Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Give the Gift of Real Food
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
This delicious holiday meal of grassfed prime rib, pan-roasted potatoes, and sautéed cabbage was a joy to cook and eat.
This holiday season, like all holiday seasons, is a time to give and receive.
Gifts are a wonderful way to express your appreciation of another person, whether it is a relative or a friend. Some people are impressed by expensive, fancy gifts. I prefer gifts that give a real benefit, and the price or status of the gift is not important to me. A gift that shows something of the giver is often the best of all. A gift that gives pleasure, and supports joy, is a gift I cherish, both as a giver and a receiver.
Would you like to give a gift that has the following benefits:
- Gives great pleasure to the person who receives it
- Gives great pleasure to the giver
- Creates a wonderful aroma in the home
- Makes the person who receives it feel wonderful
- Improves the natural functions of the body
- Creates a wonderful feeling of contentment and satisfaction
- Warms the body and soul
For me, this most magic of gifts is real food, skillfully and lovingly prepared.
The Most Traditional of Gifts
Many decisions are being made about gifts at this time of year. In modern times, we often think of commercial products like electronics, jewelry, designer clothing, and a host of other products when we are deciding what to give. Yet in older times, one of the most popular and appreciated gifts was that of food. Not just any food, but special foods that would not only be appreciated for their wonderful taste, but would nourish the body and soul of the receiver. These special foods were not factory candies and cakes, but some of the most nourishing and delicious real foods available.
Not only was the giving of special foods a tradition, but the cooking of those foods by a skilled cook was a much-anticipated blessing of the holiday season, and great efforts were made to have this happen. This was true for almost everybody. For the poor, the holiday season might be one of the few times they actually had grassfed meat or pastured pork to eat, or another special meat such as goose, or duck, or a capon. Grassfed or pastured meat, or wild fish, were the featured highlight of holiday meals. The traditional European holiday feast dishes covered such wonderful dishes as roast prime rib of beef, pork loin roasted with the skin on, rack of lamb, saddle of lamb, roast stuffed goose, roast stuffed turkey, roast duck, and many others.
What made these gifts unique is that they actually nourished the bodies of the lucky people who ate them, improving their natural functions and creating a wonderful feeling of well-being and contentment.
Traditionally, these foods were real food, not factory food, and were exactly the kind of traditional food our bodies welcome and thrive on.
It is true that many holiday foods were special desserts. But these were different than modern desserts. They always contained large amounts of saturated animal fat such as butter, lard, and egg yolks. They were only served at the end of a meal, when the eater’s body was well-nourished with traditional fats and other nutrients that protected the body from the effects of the sugar in the desserts.
GMOs, pesticides, and artificial chemicals had no place in these wonderful, traditional foods.
While you may not find much real food in the supermarket, local farmers and ranchers, and farmers’ markets often have wonderful real food available, including grassfed and pastured meat, and organic or the equivalent vegetables and fruits. There are some wonderful Internet sources of great grassfed and pastured meat. Three of my favorites are U.S. Wellness Meats, Homestead Natural Foods, and NorthStar Bison.
Give the Blessings of Your Cooking
Even the best quality real food needs a skilled cook. A skilled cook can turn the best natural ingredients into a feast that will provide great eating pleasure and nutrients to all who are lucky enough to share in the meal. If you can cook, the time and effort you put into making a holiday feast is a wonderful gift to all who eat it, and to yourself.
If you do not think of yourself as a skilled cook, I have some good news.
Cooking wonderful real food is easy, and simple. There is an old saying, “God gives us good meat, the devil sends us cooks.†The meaning of this saying is that high-quality food should not have its great natural taste overwhelmed by fancy and complicated cooking. The wonderful natural flavors and tastes of the food will do most of the magic for you. All you have to do is bring them out. The recipes I use create wonderful food, yet most of them are very simple and easy to use. Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue are full of simple recipes for grassfed and pastured meat that result in wonderful food, cooked in an easy and natural way.
I spend a big part of the holiday season planning and cooking the holiday feasts, as a gift to my loved ones. It is also a gift to me, as I also get to share in the feast!
This post is part of Monday Mania, Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Feast Without Fear — on Real Food
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Santa's Workshop is the newest addition to my wife's Christmas Village collection this year.
