Dinner on the way
Aside from the butcher case, Kettle Range Meat Co. has heat-and-eat and slow-cooker meals.
By the time I got home from the office one evening, the slow cooker had done half the work for me. Kettle Range Meat Co. had done the rest.
I’d emptied the contents of various vacuum-packed bags and lidded containers into the cooker that morning, and when we got home, we sat down to a hot dinner of Southwest beef stew in minutes. It left zero time to get hangry.
Like most grocers these days, Kettle Range butcher shop on Milwaukee’s west side sells heat-and-eat prepared items, and it also sells what it calls slowcooker meal kits.
Stop in at the butcher shop, and you’ll see a number of handled brown-paper bags lined up in a refrigerator case. Inside are either ready-to-eat meals that need only heating or slow-cooker meals that can be cooked in three to eight hours, depending on the setting and how gung-ho your particular appliance is.
The slow-cooker beef stew kit held a sealed bag of chuck cubes and another of raw onion and red and green bell pepper, cut into chunks. There were lidded containers of par-cooked pinto beans and of a lightly spicy tomato sauce with real depth, courtesy of three kinds of chiles — guajillo, arbol and ancho. There was another small container of corn, to be added 30 minutes before serving, and a quart container of rice, already cooked, that needed only to be heated.
The Southwest beef stew was ready to eat in six hours on low, but letting it go longer, until everyone was home, did it no harm. I set the lid ajar as the stew bubbled to help the sauce thicken a bit.
The detailed instructions on a slip of paper tucked into the bag suggested topping it with a dollop of sour cream or avocado, if we wished. No avocado on hand, but the sour cream was a good call.
It was a robust meal, with tender, full-flavored beef at the heart of it. (Kettle Range is known for selling meat that’s antibiotic- and hormone-free; steer are grass-fed, and pork and other meats often are from heritage breeds.)
A limited number of meal kits are prepared daily. The kit for the stew was $25 and described as enough for four; we would have needed a hungry teen boy as our fourth to help us polish off the stew.
The menus, by the shop’s chef, Erick Fisher, change almost entirely from week to week. Heat-and-eat options always include a comforting version of meatloaf on Mondays. One week I took home patty melt meatloaf — a generous slab of beef and pork studded with bits of melting Swiss cheese. With it were caramelized onions and smoked mushrooms in gravy, light, creamy mashed red potatoes and fresh green beans with corn. It was $20 and sized for two, but we had enough left over for one of us to relish it for lunch the next day.
Look for the week’s menus online or in the shop on the Friday or Saturday the week before; the week’s slow cooker meal kits are available in the case starting on Sundays.
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