Beef is one of the most widely used meats around the world. Like chicken and pork, it is used in millions of recipes from different cuisines. It is flexible and easy to prepare. Those that are big fans of steak or burgers would say that beef is the heaviest type of meat, the most satisfying when it comes to appetite. Compared to chicken and fish, beef contains a higher amount of iron.

Here are mouth-watering beef recipes you can try at home:

Melt-In-Your Mouth Butter Beef

What you need:

• 1 1/4 kilograms cubed beef stew meat
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 small pack dry onion soup mix

Mix together beef stew meat and butter in a slow cooker. Sprinkle onion soup mix over the beef. Cook on high for 4 to 5 hours, stirring once. Best served with toasted wheat bread or over cooked egg noodles.

Baked Cheesy Beef Ravioli

What you need:

• 1/2 kilogram ground beef
• 1/4 kilogram frozen cheese ravioli
• 2 cups diced tomatoes
• 1 1/2 cups spaghetti sauce
• 1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 1 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese
• 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook ground beef until no longer pink. Drain the grease before stirring in tomatoes and spaghetti sauce. Pour about 1/3 of the ground beef mixture into a 11×7-inch baking dish then top with half of the frozen cheese ravioli. Sprinkle with half of the Monterey Jack cheese followed by half of the mozzarella cheese. Repeat layers, ending with the last of the ground beef mixture. Cover with heavy duty aluminium foil and bake in a pre-heated oven (450F) for 30 minutes. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the top before serving.

Soy-Butter Beef Tenderloin

What you need:

• 1 1/4 kilogram beef tenderloin roast
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup butter

Place the beef tenderloin roast in a shallow baking dish. Brush with butter then pour soy sauce all over the beef. Bake in a pre-heated oven (350F) for 10 minutes before turning the roast over. Continue baking for another 30 to 40 minutes, basting occasionally, until cooked through or to desired doneness. When ready, allow the meat to rest for at least 15 minutes before slicing. Best served with mashed potatoes.

If you’re in the mood for a delicious, juicy meat dish, these recipes will not fail you – these are surefire winners in everyone’s books!

I am a real fan of chili and cornbread and I can eat this meal any of the year. Here is a Weight Watcher version of this spicy and delicious meal.

Weight Watcher Classic Crockpot Beef Chili

Estimated POINTS value per serving 2

Serves 6

Ingredients

1 lb. lean ground beef (10% or less)

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 tbsp. chili powder

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 can (28 oz.) crushed tomatoes

1 can (15 oz.) red kidney beans, rinsed and drained

1 sweet onion, chopped

1/4 cup canned diced chilies

2 tbsp. tomato paste

Oregano sprigs for garnish

Instructions

1. In a large nonstick skillet brown beef and garlic over medium heat, stirring occasionally to break up meat. Drain excess fat. Add chili powder and cumin and stir to combine.

2. Combine tomatoes, beans, onion, chilies, and tomato paste in crockpot. Stir in beef mixture. Cover and cook on High until flavors are blended, 4 – 5 hours. Serve garnished with oregano.

Best Ever Weight Watcher Skillet Cornbread

Estimated POINTS value per serving 2

Serves 12

 

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour

4 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1/2 cup yellow cornmeal

1/2 cup white cornmeal

1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

2 tbsp. vegetable oil

1 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup honey

1/3 cup egg whites

2 tbs. fat free egg substitute

Instructions

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt.

Add cornmeal and stir until blended.

Add remaining ingredients and stir until just mixed.

Pour into 9 inch cast iron skillet prepared with cooking spray.

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Quick Tips 

Spray crockpot with cooking spray for easier cleanup.

This meal is very filling but if you aren’t quite satisfied you can add a garden salad.  

Beef Wellington is a sophisticated beef recipe whose roots go as far back as 1820. This is a classic British meal featuring tender meat encompassed by a pastry and topped with a lavish demi-glace gravy. It is ideal for special occasions and for weekend dinner parties. This work of art is well worth the energy it takes to make.

I enjoy the richness and magnificence of this recipe, especially for elegant winter meals. There are 2 widespread problems making it: overcooked beef and soggy pastries. It really is not difficult to produce, but the key is that you must cook the beef perfectly. The best temperature to cook the meat to is 125 degrees exactly.

