boeuf bourguignon

Below is a serving of boeuf bourguignon made with that arong-satae cut (see here and scroll down, or see here). This is called the center heel of shank in English; Alex of French Guy Cooking called this a "shin" cut, but it's more from the base of the cow's thigh than from the shin. Unless I don't where the shin is on a cow. The results weren't bad:

Fusilli pasta catches sauce quite well.

As I was cutting the beef into cubes, though, I did notice some cartilage action happening. By the time the meat had softened after three hours in a wine/stock/herb broth, this was much less of an issue; most of the cartilage and muscle fascia had been reduced and rendered, leaving only tender, succulent meat. Some of the stringy stuff you see in the photo above has nothing to do with the meat: my building's grocery store only had these variety packs of mushrooms left on its shelves the night I went shopping there, and part of the variety pack was paengi-beoseot, known by its Japanese name of enoki mushrooms in the States. I really didn't want to put the paengi-beoseot into my boeuf, but I rationalized that it was still some sort of mushroomy biomass, and it would add to the overall flavor. Maybe it did; maybe it didn't, but the stringy little shrooms just ended up looking ass-ugly in the dish. Another lesson learned: never do that again.

Would I use this cut of beef again? Maybe. But I like skirt steak much better. The arong-satae cut might, however, be good for pulled beef, although I'd have to take the time to get rid of all that connective tissue before adding any barbecue sauce.

I brought the boeuf to the office on Wednesday. My Korean and American coworkers ate a good bit of it; my boss was off, so I saved the leftovers for him to chow down on on Thursday, but I don't think he had any. There's only a tiny bit of the boeuf left; I'll probably finish it as a Friday-afternoon lunch. I'm also bringing, for Friday afternoon, my leftover chicken stock and chicken gravy, plus some store-bought kalguksu noodles and a measly few hundred grams of Korean yangji-sal (양지살), which more or less means "brisket," but which is way more marbled than American brisket. I can't replicate the awesomeness of the kalguksu served at the basement restaurant in the building where I work, but my chicken broth and gravy both taste amazing, and I need to use them up. The ratio will be about four parts stock to three parts gravy, plus about 1 part water (mainly to thin out the gravy). Bring the broth to a boil; add the noodles and brisket. Cook 6-8 minutes. The brisket won't be as soft as I'd like it to be (that would take boiling separately for at least an hour, maybe two), but I've already taste-tested this dish, and even tough beef ought to be fine. I cut the brisket against the grain to increase the tenderness factor, so that ought to help somewhat.

Wish me luck. More photos soon.