Old-Fashioned Swiss Steak

Old-Fashioned Swiss Steak

I don’t use my pressure cooker nearly enough, but during my winter staycation I used it twice! Once for this flavorful, tender Swiss steak and another time for a spicy Mexican stew/soup. (Look for that recipe in an upcoming post.)

Have no fear if you don’t own a pressure cooker, as these recipes can also be made in a Dutch oven. The cooking times will be much longer over the stove or in the oven. That is the beauty of a pressure cooker — dinner can be served in about a half hour for something that can typically take up to two hours!

I call this “old-fashioned” because it reminds me of the Swiss steaks my mom used to make for us growing up, and I imagine her mother also made this meal. It was common practice for depression-era cooks to tenderize tough cuts of meat with a heavy meat mallet. Pre-tenderized top or bottom round steak are now widely available, but if you have a good old-fashioned heavy meat mallet, you could certainly tenderize the steaks yourself.

Somehow I failed to get a photo of the actual tenderized steaks without the sauce, but yes, there is a steak under all those vegetables! My family was duly impressed with this old-fashioned meal, and I hope you will be too!

Prepping Swiss Steak Ingredients

Old-Fashioned Swiss Steak
Adapted from Alton Brown/Food Network

1 to 2 pounds tenderized top round steak (or cube steak)
Ground black pepper
Mrs. Dash or salt
Flour to coat the steaks
2 tablespoons grapeseed or vegetable oil
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced celery
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
1 tablespoon tomato paste (freeze the rest for another use)
1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes (I used fire-roasted with garlic)
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
1 1/2 cups beef broth, homemade or low-sodium

Cut the tenderized steak into serving size portions. (That would be three in this household.) Season the meat with ground black pepper and Mrs. Dash or salt, to taste. Dredge the steaks through flour and set aside.

Add the oil to the pressure cooker set on medium-high heat, and cook the steaks, one at a time, on both sides until browned. Remove each to a plate and set aside. Add a little more oil, if needed, in between steaks.

Sauteing the Veggies after Browning the Steaks

Add the chopped vegetables and cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until combined. Return the steaks to the pot, submerging them in the liquid as best you can.

Tomato Sauce Mixture with Steaks ~ Yes the steaks are under there!

Secure the lid, add the pressure rocker, and turn the heat to high. When the pressure regulator begins to rock, reduce the heat to medium so that it rocks steadily for 15 minutes. At the 15-minute mark, remove from heat. Let the pressure reduce on its own before removing the lid. Serve steaks over cooked rice with a side salad or vegetable.

Note: If you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can make this in a Dutch oven. Follow the same steps, except cover the Dutch oven and cook on the middle rack in a 325-degree oven for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Download and Print this Yummy Recipe!

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Incredible Carne Guisada!

This is a reblog from a couple of years ago, but it is definitely one worth sharing again. (Plus it gave me a chance to add the handy-dandy printable PDF of the recipe at the bottom.) I assembled the ingredients early this morning before heading out to watch Sunday morning football and have some grub at a local sports bar. The house is smelling wonderful and I can’t wait to dig into it later this evening. I hope all my readers had a wonderful Christmas and will have a safe and enjoyable New Year!

Incredible Carne Guisada

This dish is SERIOUSLY amazing!!! Using a subjective adjective in my blog title along with an exclamation point already breaks a couple of my self-imposed posting rules. And there I just broke two more with capital letters and a triple exclamation point in the first sentence. But I can’t help it. This Carne Guisada is Just. That. Good. We are talking lick your bowl good. We are talking Get Outta Here that good. I cannot stress enough how much I loved this!

So now that I got all that off my chest, it’s time to start talking about the dish itself. I wanted Mexican food the other day, but wanted something different — something I’d never made before. So I went to my near and dear cookbook The Homesick Texan Cookbook by Lisa Fain, who always draws me into her recipes with her stories and photos that make everything in there look so gosh-darned good. This particular recipe caught my eye, and is the basis for what I ended up with. It’s a stew-like dish, served with soft tortillas, or you can dip into it with tortilla chips like an appetizer. I mixed it up quite a bit from hers but she provided me the foundation from which to build on. That sounded very scholarly. The recipe and food is not, I guarantee! I really wish I had doubled this batch, because there was not near enough leftover for my liking. I wanted more, more, more the next day for my lunch.