The holiday season has come. It should be a time of joy, a time to celebrate. Wonderful, special meals have always been part of the holiday season, but an ugly new element has entered the scene in the last few years—fear. Every holiday season, we are barraged with fear—fear of getting fat, fear of eating fat, fear of indigestion, fear of getting sick, fear of cholesterol, fear of heart disease, fear, fear, fear!
We are told, over and over again, to count calories, eat low fat, substitute dead factory foods for the rich, traditional holiday foods of our ancestors—where is the joy in that?
All of that fear is nonsense, if you eat properly prepared real food. Leave the factory products in the supermarket, and buy grassfed meats, grassfed organ meats, pastured pork, pastured poultry, traditional dairy, wild fish and seafood, organic or the equivalent fruits and vegetables, real pastured butter, traditional fermented foods, and make this the basis of your holiday feasts. You will not only enjoy a magnificent feast, but feel much better after eating these truly nourishing foods.
There is nothing to fear about eating real food. Nothing.
The Joy of Feasting
Almost every culture on Earth has celebrated holidays by enjoying a special meal, or meals. The finest meats, fish, vegetables, and almost every other kind of food were carefully prepared by traditional methods, and served in quantity during the feast. Many of the best recipes were specially designed for the holidays, and served only at that time. The Christmas feast was so important in old England that wages often included a fat goose at the holiday season—so even the middle and poorer classes could enjoy a special holiday feast. Fear of the food was not even an issue for most of our history, and the feasts were cherished, looked forward to, and enjoyed, with great gusto. Feasting is one of the most universal and traditional human joys, and a feast should be an occasion for pleasure, joy, and good fellowship for all.
This joy is often absent in modern times, where carefully designed propaganda has convinced many people to be afraid of food, especially the rich holiday specialties enjoyed by our ancestors. Fear ruins joy.
Real Food Feasts Are Good for Us
Not only is joy great for human health, along with being a great deal of fun, but the traditional foods of the feast are great for the natural functions of our bodies. Often these meals center around special cuts of meat, poultry, and fish, cooked in a traditional manner with rich sauces and side dishes. If real food is used, we are talking about grassfed meat, pastured pork, pastured poultry, wild fish and seafood, and flavorful organic fruits and vegetables. We are also talking about plenty of pastured butter, pastured cheese, and the wonderful saturated animal fat that comes from the pastured animals. These foods are exactly what our bodies crave, and give us the nutrition we need for our natural functions to work at their very best, which leaves us satisfied and feeling wonderful. When we eat a well-balanced meal of real food, we are getting all the nutrition that we need.
Traditional foods that are eaten at this time are often especially rich in the nutrients that our bodies crave.
Even though many traditional holiday desserts come with sugar, the traditional forms of these desserts are loaded with butter, cream , lard, egg yolks, and other sources of saturated animal fat that help protect our bodies from the effects of sugar. And the original forms of the desserts contained far less sugar than modern desserts.
When we are eating real food, our bodies regulate our appetite by what we actually ingest, because there are no phony chemicals or dead foods to con our bodies into overeating.
Many people equate feasting with feeling bloated or stuffed. I used to, until I switched completely to real food. I have never felt bloated or stuffed since.
Our Holiday Feast Plans
We have four feasts during this holiday season: Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day. We start planning the menus right after Thanksgiving, and look for the best real food we can find.
This year, we will have grassfed prime rib for Christmas Eve, redolent with the unique, mouthwatering flavor that only grassfed prime rib has, along with a plethora of delicious side dishes.
For Christmas, we will have a pastured goose, stuffed with a traditional apple stuffing roasted inside the bird, with crisp goose skin—one of the most delicious things on earth, gravy from the drippings, and other wonderful side dishes.
New Year’s Eve will bring a pastured pork loin roast, with a magnificent fat cap, marinated with Polish seasonings, roasted on a bed of apples, surrounded by roasting potatoes crisped to perfection by the melting pork fat, and many other wonderful side dishes.
New Year’s Day itself will bring another prime rib. Why two prime ribs? Since we eat only grassfed beef, we could not decide whether to get a prime rib from U.S. Wellness Meats or Homestead Natural Foods. Both have wonderful meat, yet the flavor is quite different because the plants the cattle graze on are quite different. We solved the problem by getting both, and having them on different holidays. Besides, a major holiday is a perfect excuse for the expense of prime rib, a cut we all love.
How much will we eat? As much as we want, no more, no less. And we will feel wonderful.
