I used to do my briskets in the oven. However for ease of being able to put a meal on in the morning, go to work, and have it ready to go that night when I get home, I switched over to using a slow cooker. What I’ve found though is that the flavour of my briskets doesn’t pop nearly as much when slow cooked.
So after a lot of trial and error I have a recipe that works. And the best bit is that it doesn’t take too much prep so you can still prepare it and set it going before going out for the day!
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large yellow onion
1.5kg beef brisket
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups beef stock
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Method:
*Slice onion into thin half moons. Put the olive oil in the pan and slowly caramelize on a low heat, then set aside.
*Put the brisket in the frypan and sear on both sides.
*Make up 2 cups of beef stock. Mix in the two tables of Worcestershire sauce and the 1 tablespoon of soy sauce.
*Place the brisket in the slow cooker, fat side up, and season with salt and pepper. Take the minced garlic and spread it over the top of the brisket.
*Pour in the beef stock mixture.
*Put in the onions, on top and around the brisket.
*Cook on low heat for 6 – 8 hours (depending on brisket size)
*Leave on warm for half an hour before serving.
And that’s it! A really simple yet really delicious way to add a bunch more flavour to your briskets.
Isn’t it wonderful when you find a new cut of meat you didn’t even know existed!
For me this Father’s Day it was the Cattleman’s Cutlet. If, like I was, you are ignorant to what that is, it is a giant ribeye still on the bone, looking for all the world like a gigantic version of the little lamb cutlets that usually grace the BBQ.
Oh where have you been all my life!
So today I will give you a quick rundown of how I found to be the best way to cook this big hunk of meat, with a combination of searing and slow cooking.
Step 1: Weigh your meat so you get a rough idea of cooking times. Mine came to 625gms.
Any cut of beef under half a kilo isn’t worth my time
Step 2: Rub salt into the meat half an hour prior to cooking:
Step 3: Rub whatever seasonings you see fit into the meat. For me I used a Smokey BBQ one, but you can use whatever takes your fancy.
Cooking
Step 1: Bring your BBQ to a very high heat.
Step 2: Place your meat horinzonally and sear for approximately 10 minutes
Step 3: Flip your meat, turn it vertical and sear for another 10 minutes
Step 4: Flip your meat. Turn the heat on your BBQ to minimum. Close the lid and let it cook through slowly
A good time to add any other food you are going to cook
Step 5: Open the lid. Flip your meat. Close the lid and let cook slowly for another 10 minutes. Open up and it should be ready to go!
And that’s it. 40 minutes of cooking will result in a cut of meat just that bit browner than medium-rare but lighter than medium, which is just how I like my beef. If you prefer your meat lighter or darker than adjust cooking times accordingly, as you must also do regarding the meats weight. Serve with whatever sides you like – since you’ve got the BBQ on anyway why not chuck some corn on the grill!
Growing your own veggies and herbs is great, and they certainly without fail always taste far superior to what you buy in the supermarkets. But of course, that then means you have to find a use for them when ready.
I like growing leeks as I always pass on a few to my sister, but I have limited recipes that actually use leeks (I sometimes get flummoxed by vegetables you can’t roast). Out of the recipes I do have, this one is far and away the best, assisted largely by the fact it has a lot of pig in it. So without further ado: Big Angry Trev’s Bacon, Leek & Potato Soup
Ingredients
8 rashers of bacon, chopped
1 onion, chopped
3 leeks, sliced
3 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1.5L hot vegetable stock
150ml thickened cream
Fresh parsley
Cracked pepper
Method
Chop up bacon, fry up half until crispy and put to one side
Put stock in pot, heat but do not bring to boil.
Chop up onion, sauté it with remaining bacon in butter until golden.
Add sliced leeks and diced potatoes to pan, cover and cook on very low heat for 5 minutes, shaking pan occasionally.
Take bacon & vegetables from pan and stock from pot and combine in large pot, bring to boil.
Simmer concoction for 20 minutes covered, stirring occasionally.
Let mix cool. Take mix and put in food blender. Puree mix.
Pour mix back into warm pan, slowly add cream and stir until warm.
Put into bowls, top with fresh parsley, crispy bacon and cracked pepper.
Camping is awesome! Getting away from it all and setting up ya tents by a river out in the wilderness, just nature and some good friends and family.
