Local Beef

[jaideeguy]

As tough as it is, I find the local Thai beef quite tasty and I think healthy, when compared to the factory raised chicken, pork, and other hormone, antibiotic fed alternatives. it is quite lean, with little or no fat which makes it tough.

so far, I've used it successfully in stews, sauerbratten, soups....any way that you can slow cook it for 3+ hrs.

It is absolutely useless for quick cooking unless ground into hamburger and add a little pork fat to moisen it up.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

[BambinA]

Neua daad deaw (sun dried beef)

Beef + salt +(pepper or other herbs you like) then let it dry by sun 1 day then deep fried

Yum Neua Yang (spicy and sour grilled beef salad)

Yam Neau Yang recipe Ingredients

Beef 500 grams (Tenderloin)

Shallot 1/4 bowl

Lemon grass 1/4 bowl

Parsley 1 tablespoon

Cucumber, tomato and mint (for dressing)

Fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, chillies (for sauce)

Preparation

1. This Menu was cooked like BBQ or steak. Grill the beef with hot fire.

2. Cook fast to get the medium rare.(For rare and medium rare, grill each side 3-4 minutes, medium to medium well 5-6 minutes).

3. Slice it for serving.

4. Prepare the sauce and dressing.

(repipe from net)

[gennisis]

As tough as it is, I find the local Thai beef quite tasty and I think healthy, when compared to the factory raised chicken, pork, and other hormone, antibiotic fed alternatives. it is quite lean, with little or no fat which makes it tough.

so far, I've used it successfully in stews, sauerbratten, soups....any way that you can slow cook it for 3+ hrs.

It is absolutely useless for quick cooking unless ground into hamburger and add a little pork fat to moisen it up.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

When I buy a large piece of Thai beef,which from experience I know would not roast and remain edible to my old teeth,I put it in my slow cooker with a very small ammount of oil at the bottom, Cook it for 3-4 hours,then put in a very hot oven for 30 mins. I end up with a cooked beef joint that I can slice hot or cold and its very tasty and tender.You will be surprised how much liquid you end up with in the pot.

Edited January 16, 2008 by gennisis

[BambinA]

Japanese Beef Curry - It's kind of stew curry and it's not spicy and easy to cook

Ingredient

1) Japanese Curry - you can buy it from a supermarket as House brand

2) Beef

3) Onion

4) Carrot

5) Optional - pumpkin, apple

Direction , you can read it beside the curry box. You may add chocolate for dark brown colour. Adjust the tastes- sugar, salt

Edited January 16, 2008 by BambinA

[photojourn]

There is nothing wrong with local beef if you know how to handle it. Local beef doesn't have any fat running through it like Western beef does.

Hang it in the refrigerator for about three days with a drip tray underneath it. Cut off any bits that dry out and place them in a bowl with some plastic wrap over it and they will soften up. Use these for stir-fry.

If you can't hang it then wrap it in a papaya leaf and place in a large bowl and leave in the refrigerator for three or four days. You can also cover it with papaya pulp but the leap is easier and less messy. Don't worry about any discoloration - just cut it off. Papaya will not alter the taste of the meat.

I owned a restaurant in Indonesia and we served local beef cut as steak all the time and the tourists thought it was imported beef until we told them otherwise. The important thing if cooking as steaks is to let the meat rest for five minutes after cooking before eating.

[Lickey]

There is nothing wrong with local beef if you know how to handle it. Local beef doesn't have any fat running through it like Western beef does.

Hang it in the refrigerator for about three days with a drip tray underneath it. Cut off any bits that dry out and place them in a bowl with some plastic wrap over it and they will soften up. Use these for stir-fry.

If you can't hang it then wrap it in a papaya leaf and place in a large bowl and leave in the refrigerator for three or four days. You can also cover it with papaya pulp but the leap is easier and less messy. Don't worry about any discoloration - just cut it off. Papaya will not alter the taste of the meat.