This post is part of Monday Mania, Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Why Grassfed Meat Is Better
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Grassfed Butter Steak, Tender Grassfed Barbecue, page 76
One of the questions I get asked most often is this—“What is different about grassfed beef?â€
Many people seem to think the only difference is that grassfed beef is “always tough,†and that grassfed beef lacks the “great flavor†that is supposed to come from “corn feeding.†I have found that properly cooked grassfed meat is very tender, has much more flavor, and a much better texture than conventional beef.
There are many important differences between grassfed and conventional meat. The very composition and content of the meat is very different.
Because of the vast difference in the qualities of the meat, grassfed meat is best when cooked differently than conventional, “corn-fed†meat.
How Grassfed Meat Is Different
Grassfed Meat Is an Ancient Food
Grassfed meat, coming from herbivorous animals eating their natural diet of grass and meadow plants, is one of the oldest foods of mankind, maybe the oldest. This means that the human body has adapted over uncounted thousands of years to digest and process this meat. Our bodies know the composition of grassfed meat, and how to absorb nutrients from it, and expect to find all those nutrients there when they digest the meat. Conventional meat has a totally different nutritional profile, and had not been eaten by humans until the twentieth century. Grassfed meat, fat, and bones are perhaps the most primal of foods.
Grassfed Meat Has Superior Nutritional Value
Grassfed meat has the proper balance of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6 fatty acids, containing far more omega-3s than conventional meat. Grassfed meat is also rich with CLA, a valuable nutrient that has many benefits. Conventional meat has a much higher ratio of omega-6 fatty acids, one that does not occur in naturally-fed meat. Conventional feedlot beef has far less CLA and omega-3 fatty acids than grassfed meat. Grassfed meat is also richer than conventional meat in many other nutrients.
Grassfed Meat Has Far Less Water and Should Be Cooked Differently
Grassfed meat is denser than conventional beef, and shrinks far less in cooking. Conventional meat is often quite watery, and that water cooks away when the meat is cooked, resulting in much more shrinkage. The need to deal with the water has led to the development of modern meat-cooking techniques, which will ruin grassfed meat. Because grassfed meat has far less water, it is best when cooked differently than conventional beef.
Grassfed Beef Tastes Much Better
Properly cooked grassfed meat is not tough, but tender, and has much better flavor than conventional meat. I can no longer stand the taste and texture of conventional meat, because grassfed meat tastes so much better. Grassfed meat from different breeds and producers taste different, in many wonderful ways, providing a wonderful variety of deep, rich flavors. The best comparison is with the many varieties of fine wine, which have many different tastes. Conventional beef always tastes the same—blah.
Grassfed Meat Cooks Faster and Easier
Grassfed meat cooks much faster than conventional meat, and is much easier to cook. This statement may surprise some people, but grassfed meat has so much flavor that it needs far less in the way of spices and sauces to be absolutely delicious. When you know the right techniques for cooking grassfed meat, it is very easy to cook. Tender Grassfed Meat: Traditional Ways to Cook Healthy Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue: Traditional, Primal and Paleo are both full of easy ways to cook delicious grassfed meat.
There are many other differences, but these are the major ones. Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue both cover the subject in detail, pointing out the many differences in the composition and cooking qualities of grassfed and conventional meats.
This post is part of Monday Mania, Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Raw Vidalia Salsa Provides Balance for Grassfed Meat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Raw vegetable salsa goes so well with grassfed meat.
Many traditional peoples would always eat vegetables with their meat. Since meat is acidic, and vegetables are alkaline, this helped them maintain a proper pH balance in their bodies.
It is a German tradition to eat plenty of vegetables with steak, and a Latin American tradition to eat a raw vegetable condiment with meat, in the form of a salsa, chimichurri, or Pebre.
My upcoming barbecue book includes several such recipes for raw vegetable condiments. This recipe did not make it into the book, because I invented it last week, and the book is done except for the index, which is well on the way. It is a very tasty and satisfying recipe, so I thought I would print it here as a gift for my readers.
This recipe combines the sweetness of organic Vidalia onions with traditional salsa ingredients to form an absolutely delicious side dish for any grassfed meat. The fresh vegetables are full of enzymes and other nutrients, which will help with digestion. While it calls for organic ingredients, the equivalent of organic is just as good.