Beef Wellington is made with a center-cut beef tenderloin segment. A beef tenderloin, referred to as a filet in France and America, a fillet in The UK, an eye fillet in Australia, is taken from the loin of beef. Modifications of Beef Wellington may include preparing single servings with Filet Mignon steaks as opposed to the entire beef tenderloin.

A fantastic sauce to go along with beef wellington can be achieved by simmering some dark wine and beef broth in the same container where you have made the pate mixture. The sauce is basically a gravy, so creating it with water as an alternative to wine will make an alcohol-free variation. If you are experienced with Beef Wellington, you already know it’s the type of food normally restricted to 5-star cuisine. However, with the correct recipe, it can be easy to make in your own home.

Wagyu is actually a breed of cattle that produces perfectly marbled cuts of meat, it’s the same breed stock that produces the Kobe beef in Japan. The meat is incredibly tender and has a rich taste. Wagyu beef even surpasses USDA marbling standards for prime-grade beef.

Wagyu is such as high quality meat because of the naturally enhanced flavor, tenderness and juiciness. And because the Wagyu brisket has so much marbling, it bastes the meat from the inside as it cooks.

A lot of cooks in the KCBS BBQ circuit have started using Wagyu, and my team – The Killer Hogs – is no exception.

It isn’t cheap to buy a Wagyu, coming in at around $5 per pound, but it is worth it when you consider the quality of meat you are going to get.

Most Wagyu briskets come in between 15 – 20 lbs, and if you have ever cooked a regular beef brisket, then you shouldn’t have any problems cooking Wagyu.

You inject and season the Wagyu the exact same way as a normal brisket… BUT the cooking time should be a little faster due to the extreme tenderness and fat marbling of the Wagyu.

You should look for an internal temp of 195 and it should be perfect.

You can always sauce your brisket, but unlike pork… you want to stay away from the sweeter sauces – they will clash with the beef taste. You really just need a simple dry rub of salt, pepper and garlic (just like you season a steak). If you inject your brisket (which I highly recommend), you want to use a simple injection of Beef Base, Worcestershire Sauce, Soy Sauce and water.

These simple flavors will compliment the meat without covering up the natural flavors.

If you cook a Waygu Beef Brisket, you are in for a real treat. It is some of the best brisket you can produce – the flavor, the tenderness and the over-all quality are unbeatable!

Beef Caldereta is meat spiced with tomato sauce, chili paste, liver spread and cheese. It is traditionally made with goat meat, but beef can be substituted The recipe has many variations, depending on the province where served. It is an excellent beer match. Beef Caldereta is usually served in fiestas and various social gatherings.

Beef Caldereta Ingredients:

* 1/2 kilo beef, cut into cubes

* 2 potatoes cut in bite size

* 1 medium carrots cut into bite size

* 1/2 cup soy sauce

* 1/2 cup grated cheese

* 1 small can or 1/2 cup liver spread

* 3 cloves garlic minced

* 1 onion diced

* 1 tomatoes sliced

* 1 medium can tomato sauce

* 1 red bell pepper

* 5 cloves garlic minced

* 1 tsp ground black pepper

* 2 chili pepper minced or siling labuyo

* 3 tbsp pickle relish

* Salt to taste

* 1 cup water

Beef Caldereta Cooking Instructions:

Heat some cooking oil in a pan. Saute garlic, onion and tomatoes.

Add beef and saute until the outer parts turn light brown. Season with soy sauce and mix well.

Add water, simmer over low heat for about 45 minutes or until meat becomes tender.

When meat is tender, add liver spread, and tomato sauce; stir until well blended.

Place in carrots and potatoes. Simmer until vegetables tenderize and sauce thickens. Salt and pepper to taste.

Add red bell pepper and grated cheese; mix well. Sprinkle with chili peppers and pickle relish; mix together and simmer for a few minutes.

Serve with steamed rice.

Enjoy your Beef Caldereta!

Beef Pochero is a Filipino beef stew. Although influenced by the Spanish, it is a traditional Filipino recipe in which many varieties of meat can be used such as chicken, pork, or beef. This recipe also contains a wide assortment of vegetables. My personal preference for this dish is tomato sauce, but other sauces such as pork and beans can be used.

