Saturday, April 21, 2007

Serin's Meat Mud

  • 2 pounds of lean ground beef
  • 1 lime
  • 16 oz/500 g (ml?) Diced tomatoes (in a can cause I'm lazy)
  • 16 oz/500 g (ml?) Tomato Sauce
  • Two Green Bell Peppers
  • A handful of button mushrooms
  • A handful of shitake mushrooms
  • A corona (or heffeweisen, but then substitute a lemon for the lime in order to balance the change in acidity)
  • A Roma-Tomato's worth of not-red Onions
  • Two or three cloves of garlic (up to you really)
  • Large skillet
  • Extra-virgin olive-oil.

Now. With the ingredients...

Into the skillet, pour enough olive oil to cover about a third to a half of the bottom.

Heat skillet at medium heat.

Chop onion (smaller than pencil eraser sized chunks)

Dice garlic (Finer the better)

Slice lime wedges, (widest about half inch at the skin)

Roll oil around skillet to coat bottom.

Add onions

Open beer

Stir onions

Add lime wedge to beer.

Stir onions

Enjoy beer.

Repeat previous two steps until onions are brown/burnt/tiny

Add garlic.

Agitate to let the garlic brown.

When the garlic gets a hint past golden brown, apply meat.

Brown the meat. Stir occasionally while prepping vegetables. Use the spatula to chop up the meat to ensure all the meat is consistently brown

Open cans of tomato bits
Chop mushrooms and bellpeppers into bits. Try to keep all the pieces around the half-inch size.

When the meat gets to a nice even brown, push it all to one side and drain the fat with a spoon. (There'll be a tiny bit left, but that's okay)

Return pan to stove and add tomato goop. Stir.

When the mixture starts bubbling again, add vegetables.

Let the mass simmer for about 10 minutes.

Season to taste, starting as soon as the meat is browned. I tend to use about 3 spoons worth of montreal steak spice mix, added gradually, and then I add red pepper flakes and black pepper as I see fit. The tomato sauce tends to carry enough salt by itself. This last batch, I also added parsley.

The whole process, end to end, takes about 30 minutes or so. The result is a very heavy meatsauce. I used the spatula to slice out chunks that just spread over the spaghetti noodles under it's own weight, like a blob of mud.

Thanks to Stir Fry Kitty

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