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HomePosts Tagged "best food storage"

I will never understand how restaurants can get away with charging a hundred bucks for a piece of old beef steak. Sure, it’s delicious, melts in your mouth, but, c’mon, does a man have to sign an arm-and-leg lease to enjoy a good steak? Anyway, should’ve started by saying that I’m a big fan of aged food; cheese, fish, meats.

You name it! The bad news is that these are not the types of foods one can make at home. Or so I thought after stumbling upon this recipe. The funny part is that I was actually looking for a way to clean the freezer without using anything, well, toxic, when this little jewel sprung right into my eyes.

So, why should you try aged meat? Well, because it’s easy to make. On top of that, get this: the oldest beef cut in the world is 13 years old! Imagine having ready-to-eat meat at home without having to brine, refrigerate, go shopping, or hunt. Well, it’s possible, and I’m going to show you how to do it.

So, without further ado, here’s how to make your own aged beef.

Gathering the ingredients

As I’ve said, this recipe doesn’t require any special ingredients like salt, vinegar, or whatever else people use to preserve meat (not touching that topic with a ten-foot pole). Still, the cut of choice will ultimately determine the taste. The recipe I mentioned about involved large cuts of meat – the bigger, the better. Would be a good idea to go to a butcher’s instead of hitting the supermarket. Anywho, avoid small cuts, and choose meats that pack some fat – whole ribs, porterhouse cuts, rib steak, or New York strips.

That’s basically it as far as the ingredients are concerned. For aging, I would advise using a zip-lock bag instead of food wrap – does a better job at keeping the air out; meat should age on its own. The last thing you’ll need is more air.

Arguably, refrigeration’s the best way to go about aged beef, but considering that our grand used to prepare meat long before fridges were invented, I would venture to guess that the root cellar is also a good choice.

As for quantity, a two pounder’s more than enough in my opinion – if you’ve never eater aged meat in your life, better make a smaller batch. Otherwise, you’ll get stuck with something with an extra chunk of meat.

All done gathering your stuff? Great! Let’s get to the ‘cooking’ part.

How to Prepare Aged Beef

Step 1. Prepare the fridge or designate a shelf in the root cellar.

Make sure that fridge’s clean. Stinky food, molding, and, grime will affect the aging process. So, if something smells bad in there, better toss it in the trash. One more thing: remove cheese, garlic, onion, or fish from the shelf assigned to the aged meat. Garlic and onions are fine, but not during the aging process (gives the meat a funny taste).

Step 2.  Set temp and check humidity

The funny thing about meat: if it’s kept in above 40 degrees Fahrenheit temps, it will go rotten. On the other hand, if you stick it in a below 32 degrees Fahrenheit enclosure, it will freeze. So, in this case, the sweet spot would be 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Set the fridge’s thermostat accordingly and don’t forget to check the humidity inside (should be around 60%, give or take).

Most modern setups can display values such as temp and humidity. Still, if you have an older model, I would strongly recommend buying a hygrometer (a device that measures indoor humidity). It’s quite affordable and can be used around the house as well.

Step 3. Preparing the meat.

If you decide on paying a visit to your local butcher, ask him to leave the meat as it is; most tend to trim the excess, which is a definite no-no in this case. Wash the meat a couple of times, dry with paper towels or something, and place in a zip-lock bag.

Advice: if you want to hasten the aging process, try wrapping your meat in cheesecloth. Keep in mind that the cloth must be changed each day to prevent sudden dehydration.

Step 4. Store the meat in your fridge or root cellar.

Grab a small oven tray from the pantry, put the meat inside, and stick in the freezer. That’s it! All you need to do now is wait for the meat to age.

Additional considerations on aged meat

Color’s very important in figuring out how long should the meat age. For instance, if your cut has a darker color to it, the aging process takes anyway from a couple of days to one week (don’t forget to check up it each day). On the other hand, if the beef cut has a lighter color, it needs at least 7 days to age. Still, I wouldn’t advise you to keep it longer than 30 days. Always remember that there’s a fine line between edible aged meat and a spoiled chunk of something.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the fridge’s thermostat might not be able to keep up with the process. When you’re done checking the meat, recheck the temp and humidity.

The whole idea is to allow the meat to dehydrate on its own – that’s why it’s a good idea to turn on the fridge’s fan and to set it on low. In some cases, the in-build fan may not be enough. Not to worry – just grab a laptop or desk fan and place it inside the fridge on the same shelf as your aged meat.

