Smoked Meat Croquettes
Excerpted from Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse
![Smoked Meat Croquettes](/sites/default/files/2019-06/Smoked-Meat-Croquettes.jpg)
Yield:
30
Croquettes
When you’re doing two hundred covers per night, it’s imperative to have a winner in your arsenal, one that is all prep and little cook time during service. At home, well, this is the least healthy but the most rewarding of all “night-after” cures.
For our American readers, Montreal smoked meat is dry-cured beef brisket. It resembles pastrami the way that a Montreal bagel “resembles” a New York bagel.
You will need:
- Food processor
- Digital scale (optional)
- Deep fryer or heavy pot
- Deep-frying thermometer
For the Filling
- 1⁄4 pound (113 g) cheese curds
- 1⁄4 pound (113 g) smoked Cheddar, cubed
- 1⁄2 pound (225 g) Montreal smoked meat (lean), shredded
- 1⁄2 cup (30 g) sauerkraut, drained and finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon Montreal steak spice
- 2 tablespoons yellow mustard
- 1⁄2 cup (120 ml) Béchamel Rapide (recipe follows)
- 2 quarts (2 l) canola oil for deep-frying
For the Breading
- 1 cup (75 g) flour
- 4 large eggs, beaten
- 1 cup (130 g) rye bread crumbs or plain bread crumbs mixed with 1 teaspoon ground caraway seeds
- Salt Water
- Yellow mustard (optional)
- Thousand Island dressing (optional)
- 1 kosher pickle, thinly sliced
Béchamel Rapide
- 2 cups (500 ml) whole milk, cold
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1⁄2 cup (65 g) all-purpose flour
- 1⁄4 cup (60 g) cold unsalted butter, diced
- Add the cheese curds and smoked Cheddar to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until evenly crumbled. Transfer to a large bowl.
- Now pulse the smoked meat in the food processor until it looks like hamburger meat. Transfer to the cheese bowl.
- Add the sauerkraut, steak spice, mustard, and béchamel, and using a spatula or gloved hands, mix well.
- Use your hands to shape 30 cylinders into the size and shape of a wine cork. Transfer to a parchment- lined sheet pan as you work. Refrigerate the croquettes for 30 minutes to help them retain their shape.
- To bread the croquettes: Set up three bowls, one with the flour, one with the eggs, and one with the rye bread crumbs. Dip each croquette into the flour, then the egg, then the bread crumbs. Set aside on a small tray.
- Pour the canola oil into a deep fryer or heavy pot. The oil should be 350 ̊F (180 ̊C).
- Fry the croquettes in batches of 5 or 6 for 21⁄2 minutes, until golden brown. Keep an eye on the thermometer and adjust your heat up or down accordingly so that the croquettes don’t brown too quickly: you want them to be hot in the center. Using a skimmer or slotted spoon, transfer to a paper towel–lined plate.
- Serve with your choice of yellow mustard or Thousand Island dressing and slices of kosher pickle.
Béchamel Rapide
- Note: To make your own rye bread crumbs, process several slices of very dry rye bread in your food processor. Spread the fresh crumbs out on a sheet pan to stale completely. Process again until fine, pass through a sieve, and keep in an airtight container until ready to use.
Meredith Erickson has co-authored The Art of Living According to Joe Beef, Le Pigeon, Olympia Provisions, Kristen Kish Cooking, and Claridge’s: The Cookbook. She is currently working on her own book, Alpine Cooking, and on The Frasca Cookbook. She has written for The New York Times, Elle, Saveur, Condé Nast Traveler, and Lucky Peach. When not traveling, she can be found in Montreal, Quebec (with friends and family at Joe Beef).
A graduate from no prestigious cooking school, Fred Morin has long forgotten all about the art of plating good-looking food. From the daily task of heading the tiny kitchen at Joe Beef ten years ago he now mostly cooks ingredients that don’t touch one another for three adorable yet very talkative offspring, Henry, Ivan, and Eleanor. He does sometimes cook overly complex and poorly budgeted, ambitious, classic French meals at home for his wife, Allison.
His life is still ruled by brief but intense bouts of diverse endeavors that somehow all come back to restaurants and cooking, be they gardening, trying to fly-fish in Alaska, preparing very large first-aid kits, or building bread ovens. In recent years, he casually alternated between yoga and…
David McMillan is the co-owner/chef of Joe Beef, Liverpool House, Vin Papillon, Mon Lapin and McKiernan as well as partner in Les Vins Dame-Jeanne wine agency. Born and raised in Quebec City, David has been involved in Montreal’s restaurants since the age of seventeen and continues to explore, teach, and be fascinated by unique traditional French country cooking. David is father to his three daughters, Dylan, Lola, and Cecile, whom he loves, and when not found at any of the three restaurants on the Little Burgundy block, he’s at his Barkmere cottage.