INGREDIENTS:
5 ripe red organic tomatoes, finely chopped
1 medium organic Vidalia onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 organic red bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1 organic green bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped
¼ cup fresh organic cilantro leaves, finely chopped
2 stalks organic celery, finely chopped
2 tablespoons unfiltered organic extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon unfiltered raw organic apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
1 teaspoon freshly ground organic black pepper
1 teaspoon coarse unrefined sea salt, crushed
1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon organic hot sauce of your choice, depending on how hot you like it (optional)
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Stir until well mixed. Let rest in a covered bowl for an hour before serving. Tastes best at room temperature. You can refrigerate this for a few days, if you have any left.
This post is part of Weekend Gourmet Blog Carnival, Monday Mania, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Traditional Barbecue Methods Are Worth the Effort
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Pastured pork spareribs barbecued the traditional way.
Convenience has a high price. I just threw out an old cookbook that was all about making cooking easier by using prepackaged mixes, canned soups, broth cubes, microwaves, and other modern ways to make cooking easier. The main cooking skill you needed to use this book was the ability to open packages. Nothing was mentioned about the miserable nutritional profile of such “foods,†or about the effects of all the chemicals and preservatives. Or the fact that real cooking tastes so much better.
Convenience is a big part of modern American barbecue. Gas grills, pellet grills, premade factory sauces, premade factory rubs, premade factory marinades, all make barbecuing so convenient. The problem is that this convenience destroys the very factors that make true barbecue so delicious and nourishing.
I used to barbecue on an electric-powered grill that used wood pellets as fuel. You could actually set the temperature for how hot you wanted it, in degrees just like an oven. All you had to do was make sure the hopper was full of pellets, and then turn it on. It was easy to use. I thought the food cooked on it had a nice flavor, much better than any gas grill.
Well, a funny thing happened in the two years I spent writing my upcoming barbecue book. I decided to try to recreate traditional barbecue methods. This meant making a real fire, with real lump charcoal, or hardwood briquets that were made completely from hardwood, or burning hardwood down to coals. This meant making all my own marinades and bastes, from scratch. I got a common kettle grill that was powered by nothing but my own body and the fires I built in it. I used this grill to cook every meat recipe in the book, at least twice. And the barbecue I produced on this traditional style grill was so much better than the pellet grill, there was no comparison.
It was less convenient, and took a bit more effort. But it was worth it.
I decided that I was going to make the most traditional American sparerib barbecue I could, for a friend who came over two days ago.
I made an heirloom baste that was developed in the 1930s, by simmering various fresh vegetables and spices for hours, straining the liquid, and refrigerating it overnight, then adding a few traditional seasoning liquids, and simmering it again.
I used this baste as a marinade for some pastured spareribs, which sat in the baste for two days.
I built a fire out of hickory wood and hickory charcoal, and burned it down to coals, using tongs to move various pieces so they would fit properly in the fire bed.
I drained the ribs, boiled and strained the baste that had marinated them.
I made a rub out of various traditional spices, and sprinkled it all over the ribs.
I cooked the ribs slowly, first with moderate heat, then with low heat, basting them every 20 minutes, for two and a half hours.
We were rewarded with spareribs that were so good it is hard to describe them. So tender, with a nice pink smoke ring, and the kind of deep, smoky barbecue taste that can only be created by real barbecue, with a real fire, made with real fuel. That taste was so outstanding and memorable that I am still savoring it, two days later. It was the real thing.
No gas grill, no pellet grill, no processed condiments will ever come close to producing the real thing.
It was well worth the effort.
This recipe for spareribs is advanced, but I was trying to make the best ribs I possibly could, in the old style.
I intentionally kept most of the recipes in my upcoming barbecue cookbook simple and easy to make. All of these recipes rely on the magic of real fire, real fuel, real seasonings, and real grassfed and pastured meat to make totally delicious and nourishing food.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday and Monday Mania blog carnivals.
Natural Salt vs. Industrial Salt
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Natural unrefined sea salt on the left and industrial salt on the right.
Salt is necessary for life. If you get only some of the salt you need, you will experience serious health problems.
If you do not get a minimum amount of salt, you will die.
Yet salt is vilified and blamed for high blood pressure and other diseases. The idiotic nutritional guidelines issued by the government demand that everybody cut their salt intake substantially. Various city governments are also trying to seriously reduce the amount of salt eaten, even putting restrictions on restaurants.