When the aging’s complete, remove the cloth from the meat and set it on a plate. I should warn you though that the meat might give off an unpleasant smell even after removing everything from the fridge. Don’t worry about that – use a knife to cut the outer layer. Leave a little bit of fat.

Now, given the proper conditions, meat can be preserved longer than 30 days. However, if you plan on taking it out of the cloth and ziplock bag, you should eat it within one or two days.

That’s it for how to make aged beef steak. What’s your take on this? Hit the comments sections and let me know.

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Sure, it’s delicious, melts in your mouth, but, c’mon, does a man have to sign an arm-and-leg lease to enjoy a good steak?

The other week I stopped and stared at my pantry. Looking in on all of the cans of food, bags of rice, beans and jugs of water gives me a sense of accomplishment and a certain satisfaction in all of our prepping efforts to date. For some reason I got it into my head to arrange things because the pantry had gotten a little disorganized over time. I started by pulling every item out of the pantry and staging them in the kitchen. There were bottles all over the place of dressing –  cans of beans and tomatoes took over the kitchen table and pasta galore spilled onto the kitchen counters.

The first sign of trouble was when I grabbed some condiments from the top shelf and noticed I had mayonnaise that was 2 years past its expiration. I started going further and this was the same case with pickles and some soups, even canned fruit. Now I was worried because it was obvious my brilliant solution to all of my family’s food problems had failed miserably. The next order of business was to grab one of my kids and have them check every label on every product. This scored me a lot of points I have to say…

Hard to believe isn’t it?

Next I went back into the pantry to grab some of the larger items. We have large 50 pound bags of rice that I got from Costco for a ridiculously cheap price. I grabbed one of the bags off the top shelf to lift it up and noticed the bottom was a funny color. Actually, it looked like mold and the bag was stiff. When I pulled it down I discovered that yes, the bag was moldy. Someone, maybe I placed a one gallon jug of water on the top shelf and at some point it had leaked. The jug of water was empty and 50 pounds of rice was ruined. I don’t know how this happened, but it was a little depressing.

The first step is to admit you have a problem

Here I was, mid-way through a Saturday afternoon, my house was in chaos due to all of my food storage being distributed around the rooms and I was finding more and more food that was out of date or inedible in some fashion. Initially I was ticked off that I had let this happen. I started thinking about what all could have gone wrong with food and how foolish I would have felt if we had some crisis and I went to grab the food that was supposed to feed my family and it was all rotten. Visions of my family staring at me with angry expressions on their sunken faces started to appear. Not good.

So after I had all of the food out and verified what was really expired I realized that it wasn’t too bad. It was a good idea to do this though because I wouldn’t have found that rice probably until it was too late. What really stunk is that my super awesome system for rotating groceries was not working and again, that was my fault for assuming this was being used.

Why weren’t we rotating our food the right way? Well, it comes down to a few main reasons. The first reason is that our pantry shelves didn’t really have any rhyme or reason to how food was stored. We have a decent amount of pantry space but cans of beans were mixed in with cans of fruit and for some reason we had jars and jars of jelly that nobody was eating. When groceries got put away, there was no predetermined place or order for them to go in so they went where ever was easiest. This usually meant they all got loaded onto and taken off of one shelf. Another aspect of this is that we weren’t using the time tested FIFO system (First In First Out) so food wasn’t getting rotated like it should. Fortunately for us, this didn’t get too far out of control, but we did have to throw away some jars of food.

There were two other contributing factors to our food use and one was the way my wife shopped. She is excellent at clipping coupons and always has her coupon book out when she goes shopping. The problem was that she would buy whatever she had coupons for and didn’t take into account whether or not we needed it. For example, we had a ton of jelly like I said because they were buy one get one free so she stocked up. All of that jelly kept sitting in the pantry and items we do use, but didn’t get the same coupon attention were lacking.

Also, we eat most of our meals from fresh ingredients and my wife cooks from scratch a lot. This in combination with my daughter’s gluten intolerance caused the biggest stockpile of food we had (pasta and canned tomato sauces) to be virtually ignored for many months. What used to be a staple was forgotten and was at risk for going bad.

Starting at the beginning

It makes sense to watch the expiration dates.

