after dinner sneeze

t says: I was at a new super-Walmart-atron the other day. I was surprised to find that they had beef cheek! No one else (i.e. no normal run-of-the-mill grocery store) has beef cheek! And now it was mine … for less than $2 a pound! So I bought some …

What did I do with it? I braised it, of course. I used our short rib pasta recipe. It … was … awesome.

It took a bit over 3 hours to braise a mere 3 lbs. I did trim the beef cheek substantially cuz there’s a lot of big pockets of fat. I did, however, save one huge piece of fat and stuck it into the Dutch oven to braise with the meats so it could add some luscious sweet deliciosity. The result was a wonderful pasta dish. Mmmmm.

It didn’t taste as gamey as a short rib or an oxtail – and the texture was even more tender, so I imagine I’ll continue to use it in the future (without telling anyone it’s “beef cheek” – that name might turn some people off). It’s also cheaper than the other two – even if you consider that approximately 1/4-1/3 of what you get is fat that gets trimmed …

Rock on beef cheek …