Shredded Rump Roast Sandwiches

Last Wednesday I removed the last of the beef and venison from the large chest freezer then unplugged it for cleaning in preparation for the arrival of our beef on the hoof purchase.  If you are not familiar with that term, it means buying the cow when it is still a calf.  The calf is raised grass fed and hormone free by one of our friends then we arrange to take it to slaughter at an abattoir we have dealt with for years.   We pay our friend directly for the actual cow, then pay a butcher & disposal fee and a cut & wrap fee to the abattoir.  The abattoir last Friday that our beef was ready so it is a good thing I had the freezer cleaned and ready for filling yesterday when I picked up the beef.
 

The final roast from last year's purchase was a rump roast.  This is a tougher cut of beef suitable for braising.  I used the pressure cooker to tenderize the roast much the same as I did for the round roast except I used more Sweet Baby Rays and no water for a thick, rich sauce.  My intent was to can up the shredded beef but there was only enough to fill about four 500 ml jars, hardly worth running the pressure canner so I made shredded rump roast sandwiches with half of the meat mixture and froze the remainder.  Shredded meat freezes nicely and reheats well.  It is an ideal quick start for a variety of meals.

Shredded beef or pork are long time ribfest favourites as well as being a popular southern US states' restaurants popular menu item usually as a sandwich meat.   However, you can make shredded meat for sandwiches from other meats like venison, moose and chicken.  

The meat is cooked long and slow usually on a wood fired barbecue.  I prefer using the outdoor grill in the warm weather and the pressure cooker in the cooler weather but you can get similar results using the oven or slow cooker.  The meat is ready for shredding when it falls off the bone and is melt in your mouth tender then shredded using two forks.  Once shredded the meat can be used as is, or cooked further slowly in the oven with a braising sauce (eg. bbq sauce or au jus) or either may be served topping the shredded meat or as a dipping sauce.  You can use a commercial or homemade bbq sauce, gravy or simply seasonings to get a tasty au jus.  

I served the shredded rump roast on soft Kaiser buns with homemade Miracle Whip, red leaf lettuce, Provolone cheese and a thin slice on onion.  It was a tasty sandwich, packed full of flavour!  The sandwiches looked lovely as well.

Pressure Cooked Round Roast

Certain cuts of beef tend to be less tender than others.    As a result, these cuts tend to be less expensive but when you buy beef on the hoof as we do, the price is the same over all cuts of beef.  What this means is we end up with a few cuts of beef that are not quite as tender as other cuts but that does not mean they cannot be turned into a delicious dish.  There are a few ways of dealing with this problem ranging from marinating to long, slow cooking, stewing or braising.

Acidifying is another common way to break down the meat fibers and cartilage but one overlooked old fashioned method of dealing with tougher cuts of meat is cooking in a pressure cooker.  This is one of my favourite ways to cook tougher cuts of meat because it eliminates the long, slow cooking yet gives excellent, tender results.

I recently bought a Geneva Professional Quality Stainless Steel pressure cooker to compliment my collection of pressure cookers.  A couple of nights ago, I cooked a round roast, from frozen without thawing in under two hours in the Geneva.  This roast was beyond simple to prepare.  I simply put the frozen roast in the pressure cooker, topped with Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce, onion pieces and a little water.  I put the lid on and brought the pressure cooker to pressure then reduced heat just enough to maintain pressure and let it cook.

Cooking under pressure raises the effective cooking temperature from 212ºF to 240ºF/250ºF but because the moisture under pressure permeates the food, the end result is tender, delicious meat.  The round roast cooked this way was not only very flavourful, it was fork tender, easily shredded, just perfect for pulled beef sandwiches.  Unless you cook a round roast long and slow, you simply cannot get the gorgeous tender results the pressure cooker is capable of doing.  The nice thing is the pressure cooker gives this wonderful result in a fraction of the time of the long cooking methods.

I shredded the beef using two forks then served it with oven baked potatoes topped with the au jus.   The au jus could have been thickened for a gravy but it was quite rich, making a lovely sauce as it was.  All around this was a simple yet delightful meal. 


