

Preheat the broiler.

Transfer the beef mixture to a wide, flat baking dish like a Corningware dish. Spread the mashed potatoes over the beef mixture in an even layer.

Just like this...

Place the baking dish under the preheated broiler. Broil until the potatoes are golden brown and crispy. Don't walk off! This only takes a few minutes and if you aren't paying attention, they will burn. If you are as truly awesome, your dish will come out like this:

Okay, not very pretty, but damn tasty.

Enjoy!