The studies are inconclusive and often contradictory. Yet no authority bothers to distinguish among the two major kinds of salt:
- Salt as it is found in nature, which comes with dozens of minerals and other substances;
- Industrial salt, which has everything but sodium chloride processed out of the salt.
Natural salt has been used by humans since the beginning of humanity. Industrial salt did not even exist before the twentieth century. But this crucial difference is ignored by a large portion of the medical profession and by the government, which considers all salt to be the same.
There is a great difference between the two salts—in composition, nutrient content, and taste. Natural unrefined salt is greatly superior, in every way but one.
The Two Salts Are Different in Composition and Nutrient Content
Natural, unrefined sea salt contains dozens of trace minerals and other substances.
Industrial salt contains only pure sodium chloride, and chemicals and sweeteners that have been added to make the salt eatable and free-flowing.
When we eat salt, our bodies have evolved to expect all the trace minerals and other substances to come with the salt. When those minerals and substances are not in the salt, our body craves them, and sends out the hunger signal to eat more salt. But no amount of industrial salt will satisfy this craving, because the minerals and other substances are just not there. This craving causes many people to eat too much industrial salt.
Natural, unrefined sea salt contains all the trace minerals and other substances that our bodies have evolved to use when salt is consumed. This kind of salt is very satisfying, and I find that it takes much less natural salt to satisfy my salt hunger.
The Two Salts Are Vastly Different in Taste
Many years ago, my father bought me a subscription to a renowned medical publication. The very first issue contained an article on salt. The author, a scientist with many letters after his name, asserted the following:
All salt, from the cheapest supermarket brand to the most expensive sea salt, is the same.
All salt, from the cheapest supermarket brand to the most expensive sea salt, tastes the same.
I promptly cancelled the subscription to the publication. Why? Because both of those statements were utterly untrue. I knew that the composition of these salts were different just by looking at the content of the salts. I knew the taste was different because I have a tongue.
Unrefined sea salt comes in various forms, which vary in taste, but all of these sea salts taste so much better than industrial salt.
In fact, pure sodium chloride tastes so harsh and bitter that nobody can stand the awful taste. That is why sweeteners and chemicals are added to change the taste. One of the most common additions to industrial salt is—sugar.
Salt Is Refined for Profit and Ease of Use
Why is salt refined? Money. The trace minerals extracted from refined salt are valuable and have many industrial applications.
Industrial salt is much cheaper. That is why industrial salt is used in most processed foods.
The other reason is convenience. Unrefined salt tends to clump together, and not flow freely. The user must break up the clumps to use the salt. Industrial refined salt flows freely and easily, because it has chemicals added to make it so.
I would much rather deal with salt clumps than eat industrial salt.
I only use unrefined sea salt for cooking and seasoning. I have two reasons: I believe my body has evolved to use salt in its natural form with the trace minerals, and unrefined sea salt has a much better flavor.
Some people have asked why Tender Grassfed Meat uses only unrefined sea salt in the recipes. The answer is that unrefined sea salt tastes so much better.
Disclaimer: I should mention that I am not a doctor or a scientist, and I am not advising anybody on the safety or usage of salt, or what salt, or what amount of salt to eat. I am merely describing my understanding of the differences, and my personal reasons for only using unrefined sea salt.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, Fight Back Friday and Monday Mania blog carnivals.
Collard Greens Make a Great Side Dish for Grassfed Meat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Ingredients for traditional organic collard greens with natural uncured bacon, organic hot sauce, and unfiltered raw organic apple cider vinegar.
While grassfed meat is my favorite food, part of the pleasure comes from eating it with delicious side dishes. Some of these side dishes are so good they become favorites, and are made time and time again. The recipe in this post is one of my favorites, and I have made it often. It goes wonderfully with every kind of grassfed meat. I love to make this dish with collard greens that have deep green, firm leaves.
Collard greens originated in West Africa, and are loaded with nutrition, with many vitamins and minerals concentrated in their deep green leaves. They are a staple of traditional soul food. Traditionally, collard greens are cooked for a very long time, with some kind of fatty pork. More modern versions cut the fat, but not mine. I keep the pork fat but reduce the cooking time.
I happened to mention this recipe during an Internet chat on Twitter that was sponsored by Seeds of Change, a wonderful organic seed company that is preserving real organic seeds and making them available. My good friend Kimberly Hartke, of the blog Hartke Is Online, asked me to post the recipe, so here it is.