Beef Pochero Ingredients:

* 1 kilo beef cut into serving pieces

* 1 small can tomato sauce

* 2 tomatoes chopped

* 2 ripe saba or plantain bananas sliced

* 1 bundle bok choy or pechay

* 1 bunch or can of green beans op baguio beans

* 1 chorizo bilbao (optional)

* 1/2 cabbage quartered

* 2 medium potatoes cut in serving pieces

* 3 cloves garlic minced

* 1 small onion chopped

* 2 tbsp whole pepper corn

* 2 tbsp fish sauce

* 1/2 cup water (amount optional)

* salt to taste

Beef Pochero cooking Instructions:

Heat oil in a pan, fry saba bananas and chorizo bilbao until light brown and set aside.

In the same pan, saute onion and garlic until golden brown. Add beef and saute until outer parts turn light brown. Season with fish sauce, add whole pepper corn, tomatoes and mix well.

Add enough water to cover the meat and simmer on a low heat until the meat is tender.

Add tomato sauce, precooked bananas and chorizo. Continue to simmer for a few minutes.

Add cabbage, green beans and salt to taste. Continue to simmer until vegetables are tender.

Add Bokchoy, turn off heat and continue to cook on remaining heat. After the bokchoy is soft, stir well, and serve with steamed rice.

Enjoy your Beef Pochero!

Every year, spread over the first ten days in May, the Festival of the Coppiette is held in the town of Marcellina, some thirty kilometres north east of Rome in the province of Lazio. Organized by the Committee of the Butteri (mountain herders), it mirrors simultaneous celebrations dedicated to the Madonna del Ginestre. However, the committee is concerned less with hunger of the soul and more with that of the stomach.

Coppiette are strips of meat that have been dried, cured with salt and pepper and then seasoned with fennel and pepperoncino (hot Italian chilli peppers). South East of Rome, in the province of Frosinone, the locals include garlic and white wine to make coppiette ciociare. This is simple fare and was part of the staple diet enjoyed in times past by both farmer and humble peasant. It has some close relatives. Coppiette would have been understood as jerky to the pioneers opening up the American West in the nineteenth century, and to the native Indians the settlers encountered. The Dutch voortrekkers (meaning literally fore-pullers) who made the great trek across South Africa to escape the British in the 1830’s and 1840’s, were sustained by something strikingly similar – they called it biltong.

It’s not hard to understand its appeal. These dried meats are rich in protein and residual fat. They also have high levels of salt added during the drying process to inhibit any bacterial activity. The tired and hydrated Lazian farmworker, after a day in the field, chewed on coppiette and was quickly revived by a concentrated shot of energy and nutrients. These ‘sticks’ of meat packed away to almost nothing in his pocket; they were also inherently stable because all the excess fat and moisture had been removed. Nestling in the dark recesses of a pack or pocket, they could last for days or even months.

Then and now, the raw material used to make the cured meat depends on the location. The cowboys and native Americans cut strips from beef and game species including buffalo, deer and moose. In South Africa biltong made from beef remains the most common variety available, but today the Afrikaaner also uses ostrich and game species including kudu, wildebeest and springbok. In the Lazio region of Italy, horse and donkey were the common options available. Today most coppiette are made from pork.

However, with their aversion to pork, the Jewish community makes its own version using beef. A good butcher might be able to sell you some coppiette using meat sourced from the prestigious Maremmana, a breed of cattle reared in Maremma, former marshland straddling southern Tuscany and northern Lazio. If you visit the small town of Genzano, residents might offer you their own rare speciality using meat from the donkey.

In times past, no part of the animal was wasted; today butchers, and those still making it in the home, concentrate on the sinewy muscle tissue surrounding the ham, shoulder or abdomen. Strips 10-15 centimetres long and 2 centimetres thick are cut from the carcass and seasoned in wooden vats, before being gently cooked for half an hour in a refractory brick oven fired by brushwood. Any excess water is drained off and the meat is baked for a further half hour before being left to dry for up to 48 hours in wire cages.