A pressure cooker can be one of the most valuable piece of equipment in your kitchen.   It helps but nutritious, healthy food on the table in the fraction of the time it would take using the slow cooker.  In fact, many meals can be cooked in a pressure cooker in 40 minutes or less.  I have heard that dry beans will cook in 3 minutes using a pressure cooker but have yet to try that method.  It is on my list of culinary experimentation this week.  If you don't have a pressure cooker and would like to buy one, I would suggest at least a 6 qt stainless steel, second generation (pressure control in the handle) model bought on sale of course.  With a bit of patience, you should be able to find one for under $40.  The pressure cooker will quickly pay for itself in both money and time savings!

Geneva Professional Quality Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker

I have talked about my pressure cookers previously.  A few days ago I was in Liquidation World (now owned by Big Lots Canada) doing a bit of household shopping.  Liquidation stores are the perfect place to get great bargains on kitchen equipment if you know what you are looking for.  These types of stores buy out the remaining stock of stores going out of business for whatever reason but some of the stock carried is brand name items (eg. Serta mattress, Cuisinart, Chicago Cutlery) not because those companies are going out of t business but because the store that was selling them went out of business.  I have been wanting a larger, stainless steel pressure cooker for quite some time.  Liquidation World had Geneva professional quality stainless steep pressure cookers on sale for $35, a 50% savings from their regular price which is about 50% off of what the retail price would have been when the store that liquidated was selling it.  So I ended up with a larger, stainless steel pressure cooker at a retail value of about $140 for $35.

Pictured is the new Geneva pressure cooker (far left), Jasi (middle) and Fagor (far right).  The sizes are 7 L (7 quart), 6 L (6 quart) and 4 L (4 quart) respectively.  The Geneva (made in China) and Fagor (made in Spain) are both stainless steel, second generation (regulator in handle) while the Jasi (made in China) is an aluminum first generation (rocker regulator) pressure cooker.  The Geneva is professional quality; the Fagor is commercial quality and the Jasi is standard.  None of these pressure cookers are large enough to use for home canning and the pressure is not variable, but rather 15 PSI.  The Geneva pressure cooker has a triple core base, automatic pressure control, overpressure plug, emergency release valve, auto lock handle and self sealing gasket.

I did a bit of researching on Geneva when I got home.  The news was not good and I did consider returning the pressure cooker.  [edited March 10, 2012]  According to internet search results the company making Geneva pressure cooker folded in late 2010 so parts are going to be hard to find.  Please see the comment that the company is still in business and parts are available.  Normally I would not buy a pressure cooker without being able to get parts but in today's global economy companies going under is becoming the norm.  What happens is sometimes another company will come in and take over one or more of those products and sometimes another company is formed to provide generic parts for the products of defunct companies.  The worst case scenario, if I could not find a replacement gasket a few years down the road, the pressure cooker would have more than paid for itself in cooking cost savings and I would still have a nice pot for regular cooking.  However, I compared the gaskets between the three pressure cookers.  The Geneva and Fagor gaskets are identical except for colour so I could easily use a Fagor gasket in the Geneva.  There is an O ring on the safety open-preventing valve that if need be could be replaced with a generic O ring.  Other than that with proper maintenance the Geneva should give me several years of reliable pressure cooking.  I think it was a frugal purchase all the way around but then I know pressure cookers. 

Easy Pressure Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup

I mentioned previously that I have been relying on tried and true dishes to get to know my new natural gas stove.  I'm also keeping the meals a bit simpler until we get settled into our new home.  So far, I have not attempted canning on the gas stove simply because I'm too tired and the opportunity hasn't presented itself.  The weather has turned cold and rainy so soup season has started!  Tonight I made use of one of my pressure cookers to make a quick and easy chicken noodle soup. 

Pressure cooking is my preferred method for making soups.  From freezer to stock it only takes 45 minutes for tender meat and rich stock.   I add vegetables if desired then bring the pressure cooker back to pressure to cook them or if using noodles, dumplings, rice or barley I just de-bone then add to the hot meat stock mixture and cook without pressure.

