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Sunday, May 3, 2009

Serious Eats Weekend Cook-off: Cheap Cuts of Meat

This week on Serious Eats, I discovered a new concept they are trying called the Weekend Cook-off. They will be posting a new story each week from a magazine, newspaper, or blogger featuring a certain cooking concept. Then they are asking readers to make something related to this theme, get inspired, then write about what they did and share it with others on the discussion boards. I thought this sounded really fun and is a good way to decide what to cook. I also thought it might be fun to try to this at the same time as my mom, and she agreed. The first cook-off theme was cheap cuts of meat - the more inexpensive cuts of beef, pork, and lamb that are usually just as tasty - and how to use them. Obviously everyone is trying to save money right now, so this is a fun way to still get to eat meat and spend less. I know that I eat a very small amount of meat at home nowadays, and price certainly plays a part.

My initial plan was to make a pork loin, but as I suspected, my local market didn't carry that cut. The problem with the cheaper meats as that they are also less popular, and therefore not all stores carry them.
Right next to the pork, however, was lamb and I quickly zeroed in on a pack of two lamb shoulder blade chops for only $5! I love lamb but I've never bought it, and this seemed like the perfect chance to do so. I'm a huge fan of lamb - I go to steak houses and almost always order lamb chops instead of steak. A lamb shoulder blade chop is cut from the area under the shoulder blade I believe, and is a flatter piece with a bone through the middle. I think simple is always better when preparing meat, so I came up with a very basic marinade for the chops, roughly based off of a Bobby Flay lamb recipe I looked at online. I put about 1/2 cup of olive oil, the juice of one lemon, 3 cloves of chopped garlic, oregano, salt, and pepper in a shallow dish. I coated the lamb chops well in the mixture, covered it, and let it sit for about 2 hours. Then I grilled them on my indoor grill pan for about 8 minutes total.

A Sunday dinner in the spring

While I made the lamb, I also roasted some asparagus in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Right before I took them out, I sprinkled just a dash of Parmesan cheese over them. The lamb chops turned out very well. The marinade was subtle but really tenderized the meat and gave it a good flavor, and I think I did a pretty good job of cooking them to the right doneness. Lamb should be on the pink side, just cooked through but not bloody in the middle. The only part of the lamb I would like to get better next time is to get more of a crust on the outside of the meat. But I didn't mind the different style cut. The meat was still tender, and yes, there is some extra fat and connective tissue on it, but you don't eat it, it's no big deal. I couldn't believe how well we ate for well under $10 total! I certainly hope to try some more kinds of cheap cuts in the future!

3 comments:

  1. OK, this is kind of scary. I made the exact same cut of meat, marinating it first in a blend of olive oil, garlic, thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper. I had the same experience - it was very tasty, although you had to eat around the extra fat and gristle...and I wished I was able to get a bit more char on it. Of course I served it with roasted asparagus. They say that the older you get, the more you become your mother - except in this case, I am becoming my daughter!

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  2. This was a great Sunday night meal. The Parmesan cheese dash on the asparagus was a great touch. Great job, Lis!

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