Category: Meats

Jalapeño Beef Stir Fry

A few years ago when I was out for a walk, a neighbor offered me some habanero peppers. I knew they were hot peppers, and since I like my chili spicy I brought home a bag of the little red fruit. They sat on the kitchen counter in the bag for a couple of days until I offered to chop and freeze them. My plan was to package a couple of tablespoons of chopped pepper in small snack bags ready to be used as needed.

Jerri went to bed and I washed, seeded and chopped the peppers. I bagged them, washed up and went to bed feeling productive and virtuous.

I woke up at 1 AM. The time is etched permanently in my memory because my hands were on fire. Maybe I didn’t wash my hands thoroughly enough, I thought, so I went to the bathroom and scrubbed them for a couple of minutes. Rinsing them under cold water, I was sure that I had taken care of the problem. However, when the water began to get hot, my hands got hotter.

Being a person who trusted in the vast library of useful information that is the Internet, I went downstairs to the computer and typed “habanero pepper hands” into the Google search box. At that time we had only a dialup connection, so it took a minute or so for Google to give me the first page of about a quarter million results.

Unfortunately they were not the results I was looking for. There were suggestions to use sugar, milk, olive oil and alcohol to relieve the burning, but as I tried one remedy after the other, none of which offered more than relief lasting a few seconds, I began considering banging my head against a wall. If I did it hard enough, I might forget about my hands for awhile.

I had the most sympathy for the person who had posted a comment on a chat page headed by a question of how to stop hands burning from chopping habanero peppers: “I am one of those people stupid enough to chop habanero peppers without gloves. What should I do?” My exact mea culpa and question.

I had the least sympathy with the person who posted this smarmy comment: “You should always wear gloves when chopping hot peppers.” Lots of help that was.

By this time it was about 2:30 in the morning. In a lucky flash of genius I realized that since my hands felt pretty good under cold water when I was washing them and in cold milk while I was soaking them, maybe I could just keep my hands in cold water until they shriveled up and dropped off or stopped burning. At that point I didn’t much care which happened first.

I put our largest mixing bowl on the breakfast bar, filled the bowl with about four inches of cold water, added two trays of ice cubes, put my hands into the bowl and promptly fell asleep sitting on a stool. When I woke up about 6:30 that morning my hands felt only uncomfortably sunburned.

One good thing to come out of this experience, aside from learning that soaking your hands in ice water stops burning caused by habanero peppers, was learning about the Scoville Scale The Scoville Scale ranks chile peppers according to how hot they taste in Scoville Heat Units (SHU). The heat comes from capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers taste hot, and the scale goes from zero (bell peppers which have no capsaicin) to 16,000,000 for pure capsaicin.

Jalapeño peppers, which we had been using for years, rank pretty low on the scale at 2,500 to 8,000 SHU. Habaneros, on the other hand, have 200,000 to 350,000 SHU. Peppers vary in flavor as well as spiciness, and we have learned to enjoy many of them, from the mild Anaheim and poblano peppers to the hotter jalapeños and serranos and even those habaneros that I now know must be used with care and for us at least in small amounts.

Besides using jalapeños in our breakfast frittatas and for making jalapeño poppers, jalapeño peppers make a wonderful stir fry for anyone who enjoys a slightly spicy dinner. Stir fries are perfect for quick summer dinners. If you like spicy foods, here is a simple recipe for two or three people that will tingle your tongue in less than 30 minutes.

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 lb. lean sirloin steak
1 small or medium yellow onion
3 or 4 fresh jalapeño peppers
1/2 red bell pepper
stir fry sauce
soy sauce
2 T olive oil
White rice

PROCEDURE:

Prepare the rice according to instructions on the package or your own special way.

While the rice is cooking, slice the sirloin into thin (1/8 to 1/4 “ thick) strips two to three inches long. Peel and coarsely chop the onion. Remove the stems and seeds from the jalapeño peppers and chop them into half inch inch pieces. If you have sensitive skin, wear gloves when you do this. Remove the seeds from the bell pepper and slice it into thin strips.