Now that I had all of my food out of the pantry, I was able to sort it into groups. This is just as fun as it sounds. I put the food back into the pantry in a specific order. The item order itself doesn’t matter so much as the fact it is in order. I started clockwise in our pantry and put canned meat, then beans, soups, fruit, coffee, tomatoes, sauces, mixes and then baking items like flour, sugar and other sundries. Pasta went into the kitchen and placed in one spot and the hard to reach containers of condiments were placed back down on eye level so they could be used. Freeze dried food went in storage containers under the bed. Water was stored on the floor to prevent anything bad from happening to the rice again. I know that I would have been fine if I just stored all of the rice in 5 gallon buckets, but I haven’t gotten around to that yet and we do eat off of our rice weekly.

So I had the semblance of a system now and I started filling it in with the cans according to expiration date. The cans that were the closest to expiration went at the front of one row and it wrapped around to two or three rows if needed. The newest cans were on the left and the oldest were on the right. I didn’t throw everything out that had expired because I know you can go past the dates on most things. I wasn’t going to give Mayo a chance though… Now not only do we have a simple way of pulling the oldest food item, but we can easily place new cans in a spot that will ensure rotation.

When we go grocery shopping now, my wife can easily see what we have left and fill that up. We are also trying to cook more according to what we have and purchase what we ate, as opposed to what we want, to eat to keep the pantry stocked.

This exercise taught me a few other lessons that weekend; actually it was a weird weekend because I spent both days doing similar things. It was almost like I was a nesting bird and it was a weird compulsion that came over me. I don’t normally spend my weekends reorganizing anything but it was good that I did. This also manifested itself into a good ammo inventory but I’ll write about that on another day. Now we have a better system for storing and rotating food and a different strategy for filling our pantry. That type of understanding is extremely beneficial and ensures that you aren’t just buying a ton of supplies and shoving them in a dark corner. You instead are building a stocked larder that will be ready for you when you need it.

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When we go grocery shopping now, my wife can easily see what we have left and fill that up. We are also trying to cook more according to what we

Do you wanna know the secret behind a great camping trip? Well, apart from flying solo or going with you SO, there’s also that sprinkle of magic called food. Yes, I know that most of you prefer a quick snack (MREs, poached eggs, may a couple of veggies), but what if I told you that you could actually enjoy a meal fit for a king’s table while backpacking?

Granted, it sounds like a contradiction in terms since camping has always been about leaving behind the hustle and bustle of the big city, which, incidentally includes fancy eateries and heavy cooking gear.

Well, the recipe I’m about to show you will not only blow your mind but will surely make the question the ways you chose to cook your Sunday roast. Anyway, as the title suggests, the only cooking tools you’ll need are the ones that should be included in your backpack or bug out bag.

Now, for those of you who are wondering about the cooking machine, I would recommend a simple and, if possible, firebox. Of course, you can always try your luck with a gas-powered stove.

For my part, I went with option A, since nothing beats that smoky flavor that only charcoal can provide. Moreover, since this is a 7-hour roast, I don’t think it would be a good idea to pack extra gas tanks just to cook one hunk of meat.

So, without further ado, here’s how to prepare your first 7-hour roast beef.

Gathering the ingredients

A simple dish calls for basic ingredients: salt, pepper, a bit of vegetable oil, and a dash of thyme (pairs divinely with beef). As for the cut, T-bone’s good, but a chuck steak’s better. As I said – simple stuff.

Now, for the rest of the stuff: one firebox filled with charcoal, one firestarter, and your camping pan (make sure that it’s one of those models that come with clamps). If you don’t have such a pan, you can always take a regular one from home and use a metallic bowl as a lid – clamp it in place using regular paper clips.

So, did you gather your stuff? Great! Now find a good spot and let’s work some magic.

How to prepare a 7-hour beef roast

Step 1. Find a good spot to set up your firebox.

Remember your grills safety training. We don’t wildfires now, do we? Best would be to pick a barren spot, away from trees or any vegetation. When you’re done, place a piece of paper on the bottom of the firebox and stack some tinder.

Fire it up and start shoveling coals once the fire picks up in speed. I wouldn’t recommend using lighter fluid or whatever, because your roast is going to end up tasting like gasoline.

Step 2.  Prepare the roast beef.

If you’re not in a hurry, you can marinate the roast beef for a couple of hours before the cooking part. I would venture to say that two-and-a-half hours are more than enough for the marinade to get into the beef. Regarding the latter, don’t overcomplicate things; in a zip-lock bag, add water, sugar, salt, pepper, some chili flakes for a kick, a couple of crushed garlic cloves, and two tablespoons of veggie oil.

Bag the meat, give it a couple of shakes, and store in the shade, away from insects. Now, if you want to skip this extra step, you can go ahead and start preparing the meat for pan-frying.  To do that, unpack your meat, season on all sides with salt and pepper. Don’t forget to rub the chunk with a little bit of veggie oil.

