Your filling is basically a beef stew/casserole, so any cuts that suite long slow cooking are fine. They get cooked again while the pie is baked, so premium cuts will just be wasted
The lower grade and 'off cut' parts are what are most commonly used. Like rump, brisket, chuck, shank, neck etc
Using a bench top slow cooker makes cooking this all very easy. The beef needs to be fully cooked before making the pie. An eight hour slow cook is fine
You want the pieces to be a variety of sizes to fill out the pie shape, but make sure you have some at least the height of the pie filling. The larger pieces tend to be better, but that could be a matter of taste and culture
You need to get rid of plenty of fat before and after cooking. A mouth full of fat in a pie is not nice. There is already plenty of fat in the gravy and pastry, so trim off all you can
A good meat pie should have a solid layer of meat connected with gravy, not swimming. It should also not be so full as you can't eat it with your hands (for a single serve pie) without loosing half the contents
Puff/flakey pastry works best and holds everything together
Avoid overly strong flavoured gravies, you don't want to hide the beef and pastry taste
Before you attach the lid, place a slice of tasty cheese, or an extra generous serving of cracked pepper on top of the filling
A respectable pie looks like this - thanks to Ponsonby Pies (not made in Ponsonby anymore)
Harrold McGee indicates in On Food and Cooking that soaking brown rice for 20-30 minutes can speed the cooking. However, he doesn't give any specifics.
In looking to what I consider highly credible cooking web sites, I have not found any definitive answers.
Cook's Illustrated's recommended method for the fastest, best tasting brown rice (no link since it is probably on the pay site) is:
Boiling the rice for our brown rice recipe until it is almost tender
(about 30 minutes), draining it, then steaming it until done (another
five to 10 minutes) is by far the best stovetop method for brown rice.
Martha Stewart's recommended technique (50 minutes steaming, 10 minutes resting) is quite similar.
Alton Brown recommends baking technique which may be delicious but is almost certainly the one that will heat your house the most: putting rice in a casserole covered with boiling water, and baking at 375°F for 1 hour.
You have actually asked two different questions:
- What is the fastest way to cook rice (duration)?
- What is the most energy efficient way to cook rice (least heating of your house)?
These are not the same thing.
Something to consider: of all liquid non-metals (and I don't think any of us are going to cook in molten iron), water has the the highest capacity to transfer heat.
It is going to be very difficult to find a way to cook rice that is faster (at least for actual time cooking the rice, when not counting bringing water to the boil) than the traditional pasta method, as often employed in some parts of India: Bring water to a boil, add the rice, cook until done, and drain. However, the energy required to bring all of the surplus water to the boil and the enthalpy of vaporization will make this fast, but not efficient.
Your most energy efficient rice production method (and this is by the very laws of physics which govern our universe is also the one that will add the least heat to your home) is almost certainly a rice cooker, which will heat only until it senses the rice is done. (Of course, what the rice cookers are really measuring is the rise in temperature when the water is all absorbed or evaporated, and so the temperature can rise; therefore, starting with the correct ratio of rice to water is critical).
The bottom line: brown rice takes time to cook. Some rice cookers, however, let you set a timer so that the pot will have the rice ready when you come home. This might be your best bet.
Best Answer
As @Jefromi says, there is no simple answer. Also depends on your definition of "cooked".
For water vs oil, most likely oil is more energy efficient. Frying a 16 oz steak takes only ~5/10 minutes, whereas boiling 16 oz of meat in water will take at least double that time, even if you use exact same pan and exact same stove. If you cut the meat more strategically, you can save some energy, which brings me to 2nd point.
The shape of the meat will have a big influence. For example, a 1 inch thick tenderloin will take considerably more energy to "cook" compared to 4 tenderloin steaks of quarter inch, assuming you can lay all 4 steaks in a pan together.
There is a saying that in ancient China, stove fuel was hard to come by, thats why they always used to cut the meat as thin as possible so that the dish finishes cooking fast with minimum stove-time. Don't know if its historically accurate, though :)