Coppiette, like their South African relative biltong, differ from jerky in this respect. While the latter is dried in the sun or over fires, biltong and the most traditional coppiette are air-dried in the cold months of winter. Lazio makes its speciality year-round and in other months it follows the jerky method and employs a special drying room. In both instances, the dried meat is tied together with string in pairs, or coppiette (meaning ‘little couples’) and matured for two months. After a final, very light smoking the finished product is bagged up or packaged in trays ready for sale in taverns, butchers’ and wine shops.

Jerky was first introduced by the South American (Peru) native tribe called the Quechua (part of the ancient Inca Empire) in 1550. The product (Ch’arki), was boned and defatted meat (deer, elk, or buffalo) cut into slices and rubbed with salt. This meat was rolled up in the animal’s hide for 10-12 hours and then sun dried or smoked over fires.

In South America, the Native Americans ate sun-dried venison and buffalo called tassajo, which was made with strips of meat dipped in maize flour, sun and wind dried, and then tightly rolled up into balls. North American Cree Indians mixed berries and suet (fat) with pounded cooked meat and pressed into concentrated small cakes to make pemmican.

Biltong came from pioneering South African forefathers who sun dried meat while traveling across the African subcontinent. Folklore has it that African tribesmen would place strips of venison under the saddles of their horses to tenderize and spice the meat! Seasoning became a blend of vinegar, salt, sugar, coriander and other spices.

The Indians and early settlers dried meat primarily from deer, elk or buffalo using salt, whatever spices they had and sun drying. As the Spanish arrived, the name evolved to charqui. Most travelers preferred to pound the charqui between large stones and boil it in water before eating. During ocean exploration and colonization, the Spanish sailors stocked the pacific islands with goats. What couldn’t be eaten would then be cut into strips and hung in their ships to air dry. When the Spanish Conquistadors invaded the Americas, they were surprised to see the natives of North America drying meat as well. Soon, the natives adopted the Spanish term, Charqui, only adding their accent; the word “jerky” first came to be.

North American Pioneers would first dry meat by hanging it on the outside of their covered wagon sun drying (2-3 days). Another method was to build a scaffold over a slow fire and smoke the strips. While the heat and smoke would complete the process in half a day, the smoking method required a stopover; it wasn’t long before awareness for disease and germs became prevalent and smoking became the norm.

Today jerky is made from thin strips of virtually any meat or from ground or chopped and formed meat. Manufacturers spice and dehydrate the product; some introduce smoke or using liquid smoke for flavoring.

The Classic Beef Oxford recipe is one of my all time favourites. It’s a real hearty meal for all the family to enjoy or if you are having guests over as it is very simple and will not take up to much of your time once you get all the recipe’s ingredients for the Beef Oxford on the go.

The Ingredients that are here for the Beef Oxford are for 4-6 people.

3lb Stewing Steak

1.5o flour

2oz dripping

Ground salt and pepper

8oz onions peeled and sliced (1 large onion or 2 medium sized)

2 gloves of garlic

4oz of mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

1 green pepper, sliced

2 tbsp apricot jam

1/2 pint red wine

1/2 beef stock

Cooking time 2-2.5 hours

1. Cut the meat into pieces, put in a polythene bag or bowel with the flour and toss until coated

2. Melt the dripping in a pan and fry the meat quickly until brown

3. Add all the remaining ingredients, including any flour that was left over, bring to the bowel

4. Cover and simmer for 2 – 2.5 hours or until the meet is tender.

5. Make sure that you stir it occasionally.

Variations of Beef Oxford Include:

New Potatoes – To fill the Beef Oxford dish out a little why not add some half cut new potatoes in the pot after about half an hour. Make sure that you keep an eye on the stoke level as you may need extra as it starts to reduce.

Sultana’s – If you have a sweet tooth you could add a hand full of saltanas after about half an hour, make sure that you buy good quality ones as they hold more juice.

Mushrooms – With the Beef Oxford Recipe it is not specified what mushrooms to use. Chestnut are probably the best but you could try others (Oyster, Shittake). If you use the Chestnut mushrooms keep them whole as they reduce in size a lot once cooked and it makes the dish more chunky.

Beef Stock – To make this dish extra special you could buy quality ready made beef stock available from all supermarkets now. This will give the dish more of an edge to it and will add to the flavours making them more rich.

Beef Steaks – Why not try stewing whole pieces of Beef steak (one to each person) instead of the cut up smaller pieces. This may cost a little extra but would be great if your having guests over.