Good morning everyone!
And a very happy early June Sunday to you all! May we all celebrate relatively sanely.
Fun recipe for you today. I’ll be making a British classic of Steak, Guinness and Mushroom pie!
Well shit, guess you knew that from the title up there.
Yes, this was a first attempt at this dish for me. It most definitely won’t be a last attempt but there will be a tweak or two the next time I make this.
So.
Meat pies!
Just the very mention puts a goddamn smile on my face.
Who doesn’t love a nice piping hot, crusty dough covered pie made of savory meaty goodness?
I sure as hell am guilty as charged. Shit, the Brits, Scots and Aussies have made a fucking full on culture of meat pies.
I’m also a big fan of the hand-held varieties. You got your hand pies, your pasties, your Jamaican patties, your crawfish pies, your empanadas and samosas, your Aussie meat pies (or Pocket Warmers as they refer to them) hell if you break it down a goddamn burrito is a fucking hand held pie isn’t it?
[I’m certain Maestro would figure out a way to call it a sandwich but I’m sticking with this]
When you step back and really analyze this shit, isn’t a meat pie the perfect food? Can be held in one hand while holding a cold beverage in the other hand.
Sure you can do fruit pies and such but give me a savory, meaty, gravy filled pie and a beer and I am fucking satisfied!
A few years back, there was an Aussie pie shop right near where I work, and used to live, in El Segundo. The pies were delicious but they served them in a bowl along with a double dose of starchy/carb options layered on top followed by a couple of generous ladles of gravy. I remember having a steak and shiraz pie that was covered with mashed potatoes, stuffing and then smothered in gravy.
Motherfucker!
Of course it was delicious but holy fuck! Damn near put me in traction for the next 4 hours. You know what “After Thanksgiving full” is like right?
This was the same but think about eating an entire pumpkin pie after you’ve finished your Thanksgiving dinner.
That shit hurt for the rest of the day.
Which is why I always say consume your meaty pie goodness in moderation folks. You don’t want to eat so much of this shit that you vow to never eat it again.
Let’s do this motherfucker!
Steak, Guinness and Mushroom pie!
recipe via recipetineats.com
0.7 oz dried porcini mushrooms
1 ¼ cups boiled water
2 lb chuck beef cut into cubes
1 – 2 tbsp vegetable oil
4 garlic cloves minced
1 onion finely chopped
1 celery stalk finely chopped
1 carrot finely chopped
3 carrots halved lengthwise then cut into chunks
1/3 cup flour
10 oz Guinness
2 cups beef stock
3 sprigs fresh thyme or 1 tsp dried thyme
2 bay leaves
7 oz bacon chopped small
10 – 13 oz mushrooms
1 – 2 sheets puff pastry (enough to cover pie)
Off we go!
Oh shit! Forgot to mention that this is a two day type of deal here. We make the filling on the first day, chill that shit out overnight then bake the pie the following day.
You do want maximum flavor enhancement yes?
Good!
Shit got expensive man! Definitely want to catch this when it’s on sale.
Porcini mushrooms are our “secret” ingredient today. I just so happened to have some left in the cupboard. I use these pretty frequently to ratchet up the funk on many a dish.
But you’ll need to give them a soak first. So bring that 1 and 1/4 cups of water to a quick boil and soak the porcinis in it for a good 30 plus minutes.
Finely dice up the first carrot and the celery.
I was going to make a bunch of Sweeney Todd jokes today but Alton Brown beat me to it by a good two decades.
Because, see? I get to chop up chuck with a cleaver!
Sorry chuck. But it’s your turn.
Season the meat with salt and pepper and get into a pan with hot oil.
Get to browning.
Four to five minutes per side then turn, then remove to a plate and repeat until all of the meat has been browned.
After the meat has been browned add the onions into the same grease and meaty juices and saute for about 5 minutes.
Then add in the garlic and the finely diced carrot and celery. Cook for an additional 3-4 minutes.
Finally add in the larger chunks of carrot.
Let this cook for two to three more minutes.
Next add the flour to the veggies and stir around a bit.
