Easy-to-Chew Beef
I'm missing a bunch of teeth and I used to have very loose, wobbly teeth at one time, so for a lot of years I had a LOT of trouble chewing anything tough, like steak, and I still have chewing challenges. But I also sometimes really need to eat beef for the nutrition. I eat semi-vegetarian much of the time, but I also sometimes eat beef REGULARLY for a few weeks or months.
There are already a few answers on this site that work well for me, such as thin-cut breakfast steaks (cooked very well done), homemade beef stew and eating at Chipotle. The beef barbacoa at Chipotle is very soft and that works for me and it's part of why I ate there very regularly at times while recovering from a serious medical crisis.
But my earliest exposure to easy-to-chew beef was German Roulade. This was one of my favorite foods growing up and it's part of what helped put fifty pounds on me in one year in my late teens, which is when I finally stopped being rail thin all the time and I've been a healthier weight ever since.
I'm the youngest of three kids and after my older siblings both moved out, my mother began making big pots of German Roulade two to three times per week every week because it was my favorite and I was real skinny and my mom grew up in a war zone, so she likes to FEED skinny people. So she made up to twenty stuffed meat rolls at a time for THREE people -- me, her and my dad -- and I got like eighty or ninety percent of that over the next two or three days.
I would have three with dinner while she and my dad each ate one and then I would reheat one (plus potatoes of some sort) for a bedtime snack and make two more (with potatoes) for lunch the next day, etc until it was all gone. I was also on hormonal birth control pills and between my mother cooking "my favorite" all the time and being on hormones, I put on substantial weight for the first time in my life and some long-standing health issues improved.
And then when I was living in the Tri-Cities in Washington state, I had the rude awakening that not all American butchers know what the heck "meat for roulade" is and so to my shock I had to pick out meat that looked right and explain how I wanted it cut. If you are somwhere uncivilized where butchers have never heard of "meat for roulade" and -- le gasp -- have NOT been trained in how to cut this, it is thin cut flank steak such that you have a piece of meat about maybe 10 inches long and four to six inches wide suitable for making meat rolls.
This is generally cooked in a big pot, like a Dutch oven, and you typically make at least eight of them (or up to twenty if you are my mother trying to feed me).
You take your thin-cut flank steak and lay it out flat and pepper and paprika it. You then lay out half a slice of bacon, a chunk of onion (I prefer Vidalia onions because they are mild), and a small whole kosher dill pickle cut in half or half a pickle (my mother always used a whole pickle cut in half per roll, but I always used just half a pickle after I grew up and moved away and was just cooking for me).
You carefully roll it up and stick a bunch of (wood) toothpicks in each roll to hold them together, brown on all sides and then cover with water, add beef bouillon cubes and whole pepper corns. Simmer at least two hours (you may need to add water at some point).
Serve with mashed potatoes, German potato balls or spaetzle (German egg noodles).
And if, like me, you just really, really love the gravy from this, you can make FAKE roulade gravy by frying a piece or two of bacon and pouring a small amount of pickle juice into your natural gravy drippings when you want that taste but can't be arsed to spend half a day making a giant pot of roulade.
There are already a few answers on this site that work well for me, such as thin-cut breakfast steaks (cooked very well done), homemade beef stew and eating at Chipotle. The beef barbacoa at Chipotle is very soft and that works for me and it's part of why I ate there very regularly at times while recovering from a serious medical crisis.
But my earliest exposure to easy-to-chew beef was German Roulade. This was one of my favorite foods growing up and it's part of what helped put fifty pounds on me in one year in my late teens, which is when I finally stopped being rail thin all the time and I've been a healthier weight ever since.
I'm the youngest of three kids and after my older siblings both moved out, my mother began making big pots of German Roulade two to three times per week every week because it was my favorite and I was real skinny and my mom grew up in a war zone, so she likes to FEED skinny people. So she made up to twenty stuffed meat rolls at a time for THREE people -- me, her and my dad -- and I got like eighty or ninety percent of that over the next two or three days.
I would have three with dinner while she and my dad each ate one and then I would reheat one (plus potatoes of some sort) for a bedtime snack and make two more (with potatoes) for lunch the next day, etc until it was all gone. I was also on hormonal birth control pills and between my mother cooking "my favorite" all the time and being on hormones, I put on substantial weight for the first time in my life and some long-standing health issues improved.
German Roulade
I grew up at Ft. Benning-Columbus, Georgia where every grocery store in the area carries "meat for roulade" and if you can't find enough for how much you want to make pre-cut and out on the display shelves, you can go to the butcher and say "I need X number of roulade" and they cut it for you and that's the ENTIRE conversation.And then when I was living in the Tri-Cities in Washington state, I had the rude awakening that not all American butchers know what the heck "meat for roulade" is and so to my shock I had to pick out meat that looked right and explain how I wanted it cut. If you are somwhere uncivilized where butchers have never heard of "meat for roulade" and -- le gasp -- have NOT been trained in how to cut this, it is thin cut flank steak such that you have a piece of meat about maybe 10 inches long and four to six inches wide suitable for making meat rolls.
This is generally cooked in a big pot, like a Dutch oven, and you typically make at least eight of them (or up to twenty if you are my mother trying to feed me).
You take your thin-cut flank steak and lay it out flat and pepper and paprika it. You then lay out half a slice of bacon, a chunk of onion (I prefer Vidalia onions because they are mild), and a small whole kosher dill pickle cut in half or half a pickle (my mother always used a whole pickle cut in half per roll, but I always used just half a pickle after I grew up and moved away and was just cooking for me).
You carefully roll it up and stick a bunch of (wood) toothpicks in each roll to hold them together, brown on all sides and then cover with water, add beef bouillon cubes and whole pepper corns. Simmer at least two hours (you may need to add water at some point).
Serve with mashed potatoes, German potato balls or spaetzle (German egg noodles).
Footnote
The internet tells me it's rouladen. You may find that useful if you want to look up other recipes -- an uncle of mine in Germany made this with peppers instead of onions and pickles because his daughter didn't eat onions and pickles. My German isn't that good. My recollection is one of those words (roulade/rouladen) is singular and one is plural (roll/rolls).And if, like me, you just really, really love the gravy from this, you can make FAKE roulade gravy by frying a piece or two of bacon and pouring a small amount of pickle juice into your natural gravy drippings when you want that taste but can't be arsed to spend half a day making a giant pot of roulade.
