Meat

[nonnihil]

This is one of the more fun things that I cook. It is easiest with some assistance from ukelele, but the rest of you will just have to find someone else, or do without, because you can't have her.

Comments

[ukelele]

Note: The first time we made this we had some better way of flattening the meat, not with a brick. It made it into meat lace. Unfortunately neither of us can remember it. All I remember it I was really disturbed when I first saw nonnihil doing it, because it didn't look like a kitchen tactic.

However, mmmm. And pretty!

[marphod]

I'm vaguely tempted to try this by putting the meat through my pasta roller. Unfortunately, the cleaning would be a pain.

[tiurin]

Is it possible to make hamburger via pasta roller?

[marphod]

I doubt it. I also cannot fathom why'd you want to, unless you were to reinforce your ground meat by folding it, a la a katana. %)

The device is a pair of steel rollers, that can be set between a 1/2 cm and a fraction of a mm apart. If you put in ground meat, I believe the pressure from the rollers would exceed the adhesion of the ground meat, and just turn it into chunks. (which is what happens to pasta dough that hasn't been kneaded enough, as well.)

However, rolling your ground meat means you're going to cook the whole thing way past medium rare. Cooking a single side MIGHT work. But, why bother?

A single piece of meat would hopefully have better adhesion than ground meat. Regardless, cleaning the device, which can rust, is going to suck.

[elwe]

Ooh! Sounds yummy

[capsicumanuum]

Oooh, sounds yummy

[roamin_umpire]

I must concede that this is the first time I've seen an ingredient measured in square inches. And it makes vastly more sense than any other measurement of basil I've encountered.

[arcanology]

That's why I like reading recipies from out of livejournal... all the people I know who post them are the sort of minds that state the things that need to be stated, instead of saying "use 2/3 peck unless (undecipherable cooking term here) is (yet another cooking term) and then (third cooking term)". People who aren't afraid to use bricks in their recipies.

Roasting peppers...

[anonymous]

I find a toaster oven can work well for broiling peppers, and doesn't get the kitchen quite as hot.

I wonder if some sort of salamander-like rig with two nesting hot cast iron pans would be even better / more fun.

And remembering my iron chef, perhaps you could screw the meat to a board using drywall screws and a drill. :-)

-JWM

Oh yeah...

[anonymous]

Slightly frozen meat slices thinner. But I always find it annoying to get it just the right amount defrosted, especially after work (the microwave will *not* work).

-JWM

Re: Oh yeah...

[nonnihil]

So true. I had actually planned to cook this a day earlier than I did, in which case it would still have been frozen in the middle. But getting just the right amount of not-quite-frozen is a tremendous pain.

Fortunately, the brick forgives many errors in slicing. Every slice gets thin when you drop a brick on it.

Re: Roasting peppers...

[unclenomer]

This is my kind of cooking. Drills, bricks. Need to attach a meat slicer blade to the table saw and I'll be all set.