BEEF.
=Bullock's Heart.=--THIS is an inexpensive portion of the beef, but a
very tasty one when properly cooked. It should always be served on very
hot dishes, both plates and platter. If you elect to roast your heart,
put in a basin of warm water and let soak for an hour to draw out the
blood. Wipe dry, brush with oil or butter and tie or skewer in shape.
Put in well-greased bag and roast about two hours. Serve with a border
of carrots sliced and fried.
=Stewed Bullock's Heart.=--Soak in a basin of warm water for an hour,
then drain and wipe dry. Cut in halves, rub each side with flour and put
in a frying pan with a little hot butter. As soon as browned, transfer
to a buttered bag, adding four or five onions sliced and browned lightly
in the same butter, together with a sprig of thyme and salt and pepper
to season. Add a half cupful of water and cook slowly about three hours.
=Filet of Beef.=--Cut from the end of a tenderloin of beef, slices about
5/8 of an inch thick. Flatten down to about 3/8 of an inch and trim
round. Salt lightly on both sides, dust with pepper, and lay in a little
hot melted butter, flavored with a tiny scraping of garlic for an hour,
turning three or four times in the meantime. Take out, put in a
well-buttered bag, seal and cook twenty-five minutes. Serve on small
pieces of toast that have been spread with butter and browned in a bag,
pouring over them the juice of the meat that will have collected in the
bag.
=Hamburg Steak.=--Hamburg steak, which is too often a delusion and a
snare as furnished by the inexperienced cook, can be so manipulated in
paper bag cookery as to emerge a very delectable and decorative dish. In
the first place never telephone for hamburg steak nor buy that already
chopped and mounded ostentatiously on a platter with a garnish of
parsley. Naturally the butcher works up his trimmings and inferior cuts
into this comparatively inexpensive and much patronized form. Having
purchased your cut of round steak in the slice, its lack of natural fat
must be made up by the addition of a little beef suet (preferably from
the kidney). A piece of suet the size of a butter nut may be allowed to
each pound of lean meat. Next, if possible, get the butcher to chop it
by hand rather than by the easier-to-him method of running it through
the meat grinder. Now having your good meat at home it may be prepared
in any one of a half dozen ways. For the Hamburg steaks, press lightly
together into cakes about the size of a chop. If onion is desired a
little onion juice may be added with discretion, but for most tastes
boiled onions served separately, to accompany the steak, will be found
preferable, or a few rings of raw onion added to a lettuce salad. The
closely packed Hamburg steak is bound to be tough and dry. Better add a
beaten egg to hold the chopped meat together than press the small and
delicate particles of meat compactly.
Season lightly, brush over with oil or melted butter and lay in buttered
bag. Seal and roast for half an hour. Take up on a hot platter, season,
add a little melted butter mixed with finely chopped parsley and serve
hot with baked or mashed potatoes. A tomato sauce may go with the steaks
or a brown gravy made from beef stock. A pleasant change in the
appearance of Hamburg steak can be effected by shaping it to look like
lamb chops. When these are bag broiled with a bit of macaroni in each
end to simulate the chop bone they can be arranged to stand on a bed of
parsley stacked against a pretty bowl containing tomato sauce or stewed
tomato, a spoonful of which is to be served with each portion. The bed
on which the chops are to rest may be mashed potato or peas, if
preferred to the parsley.
=Pot Roast.=--While this does not eliminate washing the pot, the juices
and flavor of the beef are so conserved that instead of the usual dry
pot-roast it is moist and tender and so well worth the trouble.
Peel and slice a good sized onion and brown in a round bottomed iron pot
with a piece of beef suet. Wash a four or five pound piece of bottom
round, place in the pot without any water and brown quickly on all
sides, turning it without piercing with a fork. When very brown add a
small cup of water, push it back and let simmer for one hour, turning
frequently. Season and cook for ten minutes longer, then place it in a
well-greased bag, seal and put in a hot oven on a broiler, adding about
a cupful of the liquid in which it was cooking, before sealing. Reduce
the heat of the oven after ten minutes and cook an hour and a half to
two hours according to size. Potatoes may be peeled and browned in the
gravy left in the pot. When done, the liquid in the bag should be added
to that in the pot and thickened for gravy, first skimming off the fat
if too rich.