Step 3. Pan-frying the meat.

Once the fire has started to gain momentum, drizzle some oil in your frying pan and place on top. When the oil reaches the cooking temp, take the beef chuck, and place in the pan (fat part down). You only need to sear the meat – two minutes on each side is more than enough. When it’s done, take it out of the frying pan.

Step 4. Oven-roasting

In the same frying pan, add some more oil, and a splash of water. Make sure that there are still coals in your firebox. Next, you will need to place the meat in the pan, pop the lid, secure it with paper clips, if you have any, and to place it over your firebox.

Leave for 30 minutes to cook. After that, grab some hot coals from the firebox and place them on top of the frying pan’s lid – this will ensure that your beef will be cooked on both sides.

Now, there’s not much left to do but to sit and wait. Keep an eye on the coals and add some more if you feel like the fire’s ‘losing its touch.’ The first time I made this dish, I was with the whole gang: wife, kids, best friend, his SO, dogs, and, yes, even the cat (taught it how to walk on a leash). Our pastime of choice was obviously cracking open a few cold ones and reminiscing.

Well, if you really want to make more out of your camping trip, you can spend this time looking for side-dishes that pairs well with the beef like wild mushrooms or even fish.

Anyway, do keep in mind that this is going to take a while, so, there’s no point to guarding the firebox.

Step 5. Twist and turn.

After about four-and-a-half hours, remove the coals from the lid. Pop it open and flip your roast. Careful not to drop it or it’s bye-bye dinner. When you’re done, put the lid back again and continue cooking it for about two-and-a-half hours. Don’t forget about the coals.

Advice: if you want to add a crunchy crust to your meat, you can ditch the lid after six-and-a-half hours. Flip the meat every now and then. If you run out of the liquid, add a little bit of water. Otherwise, the meat will dry up and, eventually, turn into ashes (true story!).

Step 6. Gravy all around!

When the beef’s done the cooking, don’t throw away the liquid in the frying pan. Use it instead to prepare a mouthwatering gravy that will everyone a run for their money. Yeah, I know that this qualifies as an extra step, far from the simple dish – simple tools ideal, but trust me when I say that the gravy made from beef feet is the best thing that ever happened to your mouth.

So, here’s what you’ll need to do in order to prepare a simple gravy:

  1. Pour your beef stock in a separate container.
  2. Add a little bit of butter to the same pan.
  3. Wait for the butter to melt then add the stock.
  4. Let it simmer for a couple of minutes.
  5. Add half a cup of all-purpose flour and whisk the mixture.
  6. When the composition becomes silky-smooth, add another half a cup of all-purpose flour.
  7. Give a few more whisks and allow it to cook for another minute or so.
  8. Add salt and pepper.

Advice: if you prefer smoother gravy, you can strain it a couple of times through a sieve or a piece of gauze.

That’s it! You now have a nice cup of gravy which pairs wonderfully with the 7-hour beef.

Additional considerations on the 7-hour beef roast

As you see, preparing this dish is easy, and you only need a handful of tools to get the job done. Now, you’re probably wondering about how to serve this ginormous beef roast. It’s all up to you, of course, but it would be a shame not to make some pulled meat sandwiches. Yes, I know that you usually prepare those with pork, but, hey, beef’s good too. So, here’s what to do in order to prepare some juicy pulled beef sandwiches from your roast.

Step 1. Get yourself a couple of bread slices.

Step 2. Put a metal plate over your firebox and drizzle it with some cold water. You can also add some veggie oil.

Step 3. Grill the slices on both sides. Don’t burn them, though.

Step 4. Put some of that gravy on each slice.

Step 5. Place your roast in a small tray and use two forks to pull the meat apart. Better you do this while the meat’s still hot.

Step 6.  Take some meat shreds and place on each bread slice. Add more gravy if you like. Now, if you fancy carrying around more veggies and ingredients, you can garnish the sandwich with onion rings and a piece of cedar cheese.

Well, campers, that’s about it for my 7-hour roast beef recipe. Hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I did cooking it. Sorry for not posting any clips or anything, but there was hardly anything left to be shot after everyone dug in (beer will do that for you). Anyway, if you have any questions or think that the recipe can be improved in any way, don’t be a stranger and hit the comments section.

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I know that most of you prefer a quick snack, but what if I told you that you could actually enjoy a meal fit for a king’s table while backpacking?