Saturday, August 6, 2011

Crock Pot French Dip Sandwiches

These delightfully greasy sandwiches are one of my husbands favorites, and I am currently writing this with a bellyful of them. They are easy to make. The trick with these, like with any beef roast in a crock pot, is to make sure not to cook it too long. I used to put dishes in the crock pot and leave them all day long, and wondered why my pot roasts came out so tough. I now have a programmable crock pot, and do my 2-3 pound roasts for only about six hours.

There are two primary roast cuts available at Kroger, the bottom round roast and the chuck roast (there are more cuts that you can braise, but these two are the ones I find most often at Kroger--the local Publix has a larger variety of meat cuts, but I don't go there unless I have to since they are more expensive). Bottom round roasts are leaner, and thus more prone to drying out if you leave them in the crock pot too long; they also don't have as rich a flavor as a chuck roast. The chuck roast has a lot more fat and connective tissue and so a lot more meat ends up going to waste, and it can be difficult to carve up (especially with the thin slices that these sandwiches need).

Anyway, to the recipe:

French Dip Sandwiches
2-3 pound beef roast
1 packet dried onion soup mix
1 can beef broth
Sliced Swiss cheese
Fresh deli hoagie rolls

1. Mix together the beef broth and onion soup mix in a crock pot. Place the roast in the crock pot and cook on low for 6 hours.

2. Remove the roast from the crock pot but keep the liquid in the pot warm. Slice it as thinly as possible. Slice each roll and put the beef slices on the bottom half and cover with cheese.

3. Turn the oven on broil. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and put both the top and bottom halves of the sandwiches on the sheet. Broil in oven to 3 minutes.

4. Spoon the liquid from the crock pot into small bowls or ramekins and serve with sandwiches.

Make sure you have plenty of napkins!

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Grill Grill Grill (dugga dugga dugga)

When we moved into our house in 2005, my dad bought us a really nice Webber propane grill. And like most nice things I have been given as gifts, I didn't take the best care of it. Because between 2005 and the Great Grill Fire of 2010, I never really cleaned it.

I'm not totally disgusting. I cleaned the parts that actually touch my food. But you know all that part UNDER the grill? The part where 5 years worth of fats can accumulate? And that little grease trap at the bottom (who knew there was a grease trap in big propane grills)? I never cleaned them. Which led directly to the aforementioned Great Grill Fire of 2010.

(Look, I claim only to be pretty good at cooking. I have never claimed to be anything but terrible at cleaning, and everyone who knows me will back me up on that ).

It wasn't really that bad. I was innocently cooking hamburgers on the clean top grill that perched unassumingly above the grease-filled underbelly, when the whole shebang just went up in one big inferno. I shut off the gas, dumped a box of baking soda on it, and we ordered out that night.

So I didn't use the grill for about a year. Because I was freaked out, and well, with my life, and all of the 100 things that always need doing, cleaning out my nasty charred grill never struggled to the top. But I bit the bullet today, and how I cleaned. I dug out all the ashes and scoured the grill top to bottom and inside and out, and am happy to report that the fabulous Weber is still in fine shape and no real damage was done.

Which is great, because summer is ending and I need to make up for a lost year's worth of grilling. I love the grill, and tonight I did the entire dinner ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn it.

I marinated two bone-in split chicken breasts (great deal on those at Kroger right now) overnight in a bottled Teriyaki marinade. I tossed those on the grill with a few zucchini, sliced down the middle and coated with olive oil and Italian seasoning, and four corn cobs in their husks.

I used to engage in a lot of guess work when grilling. Does it look done? I don't anymore and finally started using a meat thermometer, for two reasons: 1. I don't want to kill my family with food poisoning and 2. If you try to guess, you usually end up overcooking more often than not. Which takes a nice, delicious piece of meat and turns it into jerky. I try to yank stuff off the grill the second that it reaches the right internal temperature (my grill actually has a temperature chart printed on it, but there's also a handy one here.

Split breasts are a very large cut of meat, so it took a while to grill--about 45 minutes, which made dinner later than I intended. One was enough for the family, and I cut up and saved the other one to use in a pasta dish tomorrow night. The kids mainly just ate the corn, which wasn't surprising, but they ate a little chicken, too. The zucchini was a bridge to far for them, but the hubby ate it happily, so it wasn't a total loss.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Tuna Corn Cakes

Groceries are really expensive these days, if you haven't noticed. So I have been trying to make the most of cheap foods.

Two of my favorite cheap proteins are eggs and canned tuna. Seriously, they're practically free, especially if you buy the tuna when it's on sale. Eggs are easy to make delicious (I will follow up in the next few days with the frittata recipes I have been making), but tuna is a bit more challenging--it's strong, and I don't like the most simple way of making it (tuna salad). But I made a foray over the weekend that turned out quite delicious. A tuna corn cake, like a crab cake, except with corn meal.

I made mine completely from scratch, but you could easily use a cornbread mix. I personally don't like any of the mixes, as most of them are too sweet, especially Jiffy. But there are a few that don't load up on the sugar.

The husband complained that they were a bit too dry, and he had a point. That can probably be solved by adding a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise. I abhor mayonnaise (one of the things probably keeping me from ever being a great chef) and so didn't use it, but may hold my nose and add it in the next time.

Tuna Corn Cakes
1 cup self-rising flour (if you don't use self rising, just add two tablespoons of baking powder)
1/2 cup corn meal
2/3 cups milk
3 eggs
3 green onions, chopped
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
12 ounces canned tuna
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter

1. Preheat oven to 425.
2. Mix together the flour, corn meal, and milk. Pour into greased square casserole dish. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Take out and allow to cool.
3. Beat eggs. Mix in green onions, Worcestershire sauce, and Old Bay.
4. Crumble corn bread. Fold into egg mixture along with tuna.
5. Form into 3 inch patties. Heat vegetable oil and butter in a skillet. Fry the patties over medium heat for about 4 minutes on each side.

This recipe made eight cakes, which was more than enough for dinner for everyone, and lunch for me the next day.

Enjoy!