I owned a restaurant in Indonesia and we served local beef cut as steak all the time and the tourists thought it was imported beef until we told them otherwise. The important thing if cooking as steaks is to let the meat rest for five minutes after cooking before eating.

Hi Photojourn, after 18 months of not having a tender steak in Thailand {only at a euro resturant in Nong Khai ] but having made some good beef casseroles ect, ive been missing a good steak, done a bit of web research and found that Papaya is a good tenderiser, i use a near ripe papaya, peel it, cut in half longways, remove seeds, cut into 1inch blocks and lay the steak on, and cover the top of steak with the same, 24 hours and its ready for cooking , the papaya chunks are roasted in oven along with potatoes and other veg, makes a really nice steak/roastie meal, cheers, lickey..

[tutsiwarrior]

with thai beef I'd say grind up what you got, freeze it and use normally for falang food like burgers, pasta sauce, chili, meat loaf, etc...the grinding renders it usable. The fancy assed shit you get in BKK ain't available in the provences so one has to be resourceful.

look out when using ground beef with tomatoes like in chili and pasta sauce...I can't get my nieces to eat anything cooked with tomatoes...

[sceadugenga]

I got a recipe from here posted by ThaiGerd for pot roasting beef that is great.

Brown it in the pot in a bit of olive oil then add onions, garlic, tomatoes, herbs and spices as desired, put the lid on and just keep adding enough water to keep it from drying out until tender.

You can always slice any beef really thin and flatten it out a bit then cook it quick and hot for steak sandwiches.

[photojourn]

There is nothing wrong with local beef if you know how to handle it. Local beef doesn't have any fat running through it like Western beef does.

Hang it in the refrigerator for about three days with a drip tray underneath it. Cut off any bits that dry out and place them in a bowl with some plastic wrap over it and they will soften up. Use these for stir-fry.

If you can't hang it then wrap it in a papaya leaf and place in a large bowl and leave in the refrigerator for three or four days. You can also cover it with papaya pulp but the leap is easier and less messy. Don't worry about any discoloration - just cut it off. Papaya will not alter the taste of the meat.

I owned a restaurant in Indonesia and we served local beef cut as steak all the time and the tourists thought it was imported beef until we told them otherwise. The important thing if cooking as steaks is to let the meat rest for five minutes after cooking before eating.

Hi Photojourn, after 18 months of not having a tender steak in Thailand {only at a euro resturant in Nong Khai ] but having made some good beef casseroles ect, ive been missing a good steak, done a bit of web research and found that Papaya is a good tenderiser, i use a near ripe papaya, peel it, cut in half longways, remove seeds, cut into 1inch blocks and lay the steak on, and cover the top of steak with the same, 24 hours and its ready for cooking , the papaya chunks are roasted in oven along with potatoes and other veg, makes a really nice steak/roastie meal, cheers, lickey..

Hi Lickey,

You got the right idea. Papaya is a great tenderiser. My restaurant was in a tourist region in a primitive part of Indonesia (Lombok) and the beef and butchering there was pretty rugged. I used to cut my own beef at the market and even the eye fillet needed treating like this. We were buying beef for Rp 30,000/kg and my ex-pat competitors were paying Rp 150,000/kg for imported beef. We were serving 2and 3-inch cuts too, not hammered out shoe sole thick steaks. We never had a complaint about the steaks either. Use the Papaya leaf though and keep the fruit for dessert, breakfast, or juice - it's cheaper

[Lickey]

PJ, forgot to mention we have 1600+ papaya plants on our farm, selling daily to the local market and wholesale to a export/canning factory, but what do yo do with the leaf? wrap the steak with it? do you crush the leaf a bit so the juices flow? thanks for your help, Lickey..

[tutsiwarrior]

also...if you got a big slab of beef you can freeze it and cut off slices...try that fer the stir fry, it's what they use for sukiyaki...when frozen easily shreddable as well...

