This past weekend I went all in and made a Sunday roast out of some Strassburger Steaks sirloin that I butchered myself at a butchery class. I had it netted/trussed so that it held its shape during the cooking process (that’s why it has lines on it).
First I rubbed it with some delicious Botticelli extra virgin olive oil. I really love that stuff. It’s the best olive oil I’ve had, and it doesn’t take on a bitter taste like some extra virgin oils do.
Then I seasoned with kosher salt, pepper and garlic powder. After that, I sealed it up in a sous vide bag with a few sprigs of rosemary. I left it in the bath overnight for 12 hours, set to 128 degrees.
After I pulled it from the bath, I poured out any meat juices into a cup for using later.
I let the meat cool own to room temperature before searing it in a pan with some butter and the rosemary. I spooned the excess butter over the top as I cooked it, and ensure that I got a good sear on all sides.
Always let your meat rest before slicing. I rested this roast for about 15 minutes. While you do that, you can pour the meat juice into the melted butter that’s left in the pan and reduce it gently into a brown gravy sauce.
I served with a big salad and some roasted potatoes. But man, oh man. That beef was so delicious.
Oh and speaking of Botticelli Foods, they happened to send me and my wife a nice package of stuff to try out here at home.
I just used the EVOO with my roast, but my wife used almost everything here and baked these awesome little farfalle muffins – a take on my spaghetti pie, but with prosciutto cups, bow tie pasta, roasted red peppers, mozz, eggs, parmesan cheese and spinach. Insanely delicious.
Kooq sent me an awesome joined bamboo chopping block to test out with my meats here at the Food Research Lab. Here’s a short unboxing video:
Kooq uses bamboo for their boards. I love bamboo cutting boards, because they’re durable and tough, yet still great for preserving blade integrity and sharpness.
They’re also really easy to maintain and can take a beating without warping or losing solidity. Finally, they’re budget friendly. This big beast will only run you about $70 on Amazon.
Grand Temple sent me a few packs of their ready made curry to try out here on the blog. I was excited to try something new and different with them.
As you all know, I’m a meat and potatoes guy. The first place my mind went was to mix one of the packets in with some mashed potatoes, and eat it with a steak and some greenery.
I grilled up a nice Strassburger Steaks rib eye that I took home with me from a butchery class. It came out perfect. The beef was prime and had a great flavor to it. Really nice quality, and I recommend buying for home deliver.
Anyway, I sauteed some broccolini to go with the taters and steak.
Success! The otherwise boring and bland mashed potatoes were deliciously spicy. I used the red curry packet for these.
Next, I’ll try the green curry to make a sauce for some gnocchi.
Gin Lane 1751 sent me a bottle of their London Dry Royal Strength Gin, as well as a pre-mixed negroni, to test out and make some tasty cocktails.
As some of you may know, I’m a huge gin martini fan. I pretty much always have one with steak. I especially like London dry gins, so I was excited to try this brand out.
Naturally, the first thing I went for was a classic dry martini, a little dirty. I barely fill the twist cap with vermouth, and pour that over the ice that’s already been chilling my martini glass as I prep.
By the way, I’ve had that bottle of Martini & Rossi vermouth for about 10 years now. That’s how dry I like my martinis…
Next I pour in some olive juice, and finally, the gin. Shake the fuck out of it and strain into a chilled glass for absolutely crisp, salty perfection. Olives as garnish, of course.
The pre-made negroni instructions are simple: Pour over ice and garnish with an orange peel.
As you can see, I had a lemon on hand, so I mixed it up a bit with that. I also threw in a splash of seltzer to give it some mouth-pop. Nice! Not too bitter, and just the right amount of sweet.
The third cocktail I made was my own. I squeezed out the juice of that one large lemon, added some raw sugar simple syrup, then stirred that together with gin and seltzer in a tall glass with ice. I garnished with a burnt lemon peel and a lemon wedge, and let the ash from the burnt peel fall into the drink to provide some natural bitters. Very refreshing and delicious.