And what makes camping even better? Good food! Fie I say on those who are content with just a couple of snags – Big Camper Trev don’t swing that way, no sir! Ya got’s to keep ya strength up in the wild and what better way than with Big Angry Trev’s Campfire Lamb Shanksrecipe!
Check out the video for an audio description of the recipe I use (some coarse language), then find the full list of ingredients below. All you need is a set of good hot coals, a cast-iron cooking pot, a few hours and then you are set!
Ingredients:
*4 Lamb Shanks
*2 Large Potatoes – peeled & quartered
*1 Large Onion – peeled & quartered
*2 Carrots – peeled & halved
*4 Garlic Cloves
*4 Fresh Bay Leaves
*1 Tin of Diced Tomatoes
*1 Tin of Water
*1 Vegetable Stock Cube
So get ya tent, head out bush and cook yourself us some excellent tucker! Enjoy!
Jerky – oh that sweet chewy bounty of the heavens!
Real jerky is awesome! Dehydrated meat, usually beef, cut into strips and flavoured to perfection. Unfortunately most people have not tried proper jerky. All they have tried is that awful rubbery crap you get in little packets at servo’s and bottle shops.
Well that jerky is the same to real jerky as powdered mashed potatoes is to real potatoes – a horrible aberration, a pale shade of what the good stuff really is.
When living in Melbourne there was a deli at the Vic Markets that did really good beef jerky and whenever I traveled to the big city I would buy up as much as possible. But now living in NSW, Melbourne is a long way away, especially during the pandemic.
So I’ve been learning to make my own – and I’ve gotten damn good at it! And because, like Rarity, I am the paragon of generosity I’m going to share that recipe with you now.
Ingredients
1.5kg slab of Beef
1/3 cup of Soy Sauce
1/3 cup of Worcestershire Sauce
1 tbsp of Minced Garlic
1 tbsp of Brown Sugar
1 tsp of Chilli Flakes
1 tsp of Smoked Paprika
½ tsp of Ground Black Pepper
Method
Trim all the fat from the beef, stick in the freezer for two hours
Easier to carve when slightly frozen
Remove beef from freezer, slice into strips 0.5cm thick
If too thick meat wont dehydrate inside properly
In a bowl mix the Soy Sauce, Worcestershire Sauce , Garlic, Brown Sugar, Chilli Flakes, Smoked Paprika and Black Pepper.
Ohhh that delicious smell!
Massage meat strips thoroughly through the mix. Cover with cling wrap and marinate overnight
Meat should have absorbed the mixture
Take marinated beef strips, put in food dehydrator set on high for 9 hours. If you don’t own a food dehydrator either go buy one (they are worth it!) or else stick in the oven on low for 6 hours.
Space evenlyRotate racks if meat is not drying evenly
And now you have jerky! EAT!
So damn good!
And that’s it – simple as! Follow Big Angry Trev’s Jerky Recipe and you will get brilliant meat every time!
Living in a rural area, most of my meat recipes involve some form of farm animal. But today it’s something a bit different. See, out here in the bush we often forget that that big blue wobbly thing called the ocean that is so far away from our location is full of all kind of weird and whacky looking creatures that can be cooked up and popped in our tums.
In our tiny town we have The Fish Man. The fish man is a man with a refrigerated van full of seafood from the Sydney fish markets that morning, who tours the small rural towns once a fortnight and is our only chance to buy really fresh seafood.
When my wife and I were in Spain I had some fantastic Paella – great stuff! I’ve never been able to replicate it since but below is the recipe I use that comes the closest. It’s easy to make and tastes damn good! So without further ado lets look at Trev’s Prawn Paella!
Ingredients:
2 tbs olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 red capsicum, deseeded and chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp Mixed Spice
2 tsp Ground Paprika
500g Arborio Rice
1 cup dry white wine
1L chicken stock
1 bunch broccolini, chopped
800gm’s shelled green prawns
Juice of 1 lemon,
1 lemon but into 8th’s
Flat-leaf parsley, shredded
Method:
Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add onion and capsicum. Cook for 3-4 minutes until softened.
Add garlic and spices and cook for a further minute.
Add rice and stir to coat. Add wine and stock. Simmer for 15 minutes.
When all liquid has been absorbed by the rice stir through broccolini and spoon into baking tray
Layer prawns over top of paella. Sprinkle lemon juice over dish. Add segmented lemon pieces.
Roast for 15 minutes in oven at 220c
Remove from oven & sprinkle over shredded parsley. Serve.
