Michelle’s Kitchen
Michelle’s Kitchen
Top Round, an inexpensive yet leaner cut of beef becomes tender and moist in under 30 minutes with the Pressure Cooker. Plus you benefit from the fast infusion cooking that takes place inside the Pressure Cooker - perfectly spicy!
Monday, September 26, 2011
Spicy Shredded Beef - Master Recipe - Pressure Cooker
Knowing the differences between different cuts of meats ... more so their each individual price per pound as well as the cooking technique best suited to make the cut of beef delicious ... can mean the difference between a fabulous meal that your family craves and asks for and a meal that gets fed to the dog! (Or cat, mine loves beef - she has good taste)!
So this cut of beef is Top Round. You can find it in long, flat-like roasts that are around 2-3 lbs. each - or sometimes you can find them as Round Steaks.
Top Round is a tough, but leaner, cut of beef. Whereas Chuck is a tough cut of meat, has more fat than Round but can be even be less expensive per pound than Round. If you like Chuck. it will do great as well in the Pressure Cooker - just like the Slow Cooker (click here for post).
The Pressure Cooker seemed obvious to me to be the perfect vehicle to create tender shredded beef in less time than the Slow Cooker and to save on energy costs using the stove or oven!
This happened to be a long, flat roast-like piece of beef round. I didn’t need to use of all of it - so I cut it in half and put the other half in the freezer. With the half I was going to use, I cut it into small 1/2 inch cubes.
I also put a spice rub on it (by dumping onion and garlic powder, as well as cayenne pepper and chili powder into the plastic zipper bag and rubbed it all together and kept in the fridge until 30 minutes before cook time. I wanted my dish extra spicy - you could skip that step.
This recipe was inspired by a Guy Fieri recipe on Foodnetork.com - and since I’m going to piece it together over a couple posts with the changes I made ... you’ll be able to see the linked recipe very soon - it’s yummy!
When it’s time to cook the beef, I started by heating a tablespoon of canola oil in the base pot of the cooker. Once it was hot, Eric started browning the beef cubes on each side - until they had a nice crust on them. That’s extra flavor for you!
We had to do our meat in batches, so once the first batch was done, it was set aside on a plate until all the meat was cooked and ready to be added back to the pressure cooker.
Once the beef was brown and beautiful, we added 1/2 of a white onion, diced, and 1 jalapeno, seeded and diced.
We allowed those to cook and mostly soften for about 4 - 5 minutes.
When the onions were soft, we added about a teaspoon or two of freshly minced garlic as well as some additional spices - 1 tablespoon chili powder, 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1 tablespoon garlic powder and 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour. Very similar to the spice rub used earlier.
Once the above mixture was cooked for a few minutes (2 - 3), we added a couple cups of beef broth. I simply measured out 2 cups of water and then added a couple teaspoons of the beef base and stirred until dissolved.
Then a surprise ingredient that was asked to add - was 1/4 cup of Red Wine Vinegar. I’m so glad I followed along and added it because it gave such a nice addition along with the heat of the spices and aromatics.
Once everything was combined in the pot, we added the beef back into the pot.
In a Pressure Cooker, you don’t need as much liquid in order to cook the beef as asked - but I wanted to see how flavorful the sauce was ... because the sauce along was likely going to end up in my freezer as a flavor enhancer to my next batch of spicy chili or casserole. It’s always good to be thinking ahead because it pays off!!
Then it was time to get the beef nice and tender. I simply turned my heat of the stove burner up to HIGH and locked the pressure cooker lid into place.
Once the Pressure Indicator came up to full pressure (on HIGH) - I immediately turned the heat down on the stove top to LOW in order to maintain pressure. And I set my kitchen timer for 30 minutes.
Once 30 minutes was up, I let the pressure release naturally and then opened the lid (away from me because there is still steam).
The beef is all cooked down and a very robust and spicy sauce has been created through the pressure cooking - it’s so amazing, I love it!
Using a slotted spoon, Eric pulled the beef onto a platter and I took 2 forks to easily shred the beef. Save the sauce for future use or to drizzle on your created dish!
It was so tender. Incredibly moist. Spicy and kind of beyond what words I can think of to describe it - but it’s a keeper and it’s going into my freezer in small freezer-safe zipper plastic containers so that we can use it as our secret weapon in future dishes!
There are so many ways you could use this to create things your family and friends will love.
It would make fabulous Game Day Shredded Beef Sandwiches with melted cheese oozing out all over! Oh my, don’t get me started because I’ll be writing all day! ENJOY Monday!!!