If you’re a fan of gin like me, then I think you’ll dig this stuff. There’s elements of juniper, both sweet and sour citrus, barks, roots, coriander and other spices. But it’s not overpowering, and it stays true to the London dry style without becoming floral. With a strength of 47% alcohol, this packs plenty of wallop for a good cocktail, too, if you aren’t into drinking gin straight up.
Now that I’m cooking more steaks at home these days, I’ll be making lots of martinis and cocktails with this stuff. Go grab a bottle.
So cool! There were three flavors: original, peppered and teriyaki. My favorite was the peppered, but they were all great. The stem of the rose is edible too. They have a dry but not hard consistency. Good beefy and savory flavor through and through, and they come with a nice pint glass instead of a vase.
This will serve as sort of a double whammy review, since I used some nice products while cooking up these amazing steaks from New York Prime Beef.
New York Prime Beef is a high end middle meats (ribs and loins) brand that operates out of Hunt’s Point in the Bronx. I was invited in to meet the owner and employees, get a sense of the business, and try out some of their amazing products.
New York Prime Beef sells top notch prime, American wagyu and kobe beef steaks. They ship fresh overnight to anywhere in the US – never frozen unless the customer asks for it.
Each cut is beautifully packed in shrink wrap and butcher paper – even signed/initialed by the butcher who does the cutting.
Now let me tell you; I’ve had some really great steak in my day, as you can imagine. But the American wagyu strip that I took home and cooked was fucking flawless. Seriously one of the best steaks I’ve ever had, and I made it myself!
Look at the freaking marbling on this. Even the marbling has marbling.
It was a really simple cooking process. You can’t fuck it up. Season first with some salt. Heat up a little bit of oil in a cast iron pan until it’s screaming hot. Pop the steak on there for two and a half minutes per side.
But I actually used some truffle oil, truffle salt and truffle butter that I got from The Truffleist to boost up the decadence even more.
Take a look at the video:
The finished product was absolutely stunning. To be honest, this beef doesn’t need anything except for salt, but this truffle wagyu meal was fucking TITTY BAGS. I want to eat like this every day!
The texture is melt-in-your-mouth. You can cut this shit with a fork. The flavor has a buttery quality to it that sets it apart from standard beef or even prime, dry-aged beef. This stuff is like the foie gras of beef!
And that’s not to knock the other cuts they offer. Wagyu or Kobe isn’t in everyone’s budget. I also tried a prime porterhouse, and a prime dry-aged rib eye. The minimum these guys will age a cut of beef is 28-days. When I was at the facility, I saw some that had been aging for 60 days.
But anyway, let me get back to what I made at home. These babies were cut nice and thick, so I wanted to make sure I got a proper cook temp all the way through.
Sous Vide machines are all the rage these days. Everyone is buying them up because they allow you to cook meat perfectly every time. No more worrying about fucking up an expensive cut of beef!
I set mine to 128 degrees and let the fucker crank for about six hours. Then I pulled the meat out of the machine and let them rest and reabsorb some juices in the bag. Once they were about rom temperature plus, I removed them from the bag, patted them dry with a paper towel, and blasted them with a blowtorch. See below:
As you can see, I seasoned AFTER slicing and plating. This allowed me to get a better sense of the actual beef flavor for reviewing purposes.
The meat is fantastic. There’s a nice mild funk from the dry aging process on the rib eye. It doesn’t clobber you, which is good. The beef was tender and juicy, and really responded nicely to basic seasoning like salt, pepper and olive oil.
I think I liked the porterhouse a bit better. The tenderness of both the strip and filet sides was incredible.
I highly recommend this stuff. Order some today and let them know that Johnny Prime sent you. You’ll probably have the meat in time for dinner grilling on Sunday.
One of the coolest things about this spot is that the owner, Vinnie (great name), is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.
He’s a drag racer, a pilot, an old car guy (like me), and an art enthusiast. He even has some wild graffiti art on his rooftop (he supplies the paint for the artists).
