Cooking with Chuck – Provencale Beef Recipe

Cooking with Chuck – Provencale Beef Recipe

Any meal cooked with chuck steak is bound to be delicious and nourishing leaving you feeling totally satisfied – so long as it is slow cooked and slow cooked for long enough. It doesn’t have the most gracious of names, but believe me, it’s a fabulous cut of beef, I think it’s probably my favourite cut.

Chuck steak is amazing for both its taste and its health properties, and it’s really the same attribute of this cut that provides the two. Chuck is really an extension of the same muscle that your scotch fillet comes from, just a little further forward into the forequarter area. Unlike scotch fillet, chuck steak has lines of collagen, (and some fat) that run through it, which is the reason that you wouldn’t want to throw it on the BBQ as a steak! These collagen lines would contract up and make for a pretty terrible meal. But put some diced chuck in a slow cooked meal and that’s when chuck shines! The collagen will partially melt during cooking (along with the fat), to add amazing flavour to the meal.

This collagen also has wonderful anti-inflammatory properties, due to its amino acid balance, which I’ve written about before. When we solely eat the muscle meat cuts, our body gets an overabundance of a couple of amino acids that are also related to stress in the body (and I think society already has enough stress). Collagen rich beef cuts help to balance this out (think chuck, osso bucco, blade, ribs, etc).

So the key to chuck steak is to cook it in casseroles, stews and slow cooked meals. While these meals do cook for a while, the real amount of time spent preparing them is actually quite small. We just need to have some forethought and a little effort up front – then it cooks away and does its own thing. Our Conscious Farmer chuck steak comes pre-diced too, so it’s ready to throw straight in the pot. To the untrained eye, the pieces may seem quite big, but anyone that has cooked with chuck before knows that it will slow cook to break down and be so wonderful and tender.

I’ve chosen this fairly simple but yummy recipe that has olives in it – keeping in theme with this time of year on the farm – with olive picking time and our Farm Forage Day this Sunday.

Provencale Beef Recipe

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil or tallow
  • About 1kg chuck steak (grass fed of course) – diced roughly.
  • 2 bacon slices, chopped finely
  • 1 leek, sliced thinly
  • 2 carrots, chopped coarsely
  • 1 stick celery, chopped coarsely
  • 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 410g canned crushed tomatoes
  • 1 ½ cups beef stock
  • 1 cup red wine
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 6 sprigs fresh thyme
  • generous bunch fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
  • 2 medium zucchini, sliced thickly
  • ½ cup black olives

Method

Start with a large saucepan or pot. Brown the beef in batches and remove from the pot after browning.

Cook bacon, leek, carrot, celery and garlic in the same pot until leek has softened. (I always find I need to add a dash of water or stock to this process to prevent burning on the bottom).

Return the beef to the pot, along with tomatoes, stock, wine, bay leaves, thyme and parsley. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer. Place the lid on and cook for 1 ½ hours.

Check how tender the beef is and keep cooking longer if need be.  Add the zucchini to the beef and simmer until the zucchini is tender.

Remove the bay leaves and thyme stalks as you serve.

I do think this recipe is particularly tasty when heated the next day. I’ve cooked it for a crowd before, where I do most of the casserole in advance and then add the olives and zucchini when I reheat it.

Serve with steamed crushed kipfler potatoes and a sprinkling of parsley.

Enjoy with a glass of the remaining red wine!

Happy cooking, Kirrily.

You can see our selection of Grass Fed Beef Hampers available for delivery here.