Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Sunday cooking adventures

A culinary bug bit both my husband and I this Sunday. We were both inspired to make the kinds of food we never usually have. Mine was pretty tame. I made buttery blueberry waffles.
R. was wayyy more ambitious and decided to make beef jerky. I didn't even know you could make beef jerky outside of a factory, but apparently you can. First, he bought a roast (I'm not sure what cut) and marinaded it for 36 hours in soy sauce, teriaki, brown sugar, garlic, salt, and a load of other things I didn't see him add. He cut it into teeny tiny slices before putting it in the marinade. When the meat was done soaking, it looked awfully gory, but it smelled delicious. At this point, I thought we were going to spread the meat out outside in the dry, dry, 102 degree heat. No, R. insisted that we make our jerky under controlled conditions. He set the oven to 175 degrees, and hung the little strips of spicy meat across skewers through the oven rack with a bunch of foil at the bottom to catch the drips. He cooked it all day, filling the house with the most delicious campfire-y, steak-y aroma. When it was done, the little strips had shrunk a lot and were much darker. In the picture they have a weird color, but really they looked just like store-bought jerky, but without the little silica packet and all the MSG. Yum!!

5 comments:

katie o. said...

L-,
Your food looks so pretty. R-, your food is pretty...scary looking! Mark is jealous, tough-he says it looks delicious!

karmakat said...

I'm sure the jerky was delicious and certainly required a lot of creativity and patience.

I could sure go for one of those blueberry waffles-RIGHT NOW!!
Yum.

I'm glad to see you made it back safely from nowhere land.

marge said...

Nice new look.
I like it!

jennypah said...

Meat and blueberry waffles! My favorites! Are there any left? I'll be there in several hours ... :)

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