30 minute beef with noodles and tomatoes

This was a fun dish to make, and it worked out even better than I planned. It almost tastes like it was cooked with wine, with a nice mellow sour undertone (á la Stroganoff) that highlights the sweetness of the tomatoes and savory rosemary and garlic flavors. Egg noodles make for an interesting visual and great texture.

The software:
– 1 pound package grass-fed ground beef
– sea salt
– black pepper
– about 1/4 of 1 onion, diced
– 1 16oz package store-brand egg noodles
– 1 12oz (? I think) can diced tomatoes
– 1 12oz (?) can diced tomatoes with roasted garlic
– 4 tablespoons rosemary-garlic seasoning (happens to also contain a little bit of lemon and salt)
– 1/4 cup sugar
– 1/3 cup vinegar, blend of balsamic and apple cider in about 60/40
– 3-4 tablespoons butter & 1/4 cup olive oil for the cooked noodles — this is how I like them, but adjust to your own taste
– olive oil for cooking the beef
– flour or corn starch for thickening the tomatoes

The hardware:
– 1 big cast iron skillet for the beef
– 1 medium saucepan for the tomatoes
– 1 big pot for the noodles. I used a 10 quart pot and filled it about halfway.
– 1 tiny put for the sugar & vinegar magic
– a flour sifter (I prefer the one-handed squeeze-action kind)

Alright, fellow chef, you’ve made it this far! If you’re attempting this recipe right now, I recommend reading the procedure below before starting to cook. The most frustrating cooking advice I’ve ever read, but also the most useful is to assemble all of the ingredients and equipment before starting to cook. Thanks to Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here For The Eats, I’ve actually started paying attention to this in my cooking, and I’ve gotta say folks, it really does help — even though it goes completely against my usual chaotic and experimental methods of cookery. My belief is that great meals require great creativity and attention to senses while the cooking is done, and while I love to get into the “flow” of cooking by just pulling out pots and pans and ingredients as I think of them, I must reluctantly admit, to the chagrin of the anarchist in me, that preparing these things beforehand actually makes it easier to get into the zone and make a great meal. More on that in a later post.

OK. Everything together? Misé en place? Let’s begin.

First of all, fill your big pot halfway with water and put it on a large burner on high heat. The noodle package says 4 quarts, and it takes a good while for my electric stove to bring 4 quarts of water up to the magical 212-degree-F rolling boil. Throw some salt in there now, if you’re like me and think it improves the flavor.

Meanwhile, put your large skillet on the other large eye on your stove, medium heat, and put 6-7 tablespoons olive oil in there — you want the oil to cover the bottom of the pan, plus a little bit more.

Now while the oil’s heating, open the two cans of tomatoes and dump them in the medium saucepan. Put that on a another eye on medium-low heat. Be sure to stir that fairly often or those tomatoes are gonna burn and stick.

Around now, you should put your diced onions in the oil — if you’ve timed it right, they’ll make a hearty hiss as they hit the pan. Stir them around a bit and let them cook for a minute or two. Next, add the package of ground beef and let that brown. Add some salt and pepper to taste. Salting at the beginning of browning gives a better flavor, and requires less salt than adding it at the end of cooking.

Meanwhile, your tomato sauce should be starting to heat up. Add the rosemary-garlic seasoning and stir it some more. Around the time that the sauce is starting to bubble a little and the beef is mostly browned, the noodle water will hit a rolling boil. At least it did for me.

Put the package of noodles in the big pot, set your kitchen timer to whatever their package suggests (mine said 7-9; I went with 7 but it actually took more like 10). Drop the heat to medium-high so it doesn’t bubble over.

OK, hopefully your sauce is cooking along now, and you’ve kept stirring it so it hasn’t burned and stuck to the pan.

Now it’s time for some magic. Mix the vinegar and the sugar in the tiny pan and heat it over medium low heat, stirring occasionally. There’s no need to bring it to a boil, just get it steaming. When it’s at that point, stir it into the tomato sauce. Congratulations, you’ve just turned so-so canned tomatoes into something that’s downright tasty! It’s called “brightening” the flavor of the sauce; a cool trick I learned from The Paupered Chef(TODO: find and link to that post)

OK, drain the noodles when they’re done and add the butter & olive oil, stirring well. Turn off the ground beef when it’s brown, and be sure not to over-cook it, because grass-fed beef quickly gets tough when it’s overcooked. You may wish to remove it from the heat if you have an electric stove; however, I didn’t and mine turned out OK.

The main thing now is that sauce, which is still bubbling away on medium heat. Gradually stir in about a quarter cup of sifted flour to thicken the sauce. Or maybe it’s half? I sifted straight into my sauce, so I can’t say for sure how much I added. The key is to keep stirring the sauce, blending in each sift of additional flour, and watching the consistency. I was aiming for “out of the jar spaghetti sauce” consistency, and I hit it after about three minutes of stirring and sifting.

Drain the ground beef. Did I mention that earlier? There’s no need for the extra moisture.

The final step: pour the tomato sauce and ground beef into the large noodle pot (I assume you put the noodles back in the pot after draining them), and mix it well. Serve in bowls sprinkled with your favorite cheese. Simple, delicious eating! Bon appetit!

The next step: adding some vegetables. I had every intention of adding some turnip greens to this when I started but, well, I didn’t get everything together beforehand, and soon enough I was toiling away at the stove with four pots a-simmering, kitchen utensils flying across the kitchen, kids underfoot. So yeah, I forgot those veggies. But hey, with as much food as this made, we have plenty left over for lunch tomorrow — I’ll just cook them up and add them then.

Thanks for reading along, and please do let us know if you try this yourself!