=Rib Roast of Beef.=--Grease the roast lightly with drippings or
vegetable oil, season with pepper, but not with salt, dust lightly with
flour and place in well-greased bag, seal, and place in a hot oven, at
the end of fifteen minutes, reduce the heat one-half and continue
cooking for half an hour longer in case of a three pound roast or for a
seven pound one, a little over an hour.
=Roast Round of Beef in Paper Bag.=--Get three or four pounds of beef
from top round, asking the butcher for a high chunky piece--not a
slab--from the tenderest, juiciest part. Have him tie it up securely and
add a piece of suet. Well grease the bag inside. Season and flour the
meat, place a small piece of suet on top, insert in bag, fasten with
paper clips, and put on a broiler in a hot oven, reducing the heat after
about five minutes. Allow fifteen minutes for each pound. It will be a
rich brown on the outside but rare and juicy. With an exceptionally
sharp carving knife the meat should be cut in very thin, appetizingly
rare and tender slices.
This is a most economical and nutritious roast, having no waste in bones
and trimmings, and if cut from good beef is as delicious as a
porterhouse roast.
=Sauer Braten.=--Rub a solid piece of the round of beef with vinegar,
dust lightly with salt and pepper and a bit of bay leaf rubbed to a
powder. Let the meat stand over night or twelve hours. Cut several
slashes in the meat, put in two small onions cut in quarters and two
carrots cut in strips and the same amount of turnip. Dust a pinch of
poultry seasoning or sweet herbs over. Lay three thin slices of salt
pork in the well-greased paper bag, add a half cupful boiling water and
if there is room in the bag tuck in a few more carrots or onions. Seal
and place in a very hot oven for eight minutes, then reduce the heat at
least half, and cook about two hours. Have a dripping pan with an inch
of water in it, set under the oven rack so that if by any mischance the
bag should burst, nothing would be lost. The steam from the water in
the pan serves the same purpose as wetting the bag before filling,
keeping it from becoming too brittle. Two bags will be found better than
one in this case.
=Beef Steak.=--Wipe the meat, trim off extra fat and brush over with oil
or butter. Season lightly with salt and pepper, put in well-greased bag,
seal, place on grid in very hot oven and cook from fifteen to eighteen
minutes, according to thickness of steak. At the last, pierce a few
holes in the top of the bag, if there is any doubt about the steak being
sufficiently browned. Take up on hot platter and spread with parsley
butter, pouring any gravy remaining in the pan over the meat.
=Toledo Beef Steak.=--Place a top sirloin steak in a wood cookery dish,
season with salt and pepper and place in bag. Seal and cook twenty
minutes. Remove from the oven, open the bag and turn the steak. Spread
over the top a little dry mustard and season with salt, pepper, two
tablespoonfuls of drawn butter and a large tablespoonful of
Worcestershire sauce. Place on the top grate of the oven without the
bag, and leave ten or fifteen minutes until crisp and brown.
=Stuffed Roast Beef or "Mock Duck."=--Take two flank steaks or one large
round steak. If the former, sew together with coarse strong cotton,
leaving one side open like a bag to be filled with the dressing. If the
latter, place on the meat board and spread with a dressing made from
mashed potato, well seasoned, sweet potatoes sliced and seasoned, or a
forcemeat made from two cupfuls bread crumbs, a quarter cup butter or
vegetable oil, in which a chopped onion has been cooked, with salt,
pepper and cloves to season. The Germans like a half cupful of seeded
raisins or chopped prunes added to this. Roll the meat about the
filling and tie with strips of cotton cloth, or if you are using the
flank steak, stuff the pocket and tie in shape. Butter the pocket or
roll well on the outside, slip into a large well-buttered bag, add a
tablespoonful of broth or hot water, seal, and cook in a hot oven ten
minutes.
Reduce the heat and cook forty or fifty minutes more according to weight
of the steak. A second bag over the first is advised here when the roll
is heavy.