Try and get everything evenly coated.
You know what improves any recipe? Especially one calling for beef and slow braising?
This right here.
Goddamn do I love Guinness Extra stout. That shit is an incredible braising ingredient, as we’ve demonstrated before.
Go ahead and add most of the Guinness in the bottle to the veggies. Saving a drink for yourself, of course.
Don’t worry, that bottle of Guinness has 5 buddies that you can acquaint yourself with as you cook.
This dish also requires beef stock. You folks know my old standby line of “Add flavor at every opportunity.”
Look! Flavor!
Yes indeed. Leftover birria consomme instead of standard store bought beef stock. Into the pot it goes.
Chop up the now properly soaked porcinis…
Then we add them, their soaking liquid, the browned beef and the herbs into the pot.
Slap a lid on there and let it simmer away for an hour and 45 minutes.
Near the end of the braising time go ahead and chop up and cook the bacon.
When cooked but not overly crisped remove the bacon and saute the mushrooms in the bacon fat.
Cook for a few minutes until nicely browned.
Into the beef mixture goes the mushrooms and the bacon then we will give this a final cook for about 20 more minutes.
This will hang out overnight in the refrigerator for an impromptu dance party of the ingredients. It will be better this way, trust me.
Shit! Reminder! Go ahead and fish out the thyme twigs and the bay leaves at this point. I found out the hard way about leaving them in.
Oh hey! I made homemade veggie stock with all of the vegetable trimmings and ends and the like.
This went in my weekly vegetarian soup and it was an outstanding addition. This shit is going to happen regularly going forward.
Next day.
Remove the puff pastry…
from the freezer.
[sigh*]
Remove the stewed beef mixture from its cryogenic deep sleep and let come up to room temp for at least an hour before putting into a casserole dish and topping with the puff pastry.
Speaking of which.
If the pastry is a little large just tuck the ends underneath the sides of the filling.
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
Baste the dough thoroughly with an egg wash and cut a few slits in the pie top for proper venting protocol.
Bake for 35 minutes or so until achieving this result.
Cool for 5-10 minutes before serving.
Sexy sexy stuff right?
Well? Yes and no. The filling was fantastic with one minor caveat.
Here is where you need to prepare yourself for heresy and blasphemy because you know what folks?
There was too much bacon.
I know, I know.
A sentence that’s rarely been uttered before but I stand by it. The smokiness of the bacon took away from the overall savoriness of the beef and the gravy. The filling was perfectly delicious as is mind you but dammit. It needed a lot less bacon. Two to three strips would have been more than enough. It did not need more than half a pack of goddamn bacon in there.
Now to my biggest issue and the reason for the (*) up there.
That puff pastry fucking sucked on here.
I’ll own that shit too. I followed the linked recipe right to the letter including using the puff pastry. All that shit did was instantly turn into a goddamn soggy fucking mess and take away from the overall flavor of the entire dish.
My brain did everything but scream at me when I was preparing to make this dish. It practically begged me to use my homemade buttery pastry dough on top.
But NOOOOOO!
I had to follow the recipe instead of heeding my own internal instincts.
I should have my fucking head examined for not listening to that inner voice.
I’ll make up for it and buy it a few beers later today. Promise.
As I mentioned, this dish WILL be made again and I WILL use my own pastry dough and also cut down on the bacon because apart from the aforementioned hiccups this shit was fucking delicious.
So just think how much better it will be when we get the motherfucker right!
Can’t wait to try.
Hope you all have a wonderful rest of your June weekend.
Do enjoy and thanks for stopping by.
You folks are the fucking best.
See you next week.
PEACE!
True story:
I once got drunk in San Francisco on a Monday and woke up in China on a Wednesday
Maclean and Maclean, “Toilet Rock,” straight outta Canada, sometime in the 80s.
I don’t understand how we didn’t conquer China then?
So, since I often brag here about cooking, I thought I should confess a culinary sin. I suck at getting the timing right. Tonight I thought I could pull a shortcut and cook the fresh pasta in the pot where I had the seafood, garlic, etc., but I screwed it up and ended up overcooking the seafood and undercooking the pasta. All I had to do was keep the shit separate and bring it together at the end. Dumb dumb dumb.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I ate that stuff and downed some wine. I’ve had worse meals. But so anticlimactic.