Tonight's soup started with two frozen chicken legs with backs attached.  I added a stalk of celery, a quartered unpeeled cooking onion, and two bay leaves then filled the 6 qt pressure cooker to the 2/3 mark.  I brought the pressure cooker to pressure then cooked for 45 minutes. After de-pressurizing, I removed the lid the de-boned the chicken placing skin and bones in a small sauce pan, covering just barely with water and brought to a rapid, hard boil.  While that was in process I strained the remaining stock adding it to the meat in the pressure cooker bottom.  Once the bones boiled hard I strained the resulting stock into the meat mixture then added one chopped onion and brought the mixture to a boil then stirred in extra broad egg noodles.  When the noodles were cooked, I stirred in salt, fresh cracked pepper and Worchestershire sauce to taste.  That's it.  The whole soup took about 75 minutes from start to finish. 

I was quite pleased with how the pressure cooker performed on the natural gas stove.  It came to pressure quicker and de-pressurized quicker which is a very encouraging sign for running the larger pressure canners.  I am planning on putting the pressure canner through its paces this weekend since the pantry is quite close to being organized.  I likely have another half day's worth of work in there then it will be tweaking as need be.  I'll be posting pictures hopefully on Friday!

Hearty Beef and Tomato Soup

Old Man Winter just refuses to release his grip on what has been a rather long, drawn out winter.  We've had snow on and off since the first week of November and just had snow April 18 so we have been dealing with snow for about twenty-two weeks.  If anything this long winter will go down in our culinary history as the Winter of Soups.  I think I made a pot of soup for each of those weeks, sometimes twice including the four weeks we were away on our winter vacation.  This year I was a bit more adventuresome in soup making, adding ingredients or using combinations I haven't tried before.  The beauty of soup is as long as you have the basic stock you have the makings of soup!

I wrote earlier about a fundraiser one of our grandkid's school had with bean packets from the Bean Ladies.  One of the packets I bought was a simple bean mixture to be used for soup.  The next time I was at the grocery store I checked to see what kind of mixes they have.  Now I know there are a number of dried soup mixes available but I didn't want anything with seasonings, just the actual dry mix.  The intent was if I liked that combination I could make up a few jars ready to use when desired.  I bought a soup mix by Bella Tavola that consisted of green split peas, yellow split peas, long grain rice, pearl barley, alphabet pasta and red split lentils in about equal portions.  The 450 g package (about 2 cups) was 99¢.  

I made a hearty beef and tomato soup using half of the package of mix, two soup bones, carrot, parsnip, onion and seasonings.  The total cost from scratch came out to about $3.65 with the most expensive ingredient being the soup bones.  Cooking time costs for electricity would add about 70¢ for a grand total of $4.35.  The yield was 8 - 10 servings of soup so the cost per serving was 44¢ to 54¢ bring the meal when served with homemade bread well under the $1 mark.  These numbers would make any frugalista jump for joy.  Talk about a budget stretching meal!

I apologize for the quality of the picture.  This soup has a little olive oil in it that makes it very difficult to take a good picture.  Olive oil not only helps to caramelize the soup bones adding colour and flavour but makes the lycopene in the tomatoes more accessible so this is a healthier soup.  The soup was an absolute winner hands down!  I made it from scratch using soup bones but you could start with pre-made stock to shorten the prep time.  There is a lot of room to tweek as desired as well.  I think it would be excellent substituting wild rice for the long grain rice for added flavour.  The only complaint I had with this particular mixture is the pasta cooked considerably faster than the other ingredients so I wasn't pleased with the softer pasta texture.  When using a homemade mix I will omit the pasta then add it to the soup in about the last 10 minutes of cooking.

Hearty Bean and Tomato Soup

2 tbsp olive oil
2 lg soup bones
1 onion, unpeeled and quartered
1 carrot, unpeeled
1 parsnip, unpeeled
5 peppercorns
1 lg bayleaf
water

Heat oil in bottom of pressure cooker with lid off.  Brown the soup bones.  Add remaining ingredients.  Fill with water to the ⅔ mark.  Place lid and regulator on the pressure cooker.  Bring to pressure and cook 40 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Allow to depressurize.  Strain the stock returning stock to pot.  Cut any meat from the bones adding to stock.

