Alphecca

My beef generally moos when you stick your fork into it...

Liz and I love red meat. Can't say I would eat raw ground beef but we do love our meat.

BJs is the best place around to get beef. We often buy the 70 dollar beef loin and cut our own steaks... Nothing like 8 to 10 inch and a half to two inch thick steaks.

We actually had the same problem as you. With the eating out all the time. In fact you have given me a bit of inspiration about a blog on what we have done with our cooking...

Dunno if you have a Costco in your neck of the woods, but they have terrific steaks. Most of my beef, when home, comes from there. And I agree that overcooking it destroys the difference between good and bad beef. I vacillate between grilling and pan searing my steaks as the ultimate method, and yes, good pans are a blessing - mine are stainless with aluminum core (although you do want at least one cast iron skillet, and learn to season and care for it).

As for cooking, do you frequent Hog on Ice? Not many blogs primarily devoted to food prep that I know of, but he's a must stop for me when surfing. Check him out.

Having the right tools makes a big difference... though ReverWare isn't close to the top of the heap, it isn't bad. You can do wonderful things with Lodge cast iron if you are willing to take care of it, and it is downright cheap.

Go buy yourself a GOOD set of knives. Chicago Cutlery or something similar. Carbon steel that you can actually sharpen. Get the block and the sharpening steel. If you want to go all out look for Henkel or another high-end brand (you can spend $500 on a professional set of knives.)

Of course then you need to actually cut things up (My mother never bought chicken already seperated into the different pieces. She had a good set of knives) Also the veggies. (Size that you cut the veggies does effect taste, and cooking.) Good knives let you carve a roast, butterfly porkchops, trim steaks, etc.

The same kind of decision making applies in the kitchen as it does when you buy stuff at Home Depot. There is the cheap stuff, the high-end professional grade, and the decent middle grade. And the quality of your tools do impact the results.

A good cookbook. These are actually hard to find, since they all tend to utra-fancy recipes today. Something that covers the basics. How do a roast, how fry chicken, or roast a turkey. How to make gravy, or a cheese sauce for broccoli, etc. This will make a big difference, since it doesn't take that much extra to do something wonderful as opposed to something plain. Steak is fine, but not everyday. The old "Metropolitan Cookbook" - check ebay - is good. And being from the 50's, is concerned with solid, basic American food.

Saucepans aren't rocket science. The operative word is "heavy" if a saucepan is heavy enough to use as a lethal weapon, you're getting close. I got my best one by accident. The cook on a dragger in the shipyard I was working in threw it at one of the fisherman in an attempt to kill him and it bounced over the side. I fished it out of the water after the boat left. It holds a liter and a half and weighs almost four lbs. The lettering on it is Cyrillic, so I have no idea where it was made, but I'll never let it go.

Gerry

Dr. Hibbert: this man has died of beef poisoning, heh heh heh.

Well, what about wild venison? At any rate, all you need to know to cook "fancy" stuff is juice from a nice lemon, a fair amount of olive oil, chopped garlic and whatever spices you feel like that day. Voila! perfect beef/chicken/pork marinade.

That, and a good BBQ rub with 5-6 hours of patience over a nice brisket and you'll have all the beef and gout you can stand. Yum!

And lastly, try this:

1. heat walnut pieces in pan until nicely toasted. Drizzle a little honey and red-wine vinegar. Mix, then stir in a little cayenne pepper. Keep stirring until nicely carmelized.

2. Add to chopped leafy lettuce with crumbled bleu cheese and whatever else you like. Top with rasberry vinnegrete(sp?) and Voila! Instant yummy salad.

And for the real gourmet: make kraft mac and cheese according to directions (mod: use only a smidge of milk, but lots of butter). Add browned ground beef and salsa. Voila! Super cheap gourmet college kid food. Still laughable but yummy at any age. Heck, I had that for dinner two nights ago.

Ugh. You made me shudder with the whole raw beef thing. Rare is bad enough.

I like the sound of those pans. Most of mine are decent enough, but not topnotch. Nothing copper bottomed though. Nice.

I know what you mean by the eggs. I make mine hard, but I don't mind them just slightly undercooked in the yolk, so they have that more gel-like look, and a darker color. Not big on runny yolks though.

I ate a lot of takeout and fast food when I was single. When I cooked, it was usually burgers or spaghetti. Sometimes I got fancier. In general, I know the feeling, and it's hard to cook for one even if you like to cook. Ironically, since I've been cooking for two, I keep seeing ways I could have saved money and eaten better when single, without going to much or any more trouble than I already was. Go figure.

Over at Gullyborg he has a great recipe for steak and eggs.

http://gullyborg.typepad.com/weblog_archive/2005/08/ultimate_steak_.html

Easy to do and so very tasty (made it last night).

Ah yes, beef! Especially if it moos when you poke it with a fork! Steak Dianne...

One thing we don't tend to think of here in America is that we can grind our own beef if we want. That way, you can buy an inexpensive steak or stew-meat cut and grind it without so much worry about E. coli. We're just so used to the convenience of having it already ground that we don't think of the alternative.

This only occurred to me when talking to someone from Brazil, where everyone has their own grinders and they make their hamburgers really fresh.

If you're willing to put a little grunt-work into it, you can even find small hand cranked grinders that are relatively inexpensive, such as the ones at the link below:
http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templates/product/standard-item.jsp?id=0006760610936a&navCount=2&podId=0006760&parentId=cat21458&navAction=jump&cmCat=search&catalogCode=OF&rid=&parentType=index&indexId=cat21458&hasJS=true

Dang, now I may have to run over to Cabela's and get one for myself...

T-bones can be hard to find because they've got a little bit of spinal cord in the "T" and that's where the Mad Cow lives - so many retailers have gone away from them.

"Smoke & Spice" and "The Better Crocker Cookbook" are the only cookbooks the Fishpimp family uses.