Carne Guisada
Adapted from Lisa Fain The Homesick Texan

1 1/2 pounds cut of beef roast or steak, any kind, cut into 1-inch cubes
Mrs. Dash Table Blend, or salt, to taste
Flour to dust over beef, about a tablespoon or so
Ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped (I used half a yellow and half a red)
1/2 large jalapeno, seeded and diced small
1/2 serrano pepper, seeded and diced small
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
3 Roma tomatoes, chopped
2 small potatoes, any kind, chopped
1 bay leaf
Handful of chopped cilantro
1/2 cup homemade or low sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup dark beer, or sub with more chicken broth
Flour tortillas, warmed before serving
More cilantro, for serving

Hot and Mild Peppers and Onions

I had a rather large, lonely New York Sirloin steak in the freezer, which I deboned to get a pound of meat, and a meager 1/2 pound of boneless beef ribs in the freezer, so used those too. The recipe called for beef chuck or bottom round, but it’s all beef and you cook the heck out of it so the cut is unimportant. Season the beef cubes with Mrs. Dash (or salt) and pepper, then lightly dust all around with flour. Heat the oil in a cast iron or heavy-bottomed skillet to medium-high heat, then add the beef, in batches. You don’t want to crowd it or it won’t brown properly. Cook until it’s browned on all sides. Transfer each batch to a crock pot and set on high heat. Reduce the skillet heat to medium and add the chopped onions, peppers, garlic and spices. Cook until the garlic becomes fragrant, just a few minutes or so, as you don’t want to burn it. Add a skosh more oil, if needed.

Carne Guisada Ready for Liquids

Now add the mixture to the beef in the crock pot, then the tomatoes, potatoes (adding some potato was pretty outlandish, but hey, it worked!), bay leaf, and chopped cilantro. Pour in the chicken broth and beer, if using. The darkest beer I had in the house at the time was an amber ale, but you can sub with chicken broth if you don’t have any. (Yes, I did drink the rest of the beer bottle. Waste not, want not!) Cover and cook on high for three or four hours, then reduce to low for a couple of more hours, or until ready to eat. If you started this prep earlier in the day, then you can cook on low for 8 to 10 hours. The longer the better. When it’s time to eat, warm up those tortillas in a hot skillet, add a mess of the Carne Guisada to a bowl, then start digging in, slathering and slopping up all the yummy juices with the tortillas. You won’t be disappointed. And of course go back for seconds and thirds. I did.

Download and Print this Yummy Recipe!

Carne Guisada

Grilled Steak Salad with Roasted Tomato Salsa and Cotija Cheese

Spicy Grilled Steak Salad with Roasted Tomato Salsa and Cotija Cheese

I went twice — mind you TWICE — to my local store that caters to the Hispanic community each day this past weekend to find flank steak for this salad, and both times they said they had sold out already! I obviously need to get to the store earlier in the day if I want that cut of meat.

Nonetheless, I didn’t want to travel to another grocery so I settled on super-thin cut bottom round, which was labeled “for Carne Asada” so figured that would work just fine. I was planning on marinating the meat anyways in a lime juice concoction, which helps tenderize the meat. The idea to make steak salad started with wanting to use up the rest of my Roasted Tomato Salsa  from the other day. It’s been in the high 70s/low 80s  here the past few days and just love to grill in this kind of weather.

Beef Marinating in Chile Lime Sauce

There are so many things you can do with a salad like this! Some grilled corn would be great on it,  but it’s not quite yet corn season here yet, but settled on adding avocado, black beans seasoned with cumin and some of the salsa and lime juice, halved grape tomatoes, grilled red and yellow peppers, green onion, and black olives. Oh! And the finishing touches of my Roasted Tomato Salsa, crumbled Cotija cheese, cilantro, and tortilla chips.

Fresh Red Leaf Lettuce and Baby Spinach

This was the first time I’d ever bought Cotija cheese, but had seen it used in many Mexican recipes. It’s a brick of cheese that crumbles up like blue cheese, and my first taste realized why it goes so well with Mexican cooking! Such a fabulous “tang” to it! From what I researched it keeps really well too, so my somewhat spendy purchase for 10 ounces of it should keep in the fridge for quite a while and am looking forward to using it in other dishes.

Steak Marinade

1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lime juice
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar or regular vinegar
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon New Mexico Red or Ancho Chile powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
Black pepper to taste
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 pound thin-sliced bottom or top round steak (or flank steak if you can find it!)

Whisk all the ingredients except the steak in a medium glass bowl.  Add the thinly sliced steak and let marinate in the refrigerator for a minimum of 1 hour but up to 3 or 4 hours. Mix around when you can. A half hour before cooking, remove from the fridge and let set to come to room temperature.