And there ya go, a fabulous Spanish Dish that tastes great! Cook and enjoy!
Don’t ya hate it when your poultry has a secret nest?
I have all these great laying drums set up for my ducks, but for some damn reason half of them prefer to find some nice secret spot in the garden and lay their eggs there every day until I discover it a few weeks later.
This just happened yet again, so we’ve gone from no duck eggs to having well over a dozen that have to get used up pretty quick from not being refrigerated.
So I decided to try out a recipe of my sisters to use them up – her magnificent curried eggs. She makes them that mouthwatering that for years I’ve insisted on a plate of them instead of birthday gifts from her.
While I can’t profess to make them as well as her, I gave it the ol’ college try and they still came out pretty damn good! And it’s a simple recipe so really easy to make. So here is Big Angry Trev’s sisters recipe for Curried Duck Eggs.
Ingredients:
*16 Duck Eggs – boiled
*120gm Butter
*4 tbsp Cream
*2 tsp Curry Powder
*1 tsp Mustard Powder
*Black Pepper
*Paprika
*Chilli Flakes
Method
*Boil the eggs, slice in half and scoop out the yolks.
*Put yolks in a bowl and add butter, cream, curry powder, mustard powder and season with black pepper. Mash.
*Spoon mix back into egg whites.
Seasoning
How you season your eggs is up to you. Typically as the househusbandI have to cater to everyone’s particular tastes so I divvy the eggs up into 3 lots.
First lot I put on no seasoning for my kids.
Second lot I put on paprika for my wife.
The third I put on paprika and chilli flakes for myself.
I’ve yet to try them with hot sauce but that’s only a matter of time. But I definitely recommend the paprika, it really makes the flavour pop!
And there ya go, a simple recipe that is an effective way to use up all those extra eggs you find lying around the farm.
Now that we are devouring our own Muscovy ducks every couple of months, I have to keep finding new recipes to keep it interesting, as well as delicious enough it gets my wife and kids to stop complaining that ‘the ducks were so cute’.
I raised the ducks. I raised the ducks parents. I fed them, watered them, looked after them… so I say we damn well eat them!
Ahem, anyways. The latest recipe I used came out pretty damn good. And even tasted better as leftovers the next day! So without further ado let’s look at ShreddedRoast Duckin Crabmeat Sauceon a bed of steamedBok Choy.
Ingredients:
1 Can of flaked crabmeat
2 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons flour
3 Shallots, thinly sliced
1 bunch of Parsley, chopped
6 Bok Choy
12kgDuck
2 Oranges,quartered.
Method
The Duck
*Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
*Quarter the two oranges
*Pat the duck dry with paper towel. Season with pepper, salt & paprika
*Stuff anal cavity with oranges
*Place duck on roasting rack, turning every half hour
*Remove from oven and let sit for 20 minutes
*Shred all meat from carcass and set aside
Crabmeat Sauce
*Melt butter in a pan. Add shallots and sauté.
*Slowly stir in the flour to thicken and add the crab meat and mix.
*Add the shredded duck meat, mixand simmer on a very low heatfor 5 minutes
Bok Choy
*Break into individual stems andsteam for five minutes
Serving
Lay the Bok Choy lengthways on the plate and ladle the duck & crab meat over the top.Garnish with fresh chopped parsley.
For years we have been growing our own fruit, vegetables and herbs and really enjoying both the fresh taste and the satisfaction of producing it ourselves. Well for the first time ever, we have been able to do the same with our poultry as well.
We already had two Muscovy Drakes and our last lot of ducklings produced 3 more. Having a ratio of 5 drakes to only 13 ducks was going to result in a massive amount of fights, so while we kept one of the new ones to keep expanding the bloodline, the other 2 had to go.
When you wake up to find this many ducks on your doorstep, it might be time to thin the flock
Slaughtering and preparing the ducks
With the assistance of a friends parents, we knocked off two of the drakes at the 13 week mark, and subsequently kept one duck apiece. While this may sound gory, it really wasn’t. By doing poultry we had raised ourselves, we could be assured that the ducks had had a good life (we free-range) and were killed instantly and humanely. I shant go into too much detail as this is more a recipe piece but in a nutshell this was done by:
*Giving the ducks a big feed of food and water (a last meal as it were), but then not allowing them to eat or drink for the next 24 hours so that there was nothing in their bowel or bladder.