Add:

1 L (4 c) chopped tomatoes
500 ml (2 c) beef stock
1 c Bella Tavola soup mix
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp onion powder
salt to taste

Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to a low simmer and continue cooking until barley and lentils are tender.  Serve with dinner rolls, crackers or homemade bread. 

Bon Appétit!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Frugal Kitchens 101 - The Pressure Cooker

Prior to the microwave oven frugal cooks wanting to save time and money used a pressure cooker.  A pressure cooker does exactly what it sounds, it cooks food under pressure.  Normal cooking to a boil will cook at 212ºF but under pressure the temperature is 240ºF.  In addition to the higher temperature the pressure tenderizes tougher cuts of meat.  The pressure allows flavours to permeate quickly through the food as well.  Unlike a microwave oven, browning is quite possible using a pressure cooker.  Browning the meat prior to pressure cooking adds to the richness in flavour.  Cooking under pressure greatly reduces the cooking time and it does not heat up the kitchen the way an oven would.  Long cooking foods like stock that if done in a stock pot normally take a few hours but using a pressure cooker a rich, full flavoured stock can be made in about 40 minutes!  In my opinion a pressure cooker is a must have in any frugal kitchen.

Of special note, a pressure cooker cannot be used as a pressure canner but a pressure canner can be used as both a cooker and a canner.  The two main reasons why a pressure cooker cannot be used as a canner is size and pressure.  A pressure canner must be able to hold 4 - 1 quart jars something most pressure cookers are not big enough to do.  Pressure cookers are designed to operate at 15 lb pressure only but pressure canners are designed to operate at 5, 10, and 15 lb pressure.  Pressure cookers also take less time to come to pressure then pressure canners and the cool quicker than the larger pressure canners.  Processing times have been developed according to how the larger pressure canners perform not the pressure cookers so don't be tempted to use a pressure cooker for canning.

Pressure cookers are available in a variety of sizes.  In general it is better to buy one larger than you think you will use because it can only be filled ⅔ full.  I have 3 pressure canners (Mirro, All American) and 2 pressure cookers (Jasi, Fagor).  The Jasi is a 6 qt aluminum pressure cooker.  I paid somewhere in the $40 price range.  It is a first generation pressure cooker with a rocker regulator that gives an audible signal as to the pressure.  Getting used to a rocker regulator takes a few attempts.  Ideally the goal is a gentle rock not too slow and not a steady rock but somewhere in between.  The downside to the Jasi is it is aluminum so I don't use it for any acidic foods that could cause aluminum to leach into the food.  The Fagor is a 4 qt stainless steel second generation pressure cooker.  The regulator is in the handle so this pressure cooker is a lot quieter than rocker style models.  I use the Fagor a lot with my only complaint being I wish it were bigger.  I am planning on replacing the Jasi with a larger stainless steel Fagor.

When shopping for a pressure cooker:

• Watch the sales.  Pressure cookers tend to go on sale just before Christmas and again in the spring.
• Buy used.  If you want a great bargin pressure cookers can often be found at estate and yard sales.  Be aware though that some may need a new gasket.  
• Stainless steel will cost more but after using both stainless steel and aluminum my recommendation is to go with stainless steel.
• First generation (rocker style) or second generation (handle regulator) pressure cookers are equal in performance with both being calibrated to operate at 15 lb pressure.  As far as use goes it depends on what you get used to.  I've used rocker, petcock, dial and handle between my pressure canners and cookers.  When it comes to pressure canners I like the dial but with pressure cooker I really like the handle regulator.  This really is a matter of choice though.