Zesty Grilled Southwest Steak Salad

Grilled Steak Salad with Roasted Tomato Salsa and Cotija Cheese

1 bell pepper (we used 1/2 red and 1/2 yellow), deseeded and halved
Spray olive oil
Garlic powder
Marinated steak (recipe above)
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained and seasoned with 1 tablespoon salsa, squeeze of lime wedge,  and 1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 cup of mixed greens per person (we used red leaf lettuce and baby spinach)
1 6-ounce can black olives
3 green onions, chopped roughly
1/2 carton grape tomatoes, halved
1 avocado, peeled and sliced
Roasted Tomato Salsa recipe, for dressing, or any salsa you have on hand
Crumbled Cotija cheese, for garnish
Cilantro, for garnish
Corn tortilla chips, for garnish

Preheat grill to high, spray the bell pepper with olive oil both sides and sprinkle with garlic powder.  Place on grill 20 minutes before ready to assemble the salad.  Meanwhile, mix up the black beans, salsa, lime,  and cumin, and set aside. After 10 minutes flip the peppers over. Now place the thin-sliced marinated steak on the grill and cook each side 3 to 4 minutes, then remove and tent with foil. Remove the peppers from the grill and slice  thin.

Now take the steak and slice thin across the grain. Add your greens to a bowl, assemble the vegetables over it (don’t forget anything, that’s easy to do!), then top with the steak. Add the Roasted Tomato Salsa for dressing, then the cheese, cilantro, and tortilla chips for garnish. This is a great dish to mix and combine any number of fresh vegetables you may have on hand. Olé!

Incredible Carne Guisada!

Incredible Carne Guisada

This dish is SERIOUSLY amazing!!! Using a subjective adjective in my blog title along with an exclamation point already breaks a couple of my self-imposed posting rules. And there I just broke two more with capital letters and a triple exclamation point in the first sentence. But I can’t help it. This Carne Guisada is Just. That. Good. We are talking lick your bowl good. We are talking Get Outta Here that good. I cannot stress enough how much I loved this!

So now that I got all that off my chest, it’s time to start talking about the dish itself. I wanted Mexican food the other day, but wanted something different — something I’d never made before. So I went to my near and dear cookbook The Homesick Texan Cookbook by Lisa Fain, who always draws me into her recipes with her stories and photos that make everything in there look so gosh-darned good. This particular recipe caught my eye, and is the basis for what I ended up with. It’s a stew-like dish, served with soft tortillas, or you can dip into it with tortilla chips like an appetizer. I mixed it up quite a bit from hers but she provided me the foundation from which to build on. That sounded very scholarly. The recipe and food is not, I guarantee! I really wish I had doubled this batch, because there was not near enough leftover for my liking. I wanted more, more, more the next day for my lunch.

Carne Guisada
Adapted from Lisa Fain The Homesick Texan

1 1/2 pounds cut of beef roast or steak, any kind, cut into 1-inch cubes
Mrs. Dash Table Blend, or salt, to taste
Flour to dust over beef, about a tablespoon or so
Ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped (I used half a yellow and half a red)
1/2 large jalapeno, seeded and diced small
1/2 serrano pepper, seeded and diced small
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
3 Roma tomatoes, chopped
2 small potatoes, any kind, chopped
1 bay leaf
Handful of chopped cilantro
1/2 cup homemade or low sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup dark beer, or sub with more chicken broth
Flour tortillas, warmed before serving
More cilantro, for serving

Hot and Mild Peppers and Onions

I had a rather large, lonely New York Sirloin steak in the freezer, which I deboned to get a pound of meat, and a meager 1/2 pound of boneless beef ribs in the freezer, so used those too. The recipe called for beef chuck or bottom round, but it’s all beef and you cook the heck out of it so the cut is unimportant. Season the beef cubes with Mrs. Dash (or salt) and pepper, then lightly dust all around with flour. Heat the oil in a cast iron or heavy-bottomed skillet to medium-high heat, then add the beef, in batches. You don’t want to crowd it or it won’t brown properly. Cook until it’s browned on all sides. Transfer each batch to a crock pot and set on high heat. Reduce the skillet heat to medium and add the chopped onions, peppers, garlic and spices. Cook until the garlic becomes fragrant, just a few minutes or so, as you don’t want to burn it. Add a skosh more oil, if needed.

Carne Guisada Ready for Liquids

Now add the mixture to the beef in the crock pot, then the tomatoes, potatoes (adding some potato was pretty outlandish, but hey, it worked!), bay leaf, and chopped cilantro. Pour in the chicken broth and beer, if using. The darkest beer I had in the house at the time was an amber ale, but you can sub with chicken broth if you don’t have any. (Yes, I did drink the rest of the beer bottle. Waste not, want not!) Cover and cook on high for three or four hours, then reduce to low for a couple of more hours, or until ready to eat. If you started this prep earlier in the day, then you can cook on low for 8 to 10 hours. The longer the better. When it’s time to eat, warm up those tortillas in a hot skillet, add a mess of the Carne Guisada to a bowl, then start digging in, slathering and slopping up all the yummy juices with the tortillas. You won’t be disappointed. And of course go back for seconds and thirds. I did.

Carne Guisada