Quick Collard Greens with Bacon
Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
2 thick slices fatty uncured bacon, or 4 thin slices, (if the uncured bacon is not salted, add 1 teaspoon of unrefined sea salt)
2 cups filtered water
1 large bunch fresh organic collard greens, with deep green leaves
3 tablespoons unfiltered raw organic apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon thick red organic hot sauce of your choice
1.     Wash the collard greens well with filtered water, making sure any soil or sand is washed off. Remove the leaves from the stem, tearing the leaves into 2 to 3 inch pieces. Discard the stems.
2.     Pour 2 quarts filtered water into a stainless steel pot with the bacon, and bring to a slow boil. Cover, and cook for 10 minutes. This will cook a lot of the fat into the water, where it will really flavor the greens.
3.     Add the greens, vinegar, and hot sauce to the pot. Bring the pot back to a strong simmer. Cover, and cook for 20 minutes. Remove the greens to a serving dish with a slotted spoon.
Serve and enjoy with the grassfed meat of your choice. This recipe goes perfectly with the recipes for grassfed meat contained in my cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat.
This post is part of Weekend Gourmet, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Grassfed Brisket Pot Roast with Traditional Flavors
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Ingredients for a traditional grass fed brisket pot roast.
Many people have asked me for a recipe for grassfed brisket pot roast. While Tender Grassfed Meat has a number of pot roast recipes, it does not have a recipe for brisket. I received so many requests that I decided to create one.
Brisket is one of the most beefy, flavorful cuts. It can also be one of the toughest. Grassfed brisket has a reputation for being particularly tough. But a grassfed brisket, treated with the magic of traditional pot roasting, can be so tender, with a rich texture that is a pleasure to chew, and a deep beefy flavor that almost no other cut of meat can match.
Pot roasts from brisket are a tradition in French, Italian, Belgian, German, Czech, Austrian, Jewish, Russian, Polish, and American cuisines—and in many others. Just about all of these traditions use onions to flavor the meat, and most of them also use carrots. Many other ingredients are used, and these can vary greatly.
Grassfed briskets usually have most or all the fat trimmed off. An untrimmed brisket will have a great deal of fat, actually too much for a pot roast, and the fat should be trimmed to no more than one quarter inch in thickness. Brisket has so much deep beefy flavor that this recipe will be great even if the brisket is completely trimmed of fat (but a light covering of fat is best).
The amount of time it takes to cook a grassfed brisket to be wonderfully tender can vary, but it usually takes a long time. The best way to tell if it is done is to stick a fork in it. If the fork goes in easily, with little resistance, it is ready. If not, it needs more cooking. Just about every cookbook will tell you never to pierce cooking meat, or you will “lose valuable juices.†This “rule†does not apply to grassfed meat. I stick forks and instant read thermometers into grassfed meat all the time, and the meat still comes out tender and delicious.
A cast iron casserole, or an enameled cast iron casserole, is the traditional pot for cooking this dish, and works beautifully. But any sturdy casserole that can be used for browning on the stove (with an ovenproof cover) will do, if you do not have the traditional casserole.
This recipe combines a number of traditional flavors for brisket pot roast. The use of powdered onion and garlic along with fresh onion and garlic creates a rare depth of flavor. Beef suet gives a wonderful flavor to the meat, but so does butter. Your choice. Either way, the gravy will be wonderful.
This is a great recipe for a cold day, which is why brisket pot roasts were popular winter fare all over Europe.
Traditional Grassfed Pot Roast
1 grassfed brisket pot roast, about 3 pounds
1 teaspoon freshly ground organic black pepper
1 teaspoon organic onion powder
1 teaspoon organic granulated garlic powder
1 teaspoon coarse unrefined sea salt (such as Celtic Sea Salt®), crushed,
4 tablespoons melted beef suet, (or 4 tablespoons pastured butter)
2 medium organic onions, peeled and sliced
1 large organic carrot, peeled and cut into small circles
1 cup homemade broth, preferably beef
4 sprigs organic flat leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
2 cloves organic garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons arrowroot, mixed with one tablespoon of water
- Take the meat out of the refrigerator at least 1 hour before cooking, so it will be at room temperature.
- Combine the pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, and salt, and mix well. Rub this mixture all over both sides of the meat. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.
