Tips for Slow Cooked Winter Meals
Pop on some music or a podcast, tie on an apron (if anyone does that anymore), enjoy your chopping and dicing as you throw it all in the pot and then savour the smells as they build and intensify over the next couple of hours into a lovely slow cooked meal.
I’ve put together some tips on ways to slow cook our beef for winter that stretch outside the relatively simple and best known technique of some diced slow cooked beef in a casserole. This is incredibly delicious in itself, we know, but if you’d like to branch out a bit, here are some ideas that will warm you from the inside out.
Hearty beef soup
Soups are a fabulous warming food in winter; with hearty chunks of beef and vegetables in a clear, salty broth, it’s also super satisfying and great to have on hand in the freezer for those lazy Sunday nights.
Keep it simple with browned beef pieces, onion, carrot, celery, lots of beef stock, salt and pepper slow cooked until the beef is tender (and with some potato pieces popped in toward the end and topped with chopped parsley). Or you can try this Hearty Beef Soup with Basil Pesto.
You can also make a soup with oxtail, but you need to get in quick for these from us each month – as we say, there’s limited numbers – no two tailed cows on our farm!
Best cuts: Round steak, chuck steak, blade steak, oxtail.
Brisket or silverside
Both silverside and brisket can be slow cooked and served as a pulled or shredded beef. Try this Beef Rendang Curry that is raked or pulled into pieces for serving or a southern Mexican style shredded beef for tacos or wraps. These can be made with either a silverside or brisket. All of our beef is preservative free; we don’t treat our silverside cuts with sodium nitrite preservative for the pink corned meat that some may be familiar with, so this is a great option for our silverside cut.
Brisket is not standard with our hampers, but can be added as an extra to our Double Nourish and Family Hampers.
Best cuts: Brisket or silverside.
Spiced Vegetables with Grilled Steak
These Spiced Roasted Root Vegetables are a great way to move a steak from a summer evening’s BBQ with a crisp cool salad, to a lovely, warming winter meal. Cooking with what is in season (like these root vegetables in winter) is great for having the freshest and most readily available ingredients. If they’re in season, it means they haven’t been stored for periods of time and their nutritional qualities will be at their best.
This recipe uses the wonderful root vegetables of swede, parsnip and carrot, baked with onion, beetroot and sweet potato, in a cayenne pepper, paprika and cumin spiced honey that becomes sticky and fabulous after baking.
Best cuts: Serve with a T-bone, Sirloin, Eye fillet, Scotch Fillet or Rump Steak.
Sausages
Sausages are a great summer food when cooked up on the BBQ. Turn them into a winter warmer with good ol’ curried sausages!
Best cuts: Both our standard or paleo sausages work well
Short Ribs
Sticky beef short ribs are a super winter meal when served on a bed of mash with this wonderful winter slaw. We had them on the weekend when we had friends for lunch. A winner!
Osso Bucco
These guys just fall apart when they’re slow cooked – there are lines of collagen running right through the shin pieces (that’s what osso bucco is – a cross cut of the shin) that melts to that fabulous, flavoursome gelatine. Traditional recipes include white wine and thyme casseroled in the oven.
Cooking with the collagen rich cuts and cuts with bones is reported to be great for health. I’ve written about this before with regard to the positive amino acid balance of these cuts; winter is a great time to embrace slow cooking for how healthful it is.
Add bones
Make a beautiful broth with our chemical free bones – here is how if you’ve never tried it and learn why bone quality is so important. Wonderful to have in a mug on a cold winter’s day, with a pinch of sea salt. Bones are an addition to our standard hampers – they come packed in 2kg lots.
Casseroling (can it be a verb?)
Traditional casseroling (in the oven) or stewing (stovetop) are great ways to have enjoy all sorts of meals with the similar diced beef cuts – from Indian to French eating, to traditional English stews. Try this Thai Red beef Curry or Beef Provencale.
Best cuts: chuck, blade and round steak.
Mince
Choose some lovely baked mince dishes for winter, like this Lasagna or Shepherd’s Pie with my Twist.
Best cut: Just our lovely grassfed beef mince.
Our Mixed Cut Hampers
You can find all these cuts, for a wonderful array of winter dishes in our grass fed beef hampers. The Wholesome Hamper, Family Hamper and larger orders have all of the above mentioned cuts in them. You can see our complete selection of hampers here.
So get pop the music on and enjoy your casseroling.
Kirrily x
