Unfortunately, this has been one of those weeks that no matter what you cannot undo what was not done. I went to Sam’s Club on Saturday to pick up a few things that we were out of and are cheaper to get there. Namely bread, cheese sticks, etc. I was not going in for much. I was going in for only a few items really. Those other items that I always check the prices on to see if they are a better price than the grocery store also may end up in the cart. Milk usually ends up in the cart because it is usually cheaper at Sam’s Club on any average day. If you are lucky and find the milk on sale at the grocery store you can sometimes get it cheaper, but usually it is cheaper at Sam’s.
So I loaded up with my 4 loaves of bread, 5 pound block of cheddar cheese, big box of pudding and apple sauce cups for the boys lunches, big box of Goldfish crackers, 2 rotisserie chickens, etc. The catch was the browse past the meat counter. Darn those marked down for “quick sale” meat packages. There was this wonderful looking “Angus Beef” roast package that had not one but two roasts in it marked down. I grabbed one. I could not resist it. It was a good price and I could use it to make some really good stuff. I grabbed one package (not all of them, just one) and then wandered back over to the section with the big bags of cheese and grabbed a big bag of shredded Mexican blend cheese. Why? I had two roasts that would need to be turned into something yummy and these roasts were perfect for all sorts of things and I was going to need some cheese. Besides, these bags of cheese keep for a while. Not to mention I had two rotisserie chickens to consume for the week and Ben was going out of town so we could have all sorts of stuff with cheese, chicken, and who knows what else. That was my thinking. I was going to need a lot of cheese.
Now this was my second trip back to the cheese and I still managed to get the big bag of cheese sticks. This was one of the items I was specifically sent to Sam’s Club for. It was a request from Ben himself. I managed to get all the way back home before I realized that I had forgotten the cheese sticks and the toilet paper. Fortunately, neither were vital to our existence this week because we still had several rolls of toilet paper left at the house so it was not critical and Ben was going out of town so he was not going to notice that we did not have cheese sticks for at least a week. He could suffer without them for twenty four hours. Problem evaded.
That was of course before the true pain hit with my mouth. You do not know how much a single tooth will knock you out of your game until you have a tooth that becomes an internal attack of who knows what because “pain” does not do what I experienced justice. It just does not express what I experienced clearly enough. I would not wish that on my worst enemy.
Alas the week got away from me. I looked in the fridge on Thursday night and I saw that package of roasts still sitting on the shelf in the fridge. My heart sank. It was a bad week. I could not make much more than lemonade out of the week because I was certainly served a big bowl of lemons this week. What was I going to do with them all? I had no real choice, I was going to have to cook both of those roasts, regardless of how much meat this was going to yield in the end. It was cook them or throw them away. Throwing them away was not an option.
It was a good thing I bought that big bag of Mexican blend cheese because I was now going to be using it to rescue my two roasts from the bad week I just had. I threw both roasts in the crock pot with the a bunch of beef broth. I did not worry about seasoning any. I will worry about that when I prepare the meat in its final stages. What is in store for these roasts? I foresee a lot of beef taquitos and beef burritos. I see a lot of rolling of tortillas in my future. I am going to have to go buy all those tortillas, but at least I did not have to throw away the beef roasts.
Once I had the roasts cooked, I still had to shred the beef. You could just let it cool and then do it later. That is not an ideal situation I have learned. Take my word for it. I used tongs to get the big pieces of hot roast out of my crock pot and then used a large slotted spoon and strained out the smaller pieces that broke off. When the meat is hot you can then slowly turn on your mixer and break up the big pieces fairly quickly and easily into chunks.
If you leave the mixer running on low for a short amount of time you quickly and easily have shredded beef. Since I desired finely shredded beef for what I am going to be using it for, I just left mine running as I was adding the pieces of my roasts to the mixer. It took me a bit of time to get all of the pieces out of the crock pot so I took my first big piece out of the crock pot, dropped it in the mixer and turned it on. I then added the rest as I went with the mixer running. It worked nicely and I was not wasting time.
I must confess that it does not look like the most appetizing mush on the planet. I will also confess that at this point it is a thick glop of shredded beef. It is thick and if you try to store it at this point it is going to be dry. You have essentially shredded all the moisture out of it so unless you are going to use it right this second, you are going to have to incorporate some moisture back into it.
No need to worry about that as you have an entire crock pot full of juices and all that beef broth you cooked the roasts in. I simply added a good portion of it slowly back into the bowl as the mixer was running. I did this 1 cup at a time. Take your time. You do not want it runny, but you do want it to look like it is moist again. It will look like beef mush. That is fine. Remember we are going to use this for cooking so some of the moisture is going to cook back out again when we reheat this in the next couple of days.
I will probably make my taquitos and burritos on Monday or Tuesday of next week after I get to the grocery store to get the rest of the ingredients I need in the quantities I need them. I have some, but not for the quantities I need. I also have an entire rotisserie chicken to make chicken enchiladas with. I am going to need a lot of tortillas, green chilies, refried beans, etc. For now, however, I am content that I can safely put my beef in a air tight container in the fridge.
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