My fish curry wasn’t great either. Yes, it was Thai green with coconut milk. I used a different brand of curry paste, didn’t love it. And I left the nan in the oven too long, it was more like pita chips. Not horrible, but I’ve done better.
Naan, and I swear I spelled it right the first time!
This is to take nothing away from yeah right, who is awesome and whose recipes have inspired many a dish, but I do want to tip my glass tonight to Albert Burnenko, whose “Foodspin” articles on Deadspin were also provoking — I always think of him when I make clams linguini, because he insisted that while bacon/pancetta are awesome, maybe you should keep clams linguini about the seafood.
I also appreciate him as a true influence.
But to be honest it was Sarah Sprague who was the biggest reason for me being here.
Her football foodie posts were the very spark of this here thing.
From the mother blog.
And Footsteps Falco was of course an inspiration to us all.
I’ve still got his pimento cheese spread recipe bookmarked. Never fails to be awesome.
I loved Foodspin too.
Whiskey sour wants to know: Why so serious?
Aw, he’s so happy that you’re about to drink his face!
I finished a package of watermelon chunks this afternoon and saved the juice to swap in for the lime juice in a margarita. So far the result aren’t thrilling me, but it’s not terrible. It is growing on me, so perhaps after a second one I’ll like it. Of course, after a combined 11 shots of alcohol I would suspect my taste buds would be less than reliable, so perhaps I’ll file that under “having an affair in Haiti without a condom” and other bad ideas.
Oh bro. It don’t count if you’re under a hoodoo spell…..
Because you need watermelon AND lime, then rim the glass with Tajin instead of salt.
YOU’RE WELCOME
Yeah, lime is providing some acidity that watermelon, bless its heart, can’t do.
This is why I love this site.
Added about 3/4 of an oz of lime juice to account for the amount already consumed. I don’t think the ratio is quite right but it’s a significant improvement. Well done people; well done indeed.
DFO: the best enablers on the internet
Folks, who’s playing at the Prudential Center in June? Not the Devils!
/Hey, the Rangers played a game this month!
Fuck Chris Kreider!
Sorry, reflex reaction.
Know what beats a 3-hour nap? That’s right, FOUR muckafuckin’ hours
Looking through the options at my new favorite meadery’s website and saw this, lol.
They have ‘special process shipping’ to California, whatever that means. Will probably just order to Chicago with regular shipping.
I usually try mead whenever I see it on a menu, because I like to pretend I’m a Viking warrior or something, but it’s always just ok. Would love to find a good one, I’ll check these guys out.
By the way, is there anything more pointless than alcohol-related websites asking if you’re over 21? Like, does anyone actually click “no,” and slink off thinking “damn, they got me!”
Better than the ones that make you enter a birthday, because basic math is sure to trip kids up!
I think there’s some places that ask questions like “what is a VCR for”
My parents still have a VCR, although it’s not hooked up and I don’t think they have any tapes for it anymore
I still have mine, and some tapes. Mostly old tennis matches, SNL episodes, and old Doctor Who. But it’s possible that somewhere in there is an old home movie some friends and I made, and I keep meaning to resume my search for it!
I have a VHS tape of Gumby’s missile test on the USS Nebraska, that I took from the Range Sentinel off Cape Canaveral ( Brick will understand this). I also have one of my son giving a tour of the house we built in 1993, and I think there might be one of him in a tang soo do tournament. Did I ever tell yinz my son got his black belt? I really need to get those put on a disc or saved to the cloud or wharever the kidz are doing these days.
Bitcoin, convert it to bitcoin
So, I’m blatantly stealing this joke from the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog, but we really need to have a DFOCoin, which is guaranteed* to only increase in value.
*-guarantee not actually enforceable
That’s pretty cool!
Easily the best I’ve had. Nice and crisp for summer. Want to try a bunch of their flavors now, although I suspect the plain Friending Fenrir might remain my favorite
What should one be looking for in a mead?
