Houston Food Blog

Turkeys hate us, too.

​Yesterday, we offered up a selection of meatless options for Thanksgiving and those vegetarians in your life. Truth be told, we're perfectly happy not having turkey -- or any meat at all, for that matter -- at Thanksgiving. We've eaten plenty of delicious Thanksgiving spreads that featured a breathtaking salt-domed salmon or tangy black bean and goat cheese enchiladas as the main dish. And those Thanksgivings? They were memorable ones.

Some people, however, may look at a Thanksgiving spread that's noticeably absent one turkey and immediately feel crestfallen. For them -- like the father in A Christmas Story -- it's just not the holidays without a turkey on the table. But we disagree. For us, Thanksgiving is about spending time with your [crazy, drunken, dysfunctional] family, watching football on the sofa with a plate of leftovers, heading to the movies at night once the old folks have tucked in, meeting up with old friends who are home for the holiday in the neighborhood bar, and laughing at your aunts as they set their alarms for 2 a.m. in order to hit the best Black Friday sales first.

In other words, we can take or leave turkey at Thanksgiving.

And you should, too! Turkey is overrated. Truly. Unless you're a fantastic cook with years of experience (or unless you use a deep fryer), turkey is one of the most bland, dry and tasteless meats out there. Just about the only time we're even vaguely interested in turkey is when it's sliced in a deli and buried under mayonnaise and tomatoes on a sandwich. Turkey sucks.

Photo by Robb Walsh

​I ate a brisket and sausage sandwich the other day at the new Brookstreet BBQ location on Westheimer west of Beltway 8. Ever since I ate the Bohemian Special at Mustang Creek BBQ in Louise, I have been trying to recreate the brisket and sausage sandwich at every barbecue joint I walk into. The counter man at Brookstreet had no problem with my request to make the sandwich with fatty end brisket instead of the lean flat he had out on the cutting board. And the sausage was excellent. Too bad Brookstreet uses Southern Pride barbecue ovens instead of a real pit, but what can you expect in a strip center?

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt

The Hotdoggers depart from the Wienermobile at Disco Kroger

The beloved Oscar Mayer Wienermobile is rolling through Houston today, making pit stops at two area Kroger stores and distributing hot dogs and wiener whistles to the masses (it made two other Kroger stops yesterday).

Am I supposed to eat this whole thing?

While Oscar Mayer himself passed away this past Monday at the age of 95, his company and the fleet of seven Wienermobiles live on (including a mini-Wienermobile that's built on a Mini Cooper). The original Wienermobile was designed by Oscar Mayer's nephew, Carl, in 1936 and has remained popular to this day. The drivers of the giant hot dog on wheels are known as Hotdoggers and are selected from a giant pool of applicants each year to hold the one-year position as they travel the country.

The Wienermobile that is currently touring Houston is here in support of the Children's Miracle Network and Texas Children's Hospital. Hot dogs and cold drinks are for sale at the pit stops, with the proceeds benefiting the Texas Children's Hospital. In addition to the giant rolling hot dog itself, children (and adults!) are invited to build their own mega hot dog -- it's not a real hot dog; sorry, folks -- and have their picture taken with it in front of the Wienermobile.

Locations and times are after the jump.

Smashburger, the self-proclaimed "fast casual" burger import from Denver, has done well enough since its debut in Houston last December that three more restaurants are opening here.

Smashburgers are "one hundred percent Angus." They're "smashed on the grill to sear the meat and seal in the flavor." From personal experience they are also a bit of a delicious mess to eat, thanks to the glob of cheese and substantial amount of condiments on top.

Each Smashburger will open on a Wednesday later this month.

In Robb Walsh's recent feature story, "Not So Clear Cut," he explains how meat purveyors treat tough cuts of meat by marinating them with enzymes in commercial vacuum tumblers. But the practice has its risks, as Walsh writes:

"We can thank vacuum tumbler technology for turning previously tough cuts into excellent fajitas. But as always, there's a catch. As one A&M meat scientist explained, the process of marinating beef faces the same inherent problem as grinding beef. If you start off with one spot of bacterial contamination on the surface of the meat, you end up spreading it very effectively throughout the entire batch. It's only a matter of time before we face the first marinated-beef recall."

