American society seems to admire originality, variety, and all things unique and individual. But we surround ourselves with unrelenting sameness, especially when it comes to food. Here in the Mahoning Valley, in the northeastern corner of Ohio, grocery stores are in a rut. While the decorations change with every Hallmark holiday, the produce, poultry, seafood, and meats are UN-apologetically the same old, same old all year round.
I find it depressing. So depressing, in fact, that I basically gave up grocery shopping and cooking for myself about three years ago. When you find yourself ordering boxed and canned meals from Amazon, you know you've really given up, and that's where I was just a few months ago, hobbling together a diet from convenience foods, Chinese carryout, and pre-sliced cheese.
I recently joined the Lake-to-River food co-op, however, with a determination to get back into the fight for fresh food, real food, preferably locally-grown. And that's where I found, on their website, a most extraordinary thing, a type of meat I've never seen or eaten: beef cheeks! So, naturally, I ordered some.
Beef cheeks are thick, dense facial muscles. They are a VERY tough meat, with lots of sinew and almost no fat. Some sources on the Internet will tell you that beef cheeks are "tender," but they are talking about the meat's texture AFTER a long, slow, wet cooking.
As with all meats that are tough--tongue, hocks, brisket-- beef cheeks, I knew, would benefit from a method of cooking called braising.
Braising is when you slow boil something in liquid for an extended period of time. You can do it in the oven, on the stovetop, or in a slow cooker. Armed with this information, I started thinking about what flavors I wanted.
The first beef cheek recipes to turn up on my Google search reminded me that tough meats used to be the dinner fare of the lower classes worldwide, showing up as stews or as stewed-then-grilled tidbits.
I was tempted, for a few days, to use the beef cheeks to make a taco filling. I made beef tongue tacos a few years ago, and they were stunningly tasty (and lean!). But in the end, I decided to turn to my memories of a Chinese beef brisket stew from '70s.
I must have tracked down and read several dozen Chinese beef stew recipes before I settled on one to use as a basic model. The one I chose is called "Cantonese Style Braised Beef Stew 炆牛腩 " at one of my favorite Chinese recipe websites, Yi Reservation:
Using Yi's recipe as a base, I made some alterations:
Replaced the 2 lbs. of beef brisket with 1 lb. of beef cheeks
Replaced the Hou Chou sauce with Hoisin Sauce plus 4 cloves of garlic (in additional to the hoisin and garlic already in the recipe)
Omitted the rock sugar because, hey, all that hoisin is bound to make things plenty sweet.
Instead of "cooking wine," added a splash of dry white wine.
Omitted "spice" (5-spice powder)
Instead of 1 bay leaf, I used 4 bays leaves because other Chinese beef stew recipes I read that day used anywhere from 3 to 6 bay leaves, which I thought sounded interesting.
I also went to the grocery store to get vegetables for the stew. Originally, I was thinking that greens would be good, or maybe baby carrots and green beans. But when I was walking through the produce section, an amazing sight beheld my eyes: daikon radishes!! I ended up choosing one large daikon radish and a small bag of fresh green beans.
Mel's Recipe for Cantonese-style Beef Cheek Stew
After the adjustments, this is what my list of ingredients looked like:
2 or 3 T cooking oil
1 lb. beef cheeks, cut into small pieces
1 medium onion, diced
7 clove garlic, minced
3 slices ginger, skin on
1 T oyster sauce
2 T hoisin sauce
1/4 cup chardonney
1 T low-sodium soy sauce
1 T dark soy sauce
1/2 cup water
1 T dried orange peel
1 star anise
4 bay leaves
1 large daikon radish, washed and cut into bite-sized chunks
8 oz. fresh greens beans, trimmed and cut in half
chopped scallions for garnish
Beef cheek meat is TOUGH! I had a hellava time cutting it up. At first, I didn't have enough control with my regular, super-sharp butcher knife to get through the sinew; the knife kept slipping off. I had to use two implements of destruction: my short, Santoku-style knife and a pair of poultry sheers. As I was cutting, I realized that this dense meat is probably going to be extremely delicious because of all the tendons, and it would take hours to become tender, but it would be well worth the effort and the wait.
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| The white is sinew, not fat. This is some of the leanest meat I've ever seen! |
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| Cutting beef cheeks into bite-sized chunks takes a lot of physical effort. |
Method
In a dutch oven, saute the onion in the oil until it is translucent, then add the cut-up meat and saute until lightly cooked on all sides.
Add the garlic and ginger and stir-fry for another few minutes.
Add the liquids, then aromatics (orange peel, star anise, and bay leaves), bring to a boil, lower the heat to very low, put on the lid, and allow it to cook for two or three hours, until the meat is tender.
Check on the stew periodically to make sure the liquid doesn't boil away. If necessary, add water.
Add the daikon radish pieces and green beans and continue slow cooking for another hour.
Remove and discard the bay leaves and the chunks of ginger root.
I served the stew over steamed basmati rice.
The diakon radish is an awesome vegetable. It's a sturdy root, like a carrot or turnip or potato, but with an extremely mild radish flavor. It went well with the sauce and meat, as did the green beans. The meat was downright sumptuous, very 'meaty' in flavor, tender, but with no obvious animal fat, so it wasn't 'heavy' tasting. And the sauce was amazeballs.
I had my doubts that a combination of 4 or 5 bottled sauces plus an overload of bay leaves and some orange peel was magic, but . . .
Hey! It is!