Alcohol
Whatever keeps your aquatic craft unsubmerged really, although quality ingredients are probably always involved
MEEEEEEAAAADDDD
These guys are in Coventry, CT.
One of my local bars has this on tap every now and again and it is delicious. But man does it pack a wallop. I can’t imagine having more than a glass and thinking “welp, time to get behind the wheel and see what happens!”
Come to think of it, that’s probably how the Vikings discovered North America: got shithoused on mead in a Greenland village, starting rowing for home two villages over, and woke up in Newfoundland.
This explains much about my ancestry
I fucking love this time of year.
You’ve got this here post and I’ve got something pretty much ready to go for next week and it’s incredible.
Then TODAY?
Knocked that shit out of the park and it will be right here in two weeks.
God DAMN was that delicious.
Tease.
Was Family Size boxes of Cinnamon Life (and only Cinnamon Life — no other cereals) on sale for $2.99/ea today too?!
You are killing it this gravy season!
Thank you!
It’s crazy. Almost a zen state this year.
No complaining — why are coconut water cans so durable?
Oh google told me. And gave me a dumbass AI answer.
AI is, literally, the pasteurization and homogenization of every stupid potential-dies-a-little-more-each-day-starting-at-12 girl that wastes her life crying into the voids of the internet. It ain’t gonna take my nothing.
Yup, my job has never been professional shitposter so I’m safe
Going to make my own pasta tonight and do linguini with clams and shrimp
That’s fantastic.
I will have leftover egg whites, so sounds like a whiskey sour is in order….
I’m probably doing fish curry with cod, leeks, and carrots, mebbe some broccoli. Brown rice.
Nice, what kind of curry? Thai green with coconut milk?
Just came back from golf. It was miserable and drizzly all round. Plus, I have this to say:
The last time I got talked into golf, the guys assured me that “it’s going to be very chill,” which it turned out meant “we will yell and swear our asses off when we slice one into the rough, then take three mulligans while you wait there bored, but it’s chill because we don’t count it on our scorecards.”
That wasn’t the reason why I haven’t golfed since. I’m just amused by how some people define “chill.” To me it would be “just hit your shot, accept your bad score, and move on, because who cares”
You sound pretty uptight.
That’s why I drink
As a side bonus, it also solves the problem of being upright.
Although being upright sticks it to that bastard gravity
It rained today?
I’ve gotten drizzled on a couple of times this week.
Strictly because I washed my car last week.
“I usually have to pay a lot of money to get drizzled on” — Donald T., Mar-A-Lago
I would not call it rain, but it was definitely wet. Until around noon.
Hey, is anyone else here a member of the Have a Garbanzo Bean Get Stuck in that Little Cavity Below the Back of Your Front Teeth Club?
Goddamn it happened again does that mean I’m the President now?
No, that would only happen if they were chickpeas.
I had a similar issue with the Hair Club for Men
I fix that issue by turning them into hummus.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a chickpea stuck there. I’m assuming you mean just the skin and not an entire bean?
No, the whole thing!
Huh, I’ve met you many times and never noticed the giant hole in your front teeth!
Too many carrots in the pie, in my opinion one is too many, other than the mirepoix of course. I bet potatoes would work really well in that recipe.
That meat pie looks good! I gotta go down to San Pedro and have Yeah Right feed me.
In the meantime, I just made a salad:
70% chopped fresh spinach, 30% romaine hearts
diced red, orange, and yellow bell peppers
diced sweet onion
diced celery
diced avocado
diced celery
diced cucumber
diced rainbow assortment baby carrots
sliced black olives
crumbled feta cheese
tossed with balsamic vinaigrette dressing
When the topic of tossed salads comes up, the first thing that comes to my mind is Brick Meathook.
Well of course look at that list up there. Also bend over.
That’s over 100%.
That sounds awesome, now I want a big salad!
I just noticed “diced celery ” was listed twice. I fired some staff members over this.
