My first post on Beef Mechado a la Marketman was extremely educational. Not on my part, but on the part of all the commenters that weighed in on the subject matter. In our home, mechado was more like a beef stew with carrots and potatoes, and maybe the pork fat thrown in for flavor. I tried to replicate the childhood version I was familiar with, and frankly, thought I had done a pretty good job achieving what it my mind was a saucy, fork tender and screaming for steamed rice as its life partner stew, here. But in the comments section, a discussion over kaldereta vs. mechado, a detailed description of mitsa or sticking the pork fat into the center of a roast, etc. was really quite interesting. If you go back to the original post and scan through the comments, you will see what I mean…

Apicio’s comment about owning a larding iron, whose specific use is to insert lard into meat (talk about single-use implements), always stuck in the back of my mind. I haven’t found a larding iron to buy, so the next best thing was to find some beef at the grocery that already had the strip of fat inserted into it! I asked the butcher at Rustan’s to make a larger piece of beef (say a kilo worth) and he just inserted the lard with a sharp long knife and his fingers… hahaha, now I know how to do it the low-cost way… And I made my way home hoping to make a brilliant, and more authentic mechado.

I tied up the meat with string to keep it all together. I marinated it in toyo (soy sauce) and kalamansi (calamondin) for about 45 minutes to get that localized pinoy flavor to the tomato sauce, and browned it on all sides. Removed the browned roast and added chopped onions and garlic to the pot, then some passata or tomato sauce and some chopped canned tomatoes, bay leaves, ground pepper, and bit of the leftover marinade. Once this came up to a simmer, I added back the beef and stuck it ina 350F oven for some 2-2.5 hours to braise slowly. The meat was turned over a couple of times. And roughly 30 minutes before taking out the pot, I added lots of chopped carrots, potatoes and some sliced red capsicums or sweet bell peppers. You can add some water during the cooking process if it looks like its drying out. Some wine might be nice as well.

I took the meat out and let it sit on a chopping board for 10 minutes, while I cooked the carrots a bit more. Then I sliced the meat, with the nice chunk of fat in the center of each slice, laid them out on a serving platter, and spooned a lot of the veggies and sauce on the side. The verdict? Ewww. A 5.0/10.0 at best. The meat was incredibly dry, kinda like shoe leather. And the sauce was good but a bit too thick. If you doused the meat in sauce, it got a little better. But I have to say, my first version was far and away more appealing. Of course this could just have been a function of bad meat to begin with (Australian beef in this case), but I do prefer the individual softer chunks of beef more akin to a Western stew than this version. I think I am going to chop up the meat and heat it up with a thinned sauce for lunch today. That might make it a little more appealing…

The post Mechado a la Marketman, Revisited appeared first on Market Manila.