*Holding the duck upside down by its feet, which actually calms it somewhat, then striking it just behind the back of the head with an axe, yet not beheading. This not only instantly kills the duck humanely but the allows you to drain the blood.
*Submerging the carcass in very hot (but not boiling) water for several minutes so you can pluck the feathers.
*Gutting the duck.
End result
Our drake came out at a very respectable 2.2kg, filled with beautiful lean meat as we had not purposely fattened him up.
Cooking
This being the first time we were eating our own livestock, I wanted to get the cooking exactly right. Not an easy task since I’ve never roasted a duck before. After looking through various recipies I chose bits and pieces from several I liked and produced a fantastic result! So enjoy ‘Big Angry Trev’s Roast Duck & Potatoes Recipe’.
Ingredients
*1 x Home Grown Duck
*1 x Lemon
*2 x Oranges
*Sage leaves
*Purple Sage leaves
*Rosemary
*Chinese 5-Spice
*1 dozen medium-sized Potatoes
Food Preparation
*Quarter 2 oranges and 1 lemon
*Go pick the two types of sage and some big sprigs of rosemary (or buy beforehand if you don’t have a herb garden)
*Alternating between the different citrus and herbs, stuff the ducks cavity to capacity
*Taking a knife, score the duck both on the breast and underneath, making sure to cut right through the fat but not into the meat.
*Rub a decent amount of Chinese 5-Spice into the scored flesh
*Peel the dozen potatoes, then boil for 10 minutes. Shake virgoursly inside the pot to roughen the outsides, then set aside.
Method
*Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
*Put the duck in breast-side up on a roasting rack with underneath tray
*At the half hour mark, remove the duck, flip over and put back in.
*At the hour mark remove the tray and drain the fat into the saucepan containing the potatoes. Put back into the oven breast side up
The amount of fat drained from the duck at the hour mark
*Roll the potatoes around in the duck fat, then place in a deep roasting tray on the upper shelf of the oven.
*At the 1.30 mark flip the duck for the last time
*At the 2 hour mark remove both the duck and the potatoes.
Drain the remaining fat from the roasting pan into a Tupperware container and stick in the fridge for future use.
Side Dishes
To add a bit of colour to the table, I personally did a lot of orange vegetables, roasting up a ton of carrots, kumura and (ugh)pumpkin. Also to compliment the oriental style in which I was doing the duck, I made up a huge bed of fried rice, full of peas, corn and bacon, topped with some crispy noodles.
So there ya go, Big Angry Trev’s Roast Duck & Potatoesrecipe!
Got any other duck roasting tips, pop them in the comments section below!
My wife doesn’t like pork. There, I’ve said it. It’s a shameful thing to have to admit about ones spouse but there it is. Likes ham, tolerates bacon… but hates pork. My daughter likes pork to a small extent and my son merely tolerates it. So in a house of four people we have a total of one pork lover – me.
As a result I am always trying new recipes to try and convince my family to eat swine flesh on a more regular basis. Most make the meat reasonably OK for them but it never truly converts them.
However I have finally hit on a recipe that even my wife will happily eat! Saucy and tasty, this will make even those whose religious faith make them eschew pork commit heresy and chow on down – Pork Cutlets with Creamy Mustard Sauce.
Ingredients
6 large Potatoes
2 Red Capsicum
1/4 cup Wholegrain Mustard
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
1/3 cup Chicken Liquid Stock
4 large Rindless Pork Loin Cutlets
1/2 cup Thickened Cream
1/4 cup Flat-leaf Parsley L:leaves
Salt & Pepper
Method
*Preheat oven at 200 degrees
*Cut the potatoes into wedges and thickly slice the capsicum, place into a baking tray.
*In a bowl, mix up the mustard, olive oil and liquid stock.
*Pour mix over the vegetables. Place loin cutlets on top and season with salt & pepper
*Place in the oven for half an hour
*While food cooks, chop up parsley leaves and put into a bowl, add the cream
*At half hour mark take out the cutlets and wrap in tinfoil. Pour the cream and parsley mix over the vegetables and put back in the oven for another 10 minutes.
*Put the food on a plate. Sit back and let everyone compliment you on how good it looks.
Oh hells yeah!
*Devour. Threaten others that if they don’t do the dishes this time round that you will never make such a meal again.
And there ya go, a pork recipe to delight the family and ensure you actually get to eat pork once in a while.
Enjoy this recipe? Lets us know in the comments section below!
