What is for Dinner tonight...?

  • Hey Guest, Early bird pricing on the Summer Moot (29th July - 10th August) available until April 6th, we'd love you to come. PLEASE CLICK HERE to early bird price and get more information.

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,666
McBride, BC
Kind of a stormy thing = 50 - 80kph winds with rock dust, dirt and rain. Mountain mud storm and I just got all my windows washed.
5:10PM, the grid power fails with everybody trying to make supper in the storm.
Local 10MW gen set can't start until all the broken trees are off the lines.

Push one button and I am isolated on my own power supply. Lots of light and heat.
My neighbors know this. -25C and they can all shelter in my house.
7PM, grid is on and i'll shut it down for today.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,666
McBride, BC
Pretty wild and wooly last couple of days.
Power company fixes one thing only to discover something else is damaged. All over the district.
Another 24 and that should be most of it.

Salmon burgers (with dill & feta). Not exactly a PacNW native tradition! Yam fries. Radicchio salad.
 

woodstock

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Apr 7, 2007
3,568
68
67
off grid somewhere else
Last night we had boiled hardwood smoked pork, butter braised peas and potato dumplings.

Tonight we will make a soup with the liquid the meat boiled in.
We just add pearl Barley, carrots and other root veg, peas and dried porcini.

Food like this is cold weather food, so we just dial down the AC a few degrees.....
:)

That sounds delicious
 

hughlle1

Nomad
Nov 4, 2015
299
7
London
Oysters followed by blinis with cream cheese smoked salmon and keta, followed by a sirloin. Then this lot will marinate overnight before dehydration tomorrow. Should be a tasty bit of protein for my trip next month. One batch of teriyaki and another of pineapple and maple.
IMAG1231.jpg
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,666
McBride, BC
hughlle: I wish this site had a LIKE button.
Please tell me 2 things;
1. do you plan to slice this meat any thinner before marinating?
2. please describe your dehydration process.
Thanks
 

hughlle1

Nomad
Nov 4, 2015
299
7
London
Haha. It will be sliced, and has been. It would take forever and am eternity to dehydrate so!etching like that, although it would be interesting to try just because of curiosity. As it is I've actually sliced this beef at around 1/⁴ inch instead of my normal 1/8 inch slices.
(Partially freezing the meat before slicing makes it easier, but I'm a former fishmonger, butcher, and chef, so I generally don't bother). Slicing with or against the grain is largely irrelevant for !e because I chop the final product into individual bites

I don't do measurements, but it must have been something around this give or take a pinch a handful and a splash

For the teriyaki
about 250ml of light soy, Worcestershire, and teriyaki
Few teaspoons of garlic and onion granules, crushed chilli, spicy asian paprika, black pepper, honey, brown sugar, and maple
Splash of liquid smoke

The other was about 250ml of soy, Worcestershire, and pineapple juice, same spices, and about half a bottle of maple syrup :)

Marinate for about 12 hours, and then pat dry with kitchen towel and use a dehydrator at 70C for most of the day (I have a cheap Andrew James one so I have to tend to it all day switching the racks around because of the heat source being at the bottom) and wait until it becomes!es "stringy" when pulled apart. Then mason jar for 4 weeks storage, else vacuum pack for longer periods. The ones i make have distinct flavours when I do it right, but you always taste the beef. I tend not to enjoy jerky or biltong where the dominant flavour is the marinade.

It's one of my favourite snacks and cooking ingredients as it is, so it seems the best form of camping (sorry, bushcrafting) protein supply for me.
 
Last edited:

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,666
McBride, BC
"Some of this and some of that. . . " Critical measurements that everybody should know.
Thanks for all the info. I usually keep the round meat to eat at home.
Small scale batch of your goop should do a couple of bison T bones for the grill.

I use local bison burger, HiMountain cure & seasoning and a jerky pistol from Cabela's.
The real deal for me is to hand mix until the granular texture goes fibrous again.
500g squirts 17' x 3/4" on the dryer racks.
Out hunting, the stuff tastes like heaven on earth when frozen.
 

hughlle1

Nomad
Nov 4, 2015
299
7
London
Haha. Indeed. Teaspoons millimeters and the like simply mean you dont cook enough.

In the UK, a t-bone is a bit of a mythical beast. You'll pretty much every find one in a supermarket, and if you do it will cost a fortune. A good (not high) quality sirloin will cost an hour's pay at minimum wage. I'm a student, so just went with a few kilos of top round.

Meat and fish are damn expensive in the UK, and it's generally low quality. The most realistic hunting average Joe can do here is pigeon, squirrel, and rabbit. And with a <12ft/lb air rifle. And only under the guise of peat co troll if all other methods have been considered.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,666
McBride, BC
For years, I get the measuring spoon set out and lay it on the counter as a visual guide to quantities.
Last batch of tabouleh, I used 2 big handfuls of dried mint. Was about right.

I can see the tree line for the bison ranch from my kitchen windows. The only practical and economical method is to buy
a good sized deep freeze and buy meat by the quarter or side. I ask for steaks at 3cm, fairly small (2-3kg) roasts and all the rest burger.

I've had 15 years of practice doing this with a side of 2yr old bison, every November or so.
Hang 7 days, cut wrapped, labelled and flash frozen, about $4.50/lb for some 220 - 240lbs meat.

Then, I barter for elk, moose, venison, chickens, pork and so on. Elk TBones last night, farm chicken on the grill tonight.
Got a call from a neighbor = they butchered an 18 mo old beef. Did I want liver? Sure, took 10lbs for free.

Buy a freezer. It's the sole ingredient for economy. Ribs and chicken parts on sale, buy several.
Crazy deal on fresh green beans at the store. Bought 5kg, diced, bagged and froze them up for myself.

Freezers hold their value, even the small chest size for a bedroom corner in a flat.
Without one, you can't cope with bulk food offers, even dropped at your feet.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,666
McBride, BC
Yeah, I forgot that good part = bulk cooking. My chili con carne' (with bison burger) recipe makes 18 meals to freeze.
I got into that habit when I was working, shop in my freezer for the day's lunch. Cook on a 1-burner butane rig at the office.
Cook bulk 3 or 4 nights a week for 2 weeks and you can coast for ages. One mess made 3 x 14" pizzas = 24 big slices of 3 kinds of pizza.

Another thing that's worth buying is a kitchen scale so you can bag up bulk foods into useful if not equal portions.
I need 900g wild Saskatoon fruit for a pie. 1,000g boils over and makes a mess. I freeze 850-900g at a time.

Tonight will be chunked up sausages in a pan. Near the end, cleaned and chunked up Granny Smith apples, tossed with cinnamon, a little nutmeg
and a little brown sugar. Pork with apple sauce in one pan, one fire. Some starchy thing, some salad thing.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,666
McBride, BC
Oh yeah, bison are boney critters. Off the hook, maybe 25% bone loss in butchering.

Best of all, I was taught by a professional chef over 2 days how to roast bones, make stock and make espagnol to freeze in 1C lots.
From that, I was taught to make 10 different derivative sauces. I helped him out by doing the grilled kebab bites a few times for 300+ people.
I guess he figured he owed me some time to learn to do what I had failed at so many times.

You could also find the basics of all that in Wayne Gisslen's culinary text book = Professional Cooking.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,666
McBride, BC
I needed to learn to roast bones and make espagnol. What a pleasure to learn what mattered to me.
The chef left me to make the derivatives. His remark was: "I'd sell what you make."
I'll never forget his professional instruction.
Partly because I scribbled notes every couple of hours during those 2 days!
 

BCUK Shop

We have a a number of knives, T-Shirts and other items for sale.

SHOP HERE