Frugal Kitchens 101 - Pressure Cookers

Pressure cooking is the old fashioned way of putting good food on the table quickly preceding microwave ovens and take-out. A pressure cooker is a specialized cooking vessel that instead of cooking at 212ºF under pressure it cooks the food at 240ºF. What this means is the food cooks a lot quicker but because a moist heat is used the food is moist and tender. From start to finish a small roast can easily be cooked to moist and tender in less than 30 minutes! Unlike a slow cooker the meat can be browned in the same pot it will be cooked in and because of the greatly reduced cooking time you can easily pop thawed meat in the pressure canner when you get home from work with it being ready to enjoy less than 30 minutes later with minimal prep work.

In terms of energy usage my large slow cooker costs 4¢ per hour to run so for most dishes that would average 24¢ to 32¢. Using the large burner (2,000 ) W at a cost of 24¢ per hour the cost for the meat (20 minutes) would come out to 8¢. Now the cost savings is not as important as the kWh savings. In short the pressure cooker is considerably more eco-friendly than the slow cooker.

I have 2 pressure cookers (Jasi 6 qt, Fagor 4 qt) and 2 pressure canners (22 qt) that can be used for large batch pressure cooking. Now before I go any further all pressure canners can be used as a pressure cooker but all pressure cookers cannot be used as pressure canners. There are more details on this in this blogs archives. Pressure cookers are classified as 1^st or 2^nd generation depending on their regulator design. My Jasi is a 1^st generation pressure cooker that uses a weight as a regulator. I like it because of the size and the fact the weight makes an audible signal as the cooking progresses. The downside to the Jasi is it is aluminum so cannot be used for acidic foods. The Fagor is a 2^nd generation pressure cooker with the regulator built into the handle. It is smaller but it is stainless steel so can be used for acidic foods. I'm used to pressure cookers with the weighted regulators so can tell by the noise they make how things are progressing. The Fagor is pretty much quiet so that took a bit of getting used to.

A pressure cooker will cost you anywhere from $20 to $200 for a dual pressure cooker/canner and then some but if you are looking at a pressure cooker only you should be able to buy a nice stainless steel one for under $60. So figure on the $20 to $60 mark for pressure cooker only.

Tips for buying a pressure cooker:

• buy a larger size than you think you will use as a pressure cooker can only be filled ⅔ full
• stainless steel costs a bit more but gives greater versatility in that you can cook acidic foods
• whether the regulator is separate (1^st generation) or in the handle (2^nd generation) is purely a personal choice
• watch for the December sales meant for Christmas shopping; some can be as much as half off
• a rack is a really nice extra; if your pressure cooker does not come with a rack see if you can find a small cake cooling rack that will fit your pressure cooker
  

Enjoy!

Pressure Cooker Pulled Pork

The myth perpetuated by the food industry persists that cooking from scratch takes a lot of time and effort. Unfortunately it is a myth that serves to rid you pockets of hard earned money, discourage you from cooking from scratch all in the interests of lining the pockets of the food industry. The kids were telling us that right now there is not a lot of free time so they want good meals that don't take a lot of time to prepare. The emphasis is on good meals so one kitchen tool they rely on is the pressure cooker.

A pressure cooker cooks under 15 lb pressure raising the cooking temperature to 240ºF in a moist environment. Once the food is prepped the lid is put on and the pressure cooker is brought to pressure then allowed to cook at that pressure for the desired period of time. The vessel is then allowed to naturally depressurize or quickly depressurized using the cold water method. The end result is tender meat from even the toughest cuts and fast cooking times. Unlike a slowcooker the meats can be browned first in the same pot and in terms of energy usage the pressure cooker works out to be cheaper.

Pressure Cooker Pulled Pork

The kids put a nice sized, trimmed pork roast into the pressure cooker then brought it to pressure and let it cook for 20 minutes. While the meat was cooking the vegetables were prepared. The green beans and peas were steamed while the cheesy hash browns were bake. Once the meat was finished cooking it took little more than a quick shredding with two forks and stirring in a favourite barbeque sauce for easy yet very tasty pulled pork.

From start to finish it took 30 minutes to get the meal on the table. This is good home cooking from scratch that clearly shows you that home cooking does not need to take a lot of time. It was a gorgeous, home cooked meal well presented and very tasty!