It's A Familiar Theme
Welcome back to another episode of Grandpa's Gotta Cook. Today, we have beef kebabs with, yes, you guessed it, bell peppers, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.
As usual, I was struggling with what to cook last Saturday. It's hard to get in a rhythm when you only cook once a week (not complaining) and then don't think about what you're going to cook with any level of care until Saturday morning.
However, after a brief consultation with my daughter-in-law, I decided on beef kebabs. The reason: without telling one another, we were both thinking about kebabs, which, is kind of cool, and kind of spooky, since our food tastes don't always line up.
So, then, it became a matter of how best to go about this. The meat we have is primarily frozen, which means some kind of thaw time, and then the potentiality of cutting it up. In this case, there happened to be two packages of stew meat already cut. I'm not a fan of stew meat when it comes to anything other than stew, but the idea of thawing and then cutting up a steak didn't appeal to me (yes, I was feeling lazy).
The next order of business was what to include on the kebab. Well, when I'm cooking, that's a no brainer. There needs to be bell pepper and mushrooms, which are mainstays of kebabs, plus a cherry tomato or two. I thought about onions, but only one of us really likes them cooked, so I refrained.
Then, I decided I needed a marinade recipe of some kind, so after typing in a few search words in Google I came up with one that we actually had all the ingredients for, in one form or another.
The recipe called for oil, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, lemon, mustard, garlic and black pepper.
Once the kebab fixings were cut up and the marinade was ready, it was all supposed to go into a resealable bag for 1-5 hours. Fortunately, I'd settled on this in time to give it a good three hours to soak in the refrigerator. I even managed to turn the bag over a couple of times.
Finally, when it was time to put the kebabs in the oven, I arranged the fixings onto wooden skewers that I soaked for about 15 minutes to avoid scorching. Then each kebab went on a flat metal pan with tinfoil. As you can probably guess, there were plenty of fixings left over, so they got their own pan with tinfoil. Both went into the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. I also doused each with the marinade that ended up at the bottom of the bag.
Since this was an untried recipe, there was a little bit of concern about how they would turn out. There was no need on this particular food. The only problem was not having enough, apparently.
And the daughter-in-law? She ate three. :)
Went vegan two weeks ago on a bet.....Now that that's out the way this post has inspired me on my recover meal...lol
Whoa. Well, there's something to be said for doing a 'meat cleansing' every once in a while. :) Glad I could inspire. It's actually pretty good. Let me know if you want the link to the marinade, though I suspect you have your own in mind. The meal can't get much easier to prepare unless they did it for you, so it's a great choice for a recover meal or any other reason, for that matter.
That sounds like a really good dinner! And other than making the marinade, seems pretty straightforward. There are a few ingredients there that I would have to get from the store. I don't have any more Worcestershire sauce. Seems like everyone liked it, so you can add that to your repertoire.
The marinade was pretty easy, too, actually. I'll probably try it again during the summer on a grill this time. That's about the only thing that would probably make it better. That and allowing it to marinate a little longer.
my daughter ask her 8 year old son what he wanted for his birthday meal. He ask what his choices was and she said anything you want. He said PaPa Joes sloppy Joes. It;s another story as to why they call me PaPa Joe. I too love those untried recipes.
Well, the kid's got good taste. It's tough to beat Sloppy Joes, let alone PaPa Joes Sloppy Joes.
I like trying new things, but I'm not sure if I totally enjoy dragging other people with me. If they want to come along for the ride, great, but I find myself being the one who's quickest to try something, so better to do it alone first, and then if I really like it, let it loose on them. Unfortunately, I don't usually get a chance to do that when it's me cooking. :)
Excellent job @glenalbrethsen. I was surprised to hear you can get Worcestershire sauce locally.
So the stewing beef worked out OK for the kebabs then? Not sure I would have risked it! 😊
Is there a special Worcestershire sauce? I've seen some version or another at every grocery store that I've looked at. It's fairly common in the US... unless it's like champagne and only the wine from Champagne, France is *champagne, while all the other stuff is just sparkling wine.
Well, apparently Worcester is a county in England that merged with Herefordshire, another county. And then Lea & Perrins makes the sauce there.
I think my last bottle was made by Heinz in Pennsylvania. Ha ha.
Well, see, there you go. Lea & Perrins is a subsidiary of Kraft Heinz. So not even Heinz is on its own in this one. I haven't looked on the bottle to see where mine was manufactured, but if it was made in the states, cool.
I looked them up on Wiki and I saw that they had been acquired. I wonder if they're considering changing the name to Philisauce. :P
OMG. I'm already having a depressing morning and this just about puts the lid on it @themanwithnoname and @glenalbrethsen. Is there nothing safe from the Great American Takeover?
. . . I've just checked my bottle and that, at least, is made in Hayes, Middlesex by Heinz UK.
We have two, looks like, and one says Pittsburgh and the other I believe is in New Jersey. Label is kind of worn in that spot. So, I guess you'd have Pittsauce and Jerseysauce or something. :)
Well, I don't know if it's the Worcestershire sauce, but Lea & Perrins has apparently been making it available for quite some time.
Yeah. I think the beef was actually a choicer cut than what I normally get for stew. That, or the marinade really revved up the taste. It wasn't chewy at all, and actually had quite a bit of flavor. The meat actually ended up cooked medium well, so I think that helped it since it would tend to dry out if cooked any longer.
Now you're just showing off @glenalbrethsen and starting to sound like a professional! 😂
Okay. I better stop. The whole purpose of this series is to show how unprofessional I am. It won't work if I'm being professional in the comments. However, I guess I'm a little picky when it comes to using stew meat. :)
Man @glenalbrethsen if we finding all this food to talk about, we might become height challenged. haha
That looks yummie!
Whew, that was a close call on thinking about cutting up a steak when apparently this turned out so well.
I think part of it has to do with the actual selection of the beef for stew. This didn't look like stew meat to me really, and while it wasn't like sirloin, it still was pretty tasty. So, who knows.
I'm already vertically challenged. Horizontally, not so much. :)
I like talking about food. I don't gain weight just talking about it. It's the consumption that gets me.
good cook grandpa
Well, I appreciate that, even though I don't think it's all that true. I do okay, and some days are better than others. I think it helps when a) people are actually hungry, and b) they actually really want to eat what I'm cooking. :)