When I get home I need to send you a couple recipes from the Tea and Sympathy cookbook. Everything from there is amazing and I remember the steak and guiness pie being fantastic when I had it in the restaurant. Cheese and onion pasties are my absolute favorite savory hand pie though. Man, I am hungry
Another good use for dried porcini mushrooms is to stick them in a spice grinder* and turn them into powder. You can then use it to add some umami to dishes or spice blends where you don’t want chunks of mushroom.
*– cooking books and websites always say never to use your coffee grinder as a spice grinder. Fuck that noise, I have too many kitchen devices already. Just clean it well afterwards and it’s fine.
My only question here is where you wouldn’t want chunks of mushroom. Maybe a super creamy smooth soup where you don’t want any chunks of any sort?
Sure, that’s one example. Also maybe a spice rub for, I don’t know, a pork tenderloin or a steak. I don’t like mushrooms in chili, but a small amount of porcini powder will provide a nice umami boost.
Tenderloin was the reason for buying them. They’re also excellent in a pan sauce for a steak.
And how did I forget duck? A little porcini powder on duck, paired with a mushroom risotto?
I only use a coffee grinder for spices. It’s easy because I never grind coffee in it.
I do, but if I’m real worried about a strong spice flavor carrying over, I’ll just “waste” a small amount of coffee beans to soak up leftover aromas.
A lot of spices are good in coffee anyway. Clove in coffee is a Maltese thing and it’s delicious
Yeah, I generally wouldn’t worry about it much. Maybe if I was just grinding some dried chili peppers and didn’t want really spicy coffee, but something more “aromatic” is no big deal.
So relieved that Zverev didn’t win. Fuck that guy.
I bet the Cubs fans are becoming INSUFFERABLE for Redshirt……
Nah. In Party Deck surrounded by Reds fans. Though it does sound a lot like Wrigley Field
All right, time for some yard work. Take that, stupid nature!
You show that heat dome!
It’s 61° and cloudy here.
Now it is I who hope to enter California….
Afternoon Reds game with Dad. Yeah, this’ll do
Hoping it’s a real
HOME RUN!
Excellent! As a Cubs fan I can only hope you’ll be disappointed but that hasn’t happened in the first 3 games of this series.
Both of us are due…
The Ceremonial First Pitch was done by an pALS who barely got the ball to the plate.
It’s was inspirational and a mistake to pull him for the Reds Starting Pitcher.
“The last time the Cubs won a world series, the EU still existed!”
– color baseball announcer in 2121
That’s pretty fucking empty
This dearth of sports is brutal.
I see those 24 hour roku channels have like an old sports station now. In case you want to watch some 1992 Nebraska Cornhuskers action!
THIS GUY ALEXANDER ZVEREV I CALL HIM MATT GAETZ AFTER THE FRESHMAN FORMAL BECAUSE HE’S COMPLAINING THAT THERE’S BLOOD ON THE BALLS.
Obligatory-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=978WE78-EPE&ab_channel=GiannaGould
This is some cold winter night food porn right here folks.
Yeah, more January than June. If we make it we’re just going to cheat and use refrigerate pie crusts.
Is it just me or is that Jabba the Hutt’s face in there?
and he looks angry… like he lost his princess Leah in a bikini…
SOMEONE PHOTOSHOP THAT HIP ROLL OFF THE PHOTO OF THE YOUNG OLD DEAD WOMAN!
.
Listen up, you primitive screwheads…
And pie. WAR pie.
Not even Brick would suck on that dough in one of his sub-Atlantic war games.
That’s a sexy, sexy piece of food. Well done, good sir.
That braised beef with some white rice and a green salad or ripe plantains 😛
And maybe I’m a precious asshole, but isn’t the Pie Experience dough encasing filling? Well yeah, course I will eat from a vessel full of stuff that someone placed dough on top, but that’s half a pie C’MON!
Agreed. Dough should be on the bottom to Utah Hockey Team up the juices.
But shepard’s pie doesn’t even have that, just mashed potato on top. But it is still pie!
Wouldn’t that make this a sandwich?
I haven’t seen a few slits cut this cleanly since the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream released their 12-gal roster featuring zero of their rookies.