I think that about covers it. I hope to see his products flood the market. They’re so good.
In this video review, I give you my thoughts on CrowdCow, Tom’s Steak Rub by Faith Family & Beef, and Kamikoto knives after cooking up some nice steaks in a cast iron pan.
CrowdCow works with small, sustainable cattle ranches to ship beef directly to consumers. They specialize in grass-finished beef. Today I’m working with a flatiron steak and a chuck eye steak that they sent to me.
Tom’s Steak Rub is made by a family that lives and works on a large cattle ranch in western Nebraska. They sent me awesome hats with the steak rub, too, which match my steak shirts perfectly.
In the video I’m testing out the Kamikoto 7-inch Japanese forged steel santoku. They’re running a massive sale on these things right now. The knife is normally $675 but it’s currently on sale for $115. They also have nice knife sets at deeply discounted prices as well.
In short, I highly recommend all three of these products. Please enjoy the video!
Munchery is a food delivery service that brings you chef-prepared meals that just need to be heated or sauced prior to eating. They recently hooked me up with a $100 credit for me to test out their service. As such, I placed hefty orders on two different dates to test out their skills. I ordered for dinner both times, but they do offer lunch as well. My total for all of this food came to $95.
Dinner One
My delivery guy showed up on time, he was super nice, and seem to be delivering a ton of other orders. Here’s what we had:
Chirashi: This was really pretty. The rice was pre-seasoned with sesame seeds and other Japanese spices, and the sushi was all good quality and tasted fresh.
Farro, Black Rice & Kale Salad: I really liked the dressing and wanted more! The salad itself was massive. This could easily be an entree for one. Very nice.
Applewood Smoked Whole Chicken: Delicious. Awesomely smokey, juicy and flavorful. I really liked the sauce that came with it too.
Balsamic Marinated Tri-Tip Steak: Tri-tip is a very tricky thing to do right, and probably suffers a bit from a second heating process, but they did a pretty good job on it. The sides of peppers, potatoes and mushrooms were on point.
Dinner Two
Here’s a shot of everything:
Beet-Pickled Eggs on Boston Wedge: Your basic type of wedge salad, only with Boston leaf lettuce instead of Iceberg, and a nice touch of pickled eggs..
French Dip Beef Sandwich: Not too bad at all! It came with pickled red onion, which I love, extra juices for dipping, and a horseradish cream sauce. Very nice.
Misoyaki Glazed Salmon: This was the big winner of the meal. Nicely cooked, really tasty and balanced with both sweet and savory flavor elements. This was my wife’s favorite too.
Roasted Bistro Filet: This steak was more tender than the tri-tip, but it was unfortunately a bit overcooked when it arrived. It wasn’t ruined, but I was nervous to stick it back into the oven for the re-heating process. The blue cheese cream sauce and potatoes were delicious though.
All in, this is a great service. It’s really convenient to just have to pre-heat the oven, which you can do during the delivery time window, and then heat your food. Or in the case of something like the Chirashi or the salads, just dress and eat. It’s a perfect service for a city of tiny, useless kitchens and people who are way too busy to prepare and eat proper meals at home. I definitely recommend it!
It seems like everyone in the country knows about Omaha Steaks delivery service. Over the years, I’ve had many boxes delivered to me, but I just realized that I never actually took the time to review them. Recently my wife and I were given a box of various goodies, and the steaks within were tenderloins.
I did a simple preparation, which is becoming my go-to method of cooking steaks at home: sous vide and then a blow torch finish. You can see the recipe post HERE.
I think the issue with Omaha Steaks is that they spread themselves too thin by offering a bunch of other items aside from beef/steaks. They do chicken, pork, meatballs, baked potatoes, french fries, etc. As a result, maybe the steaks suffer?
My filets, while tasty, were a bit on the thin side. I enjoyed the ones from Nebraska Famous Steaks better, mainly because they were thicker and actually felt like a real steakhouse filet mignon. That said, the Omaha jams were still great in the way I prepared them.