Pour 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a skillet. A wok, of course, works best but is not essential. About eight minutes before the rice is done, heat the oil, add the beef and brown it lightly. Add the onions and peppers and stir rapidly for about 1 minute. Season the meat and vegetables with two to four tablespoons of stir fry sauce.

Continue stirring for another one to two minutes to cook the vegetables. Season to taste (I always add a dash of salt) and have soy sauce at the table for final seasoning. Serve over rice with a garden salad on the side.

NOTES: Most of the heat in peppers is concentrated in the seeds and white membrane inside the pepper, so the spiciness of the jalapeños in this recipe is on the low end of the Scoville Scale.

And a final reminder from one who now knows better: Wear gloves whenever you chop habanero peppers.

White Spruce Pepper Burgers

In the summer of 1961 I helped sign on WERL radio a couple miles north of Eagle River, Wisconsin. In those days small town radio stations played a wide variety of music, had as much local news as they could get and did whatever they could to attract listeners and advertisers who ultimately paid the bills. Being involved in a new radio station was an exhilarating experience.

There was a radio station about 25 miles away, but the signal was not very good, and the station did not cater to the residents of Eagle River and the smaller communities nearby. People were excited to have their “own” radio station. People gave news tips to the news director, called in requests to the disc jockeys (of which I was one) and contacted the station to ask that an advertising representative (which included me) stop in.

We were all celebrities that summer. It helped that we did remote broadcasts from virtually every event that occurred in the area. If a business was having an anniversary sale and was willing to pay for an hour’s broadcast, we were there. When a community had its annual celebration, we found businesses to help sponsor coverage of the activities, and even individuals found ways to use the new station to celebrate family events.

One evening when I was alone doing my show at the station I suddenly was surprised by a huge happy man carrying a case of beer who walked into the studio. He set the case down and asked if we would announce that he and his wife had won the Vilas County Fair award for the largest family in the county. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was at least 14 children. I thanked him for the beer, got the details and had a story ready for the 8 AM news the next morning before I left for the day. We all enjoyed the beer.

Eagle River was and still is a vibrant resort vacation community. There must have been 50 supper clubs, cafes, bars and grills and resort restaurants open to the public within 25 miles of the station, and I ate at most of them in my sales territory.

A typical sales call went something like this: George, the station manager who was also the sales manager, would say, “Chuck, Luigi from the Black Oak Club wants someone to stop in as soon as possible. You should give him a call and go sell him.” He would give me a phone number and directions, and off I would go in my trusty DeSoto.

Luigi would buy a package of ads, give me a tour of the establishment and a copy of the menu and invite me back for dinner. “I want you to know first hand how good our food is,” he would say, “How can you write a good radio ad without tasting the food? And the wine,” he would add. I ate very well that summer.

One of those supper clubs was the White Spruce Inn, just a couple of miles from the radio station. It was located on the north bank of the Eagle River in one of the oldest buildings in town. Since George handled all the advertising accounts in the city, I did not get a complimentary dinner there, but all of us soon learned to appreciate the White Spruce pepper burgers for lunch. One day I asked for the recipe, and the chef obliged.

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb. lean hamburger or ground round
1/4 green bell pepper
1/4 red bell pepper or a fresh pimiento
1 T Worcestershire sauce
Salt & black pepper to taste

PROCEDURE:

Wash and chop the peppers finely and add them to the hamburger along with the Worcestershire sauce. Grind a little black pepper and shake a little salt over the meat. Mix it well, make four patties and grill them over charcoal or fry them in a hot skillet.

NOTES: I use about a quarter teaspoon each of salt and pepper. The White Spruce Inn closed a few years ago but reopened as Eddie B’s White Spruce Restaurant and Tavern. I hope they still offer these delicious burgers.