cooking question and PICSPAM

[cornerofmadness]

First the question, for all the cooks on my flist, how do you prepare thin, quick-cooking beef as for a stir fry or fajita. I always manage to ruin it. I'm pretty good in the kitchen but this one stymies me.

Take tonight's sukiyaki. I started with thin cut braising beef then pounded it even flatter. Being that broken down it should have been tender as heck. I fried it only for a moment then added it to the sukiyaki. I'm beginning to think part of the problem is the Asian (and hispanic) sauces. I think that my med. rare beef parboils in a blink of an eye or something. Cook time less than 3 minutes and tonights beef the cats couldn't chew.

And now ICE STORM 2009 PICSPAM

Roy’s footprints frozen into the snow

The Icy Hills of Home

Japanese Lantern in Ice

THIS is what my car was trapped in. Poor Yukio

On the Way to Jackson

Winter Fairyland

Pines

Breaking under the Ice

Dogwoods (Jackson library)

I think this one is beautiful SERIOUSLY. It's my favorite. It's almost art. If you only click on one...

Roy back after two days in the snow



















http://dragcave.net/user/cornerofmadness

Comments

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

Gosh, those ice shots are beautiful!

The main thing I can say about beef is that the quality of the cut makes a great deal of difference - cheap meat will be tough no matter what you do to tenderize it. Good beef shouldn't have that problem -- and braising in sauces should make it MORE tender, not tough. I tend to cook by feel more than anything else, so unless I'm watching what's happening, I'm not sure what's going wrong...

*is confused*

[sillymagpie.livejournal.com]

She didn't braise it, she used a cut meant for braising, which would have been tough from the start. It's meant for slow cooking.

When you sliced your frozen meat for sukiyaki, was it against the grain or with the grain?

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

Very true. Although sukiyaki (at least the way I make it) can be braised (in the sauce) after it's quick stir-fried.

Generally that's why I use chuck or even sirloin for stir-fry...

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I probably should have used sirloin. Eye of round can get tough too

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yeah the braised meat was definitely the first mistake.

against the grain

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

it's geting so hard to figure out good meat. This wasn't cheap. sigh. This happens EVERY time. Hell I'm eating it half raw since i like it that way and it's like shoe leather. It must be me

yeah isn't it pretty?

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

What was the cut? (Not yours, what the store said it was - "for braising" means a lot of things -- flank steak? Flank is pretty tough, as sillymagpie says, that's generally for long, slow cooking.)

See if you can find Alton Brown's show on beef. He explains it better than I could. *g*

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

eye of round

i think I've seen that episode. God Ilove Alton