I'd say curry the mother but curry spices are hard to come by..,

[photojourn]

PJ, forgot to mention we have 1600+ papaya plants on our farm, selling daily to the local market and wholesale to a export/canning factory, but what do yo do with the leaf? wrap the steak with it? do you crush the leaf a bit so the juices flow? thanks for your help, Lickey..

Hi Lickey,

1600 plants is a lot of juice

Yup, just cut a leaf off and wrap the steak in it. I've never crush the leaf but I imagine a light crushing would realease more of the enzymes. I've always wrapped the beef with the top side of the leaf in contact with the meat. Then just place it in a bowl in the refrigerator for a couple of days.

I've used mashed papaya as well, but after a few days the meat got "spotted" with what looked like a fungus. It wasn't fungus though and the meat was perfectly edible, but the appearance wasn't good prior to cooking )

The best way though is to get a nice piece of eye fillet or topside and just hang it in the refrigerator.

Tutsiwarrior is right. It is much easier to slice chilled meat of any decription than meat at room temperature.

Hasap rules state that fresh produce should not be above 4C for more than four hours from the time of slaughter to consumption. Each time you take it out of the refrigerator, slice it and then wait for it to cool down again erodes the four hour limit.

Personally, where we were in Indonesian the meat spent more time than four hours above 4C and we had no I'll effects. Just cook above 72C to kill bacteria.

[Lickey]

Hi Photojourn, thanks for that, we use the 24 hour rule for papaya, but will take your advice on the leaf and see how it goes,

Tutsi, heres a curry recipe for you, onioin chop finely,4 cloves garlic, chop finely,4 red chillis,deseed if you want, chop finely [small] heat the wok with 2tbls of oil or large knob of butter, put the above in, add the meat/chicken/prawns then grate in a large carrot, stirring in all, decore an apple, cut it into chunks and add, now the sauce!! for a good thick sauce, i use cream of mushroom cambells cup a soup, make the soup then add the curry powder, a good heaped desert spoon full, Waughs curry powder, available in Makro, [yellow label with the crossed guns on it ] stir this into the soup and add to wok, stir all in, simmer for 20 mins, and the final touch is the ginger, peel and chop finely an egg sized ginger root, add this to the mix give it 5 mins and serve on a bed of rice which im sure is always available in any thai house, and add mixed nuts and raisans or sultanas to the wok as well for more different tastes and flavours, Cheers, Lickey..

[tutsiwarrior]

Hi Photojourn, thanks for that, we use the 24 hour rule for papaya, but will take your advice on the leaf and see how it goes,

Tutsi, heres a curry recipe for you, onioin chop finely,4 cloves garlic, chop finely,4 red chillis,deseed if you want, chop finely [small] heat the wok with 2tbls of oil or large knob of butter, put the above in, add the meat/chicken/prawns then grate in a large carrot, stirring in all, decore an apple, cut it into chunks and add, now the sauce!! for a good thick sauce, i use cream of mushroom cambells cup a soup, make the soup then add the curry powder, a good heaped desert spoon full, Waughs curry powder, available in Makro, [yellow label with the crossed guns on it ] stir this into the soup and add to wok, stir all in, simmer for 20 mins, and the final touch is the ginger, peel and chop finely an egg sized ginger root, add this to the mix give it 5 mins and serve on a bed of rice which im sure is always available in any thai house, and add mixed nuts and raisans or sultanas to the wok as well for more different tastes and flavours, Cheers, Lickey..

hey...a good one; you are using local resources to the best effect. Many times here on the forum people suggest recipies for which ingredients are required that are simply not available. Prepared curry powder is available at tescos (I like to grind my own and always bring back a load from the ME for the purpose) and the rest can be bought down the market.

Right on!...we gots to get folks interested in the manner and purpose of using local ingredients for falang food...

btw, ol' jayenram has contributed quite a bit to this forum on his 'I miss spuds' thread on the western food section...check it out...he is a curry master...

Edited January 18, 2008 by tutsiwarrior

[jaideeguy]

how do you 'hang' a piece of meat in the fridge when the fridge is always full??

could it be done in a cooler with ice??