Is that what happened with the inside skirts steaks and beef for fajitas, two of the four meats being recalled by H-E-B? The chain notified Hair Balls that there's a voluntary national recall by JBS Swift Beef Company for E-coli for the following products:

• Raw Beef Briskets with plant inspection #969 (EST #969) with sell-by dates between 5/12 and 6/20
• Raw Beef Inside skirt steaks in a Styrofoam tray with sell-by dates between 5/4 and 6/20
• Hill Country Fare Beef for fajitas with a sell-by date of 5/23
• Any fresh ground beef in a Styrofoam tray with sell-by dates between 5/9 and 6/20

So far, there haven't been any reports of illness in Texas, but check you freezers. And blame the Japanese for gobbling all our outside skirt steak.

Food Inc. debuted in Texas last week. The producers of the movie talk about a "curtain" that's been deliberately placed between consumers and the meat they are eating. "The industry doesn't want you to know the truth about what you're eating. Because if you knew, you might not want to eat it," the narrator says.

Meat companies didn't allow the movie makers inside their processing plants to film. (Hmm, I wonder why?) While I'm a little tired of the scare tactics about food, I am in complete agreement with the idea that consumers need to respect the animals they are eating and see them as something other than little styrene packages in the grocery store.

That's part of the reason I wrote about Beef 101 class at Texas A&M in the feature "Not So Clear Cut." While I was taking the class, I brought a video camera with me inside the slaughterhouse and to the meat-cutting floor and videotaped the process. If you want to remove the "curtain" between you and the meat you are eating, have a look.

Mark Mavrantonis, Director of Culinary Development for Legacy Restaurants, which owns the Original Ninfa's, buys Certified Hereford outside skirt steak for the famous fajitas there. He doesn't hold back in his opinions about fajita meat.

"Using inner skirt steak for fajitas is probably okay," he wrote me in an email, "just as long as you use frozen tortillas and tomatoes out of a can... but you'd never see any of that crap at the original Ninfa's on Navigation. In fact, if I went in there next week and suggested using inner skirt or not using Hereford to save money, the cooks would probably kick my ass."

Photo by Robb Walsh

While we were debating the word salumeria, a commenter by the name of SpandTexPants complained that Houston didn't have a butcher shop that sold dry-aged beef. Well, now we do. Hubbell & Hudson Market in the Woodlands has a dry-aging case in its meat department.

When I stopped by today and asked about it, a counterman named German got out a black, moldy USDA Prime rib eye to show me what it looked like. This piece of meat went into the dry-aging case on June 9th. The weight is recorded when it goes in and again when it comes out. Dry-aged meat loses as much as 20 percent of its weight in the aging process. The rib eye he showed me won't be ready until June 30.

Looking for a fun project this weekend? I recommend you go to your nearest Fiesta Supermarket, buy yourself a cow head and make some delicious barbacoa.

You'll need a large barbecue unit--like a barrel smoker, a big aluminum roasting pan, and a whole lot of patience. The complete recipe for "Backyard Barbacoa" will be appearing in my new book "The Tex-Mex Grill" scheduled for release in the Spring of 2010. Meanwhile, here's a video that will give you the broad strokes.

Enjoy!

photo by Robb Walsh

It's not too late to sign up for the most serious barbecue seminar in the state. BBQ 101 is a three-day professional training session sponsored by the National Barbecue Association at the Texas A&M Meat Science Center in College Station. The class will be held next week beginning on the morning of Tuesday May 12 and ending on Thursday May 14th in the afternoon. The class is intended for barbecue pros, but open to anyone.

Participants will spend a lot of time in a meat locker, so bring a sweater if you're coming. The course will feature a overview of animal science and an in-depth look at how to cook various cuts of beef, pork and poultry along with a butchery lesson from the top meat scientists in the nation. Rubs, marinades and barbecue sauces from different regions of the country will be compared and a hands-on tutorial in mixing seasonings will be offered by the pros at Adam's Extracts. Yours truly will be covering the history of barbecue.

Filet mignon at Fleming's

Fleming's Steakhouse at Town & Country Village is now open, the newest entry in the quickly expanding dining scene on the west side of town.  This marks the third Fleming's to open in Houston: the first, in River Oaks, has been serving steaks for six years while location in The Woodlands has been open for five.

The Town & Country location is the 63rd steakhouse to open in the United States.  Fleming's is a national presence in the restaurant scene and drove many concepts now seen in steakhouses across the country, such as wines by the glass and private dining rooms.

Their list of 100 wines is particularly notable, as all are available by bottle or the glass and even in flights of three.  There is no markup on wines by the glass or flight, a welcomed respite in times of tighter dining budgets.  The wine is kept and served at a comfortable 60 degrees, ensuring a better taste as the wine warms and opens up as you drink it.