- Heat 2 tablespoons of the suet (or butter) over medium heat, in the bottom of the casserole. When the fat is hot and slightly smoking, add the roast to the pan. Brown for about 5 minutes, then turn the meat over and brown the other side, also for 5 minutes.
- Remove the meat from the pan. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of suet (or butter). Add the onion and carrot and cook for 5 minutes, stirring from time to time. Remove the vegetables from the pan.
- Return the meat to the pan. Pour the vegetables over the meat, and use a spoon to push them so they surround the meat. Add the broth, parsley, and garlic, and bring the mixture to a slow simmer.
- Cover the pot and place in the oven. Cook until a fork goes easily into the meat, which could be anywhere from 2½ to 3½ hours.
- Remove the meat to a plate. Bring the gravy to a simmer over the stove. Stir the arrowroot and water together until they combine, then add the arrowroot mixture to the simmering gravy. Simmer briskly until the gravy thickens, stirring well. Once the gravy thickens, place it in a pitcher and serve the tender meat.
Serve and taste why brisket pot roasts have been cherished for so many years.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, Fight Back Friday and Monday Mania blog carnivals.
My Podcast Interview at Our Natural Life
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jon and Cathy Payne of the Our Natural Life blog. Jon and Cathy are amazing people. After retiring from successful careers, they became farmers. They describe their fascinating new life as homesteaders in their fine blog. I really enjoyed the interview.
In this interview we talked about how I used real food to resolve my health problems; the crucial role grassfed meat played in restoring my health; how I learned to cook grassfed meat by researching traditional cooking methods; health and cooking characteristics of grassfed meat; and a little preview of my upcoming book on barbecuing grassfed meat.
The interview was a lot of fun to do, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Jon and Cathy also have a giveaway contest for a copy of Tender Grassfed Meat. Here is the link to the podcast and the giveaway:
Cooking Tender Grassfed Meat (Podcast ONL072) and a GIVEAWAY!
Delicious, Festive, and Healthy—Christmas Liverloaf
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Festive Christmas grassfed liverloaf with red piquillo peppers and green organic cilantro.
We think of gifts around the time of Christmas. One of the best gifts that can be given is the gift of good nutrition, and this dish is loaded with nutrients from grassfed liver, grassfed heart, and grassfed kidney. In honor of the traditional Christmas colors, it is flecked with red and green. These colors come from the nutrient-dense combination of cilantro, tomatoes, and piquillo peppers. Not only do they make a colorful meatloaf, they add valuable nutritional combinations of their own. And they add a wonderful flavor to the meatloaf.
Innards such as liver, heart, and kidney are known to be full of all kinds of nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and others, in a form that is easily digested and used. Traditional peoples ate them to improve the health of their livers, hearts, and kidneys. Yet modern people have been reluctant to eat these nutrient-rich foods because of their taste and texture. This meatloaf makes all of these meats absolutely delicious, as well as nutritious.
This recipe is based on U.S. Wellness Meats liverwurst, which is the easiest way I have found to get these wonderful organ meats into my family’s diet. U.S. Wellness Meats liverwurst is 25% grassfed beef liver, 25% grassfed beef heart, 25% grassfed beef kidney, and 25% grassfed beef. It is the only product I know which has all these vital organ meats in such an easy-to-use form. I use this great sausage as a base for many meatloafs, meatballs, and hamburgers, and it always comes out delicious.
The combination of cilantro and tomatoes is very traditional in Latin America, and is believed to have many benefits, including helping the body to remove toxic metals such as mercury and aluminum from the brain and other organs.
Piquillo peppers have incredible flavor, but are not hot. These small peppers are peeled, smoked over wood fires, preserved in olive oil, and placed in jars. They are available in many markets, and can be ordered over the Internet. You can substitute an organic red bell pepper, and it will still be delicious.
This meatloaf shows that innards can be easy to make, and delicious, as well as decorative!
Ingredients:
1 pound U.S. Wellness Meats liverwurst sausage
½ cup fresh organic cilantro, very finely chopped
½ cup organic tomato puree
3 organic piquillo peppers, (or 1 organic red bell pepper), very finely chopped
2 pastured eggs, lightly beaten with a fork
½ cup plain organic bread crumbs of your choice, preferably from sourdough or sprouted bread
- In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients until they are well combined. Place the mixture in a loaf pan, preferably glass. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Place the pan in the preheated oven and bake for 40 minutes.
Admire the Christmas colors, then serve and eat them!
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