Fleming's steaks -- their specialty, of course -- are dry-aged for three weeks before heading to the restaurant to be hand-cut each night.  A quick sear of 1600° locks in the flavor of the beef and the steaks are refreshingly dressed with only kosher salt, black pepper, parsley and butter.

photo by Robb Walsh

Two Meatballs in the Italian Kitchen by Pino Luongo and Mark Straussman is a cookbook written by two Italian restaurant owners in New York. Pino is a purist from Tuscany, Mark is a populist from Queens. And the two men don't see eye to eye on meatballs.

For Mark's American customers, meatballs are the crowning glory on a mound of spaghetti. The Italian Pino insists that the big meatball is out of proportion to the skinny spaghetti and that we Americans ought to learn to eat the pasta first and the meatballs as a second course. Meatballs all by themselves, it turns out, can be an authentic Italian entrée. The discussion reminds me of the authentic Mexican versus Tex-Mex debate.

Photo courtesy of Matthew N. Stoller

Hot beef injections are down the street, sicko.

It's long been known that Japan has the market cornered on bizarre vending machines.  From machines dispensing beer and sake to bowls of hot ramen and farm-fresh eggs, the Japanese are a people who love a good automated food product.

In a patriotic move to bring that fame and glory to America, Nebraska has installed their own weird vending machines throughout the state.  Travelers to Lincoln (and whatever other cities are in Nebraska...I'm not really sure) can now purchase items like Hot Beef Sundaes and Pizza on a Stick from conveniently-located vending machines.  These products are sure to help ease the burden of the stressful, time-crunched Nebraskan lifestyle of hectic farming and corn-husking.

The Hot Beef Sundae is -- frighteningly enough -- not a new concept.  The Midwest, in what I assume is a bid to create a signature dish from their regional foodstuffs, created the Hot Beef Sundae from their primary agricultural products: Cheese and beef, with a few potatoes thrown in for good measure.  It's currently on its way to securing fried Mars bar status by being served at the Iowa State Fair.

For a more accurate -- and dare we say tantalizing? -- description of a Hot Beef Sundae, let's turn to the vending machine itself.

The location of the nearest Texas barbecue joint and what to order when you get there seem to be the first questions on the minds of many visitors to SXSW in Austin. So this year, veteran barbecue writer Joe Nick Patoski put together a Texas barbecue panel for conference-goers. Panelists included Rick Schmidt, the owner of Kruez Market in Lockhart; John Morthland, who writes about barbecue for Texas Monthly; Wyatt McSpadden, who has a new photo book out called Texas BBQ; NPR's Kitchen Sisters, who just published a book called Hidden Kitchens Texas; and myself.

Mostly the panel dealt with definitions and debated the "Sauce or No Sauce" thing. The most significant piece of information I gleaned from the gathering was that a study by Texas A&M has identified brisket as a significant source of healthy monounsaturated fats such as those found in olive oil. The "depots" of healthy fat are found in brisket from corn-fed beef.

Photo courtesy of Lodigs.

A "regular" sized cheeseburger at Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

Get your grub on today -- for free! -- at the grand opening of Houston's first Five Guys Burgers and Fries at Bunker Hill and I-10.  All you have to do is become a fan of Five Guys at their Facebook fan page and free burgers and fries are yours, today only, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and in the evening from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Five Guys started out in Arlington, Virginia in 1986 with a small location that quickly became a cult favorite in the Washington, D.C. area.  By 2001, they had expanded their business to include five other tremendously popular D.C. locations.  Sensing the opportunity to expand on a national level, Five Guys entered the franchise market.  By 2003, they had established over 300 locations across 25 states.

That's Your Big Boy

If the three-martini lunch was the status symbol of the go-go '80s (Gordon Gekko and all that), then surely the steakhouse dinner replete with a bottle of Opus One and a finishing cigar was the defining dish of the naughty '00s (pronounced "aughties" by the way).

Such naughty carnivorousness was exacerbated by an avalanche of high-end steakhouse chains entering the Houston market. Old standbys and feisty newcomers mingled and prospered during the boom -- Ruth's Chris, Morton's, Vic & Anthony's, Smith & Wollensky, Mo's, Pappa's Brothers, Fleming's, The Strip House, Sullivan's, The Palm, The Capital Grille, Perry's, Spencer's, Don Shula's, Killen's. Just to name a few.