Monday, May 12, 2014

s. Meat and Poultry





For most world cultures, meat is the most satisfying food and its consumption correlates directly with wealth and power. Humans naturally crave meat and only moral or environmental reasons can minimize its consumption

Most of the guests you have invited for a festive dinner are unconsciously expecting that the main dish will be some kind of meat or poultry. Recipes for these dishes provide the essential part of most cookbooks. 




Meat and poultry have been globalized and industrialized the world over. Most people buy their meat at the supermarket where it is cheaper and “good enough.”

The relentless cost cutting needed to satisfy this price tropism has led to all kinds of dubious practices with an overuse of hormones, antibiotics, corn and corn derivatives and even protein-based diets.

We all know that a high fat content makes the best, most tender, most delicious meat. But fat does not sell, and the industry has tended to move to leaner, tougher, less tasty meat that health experts can condone more readily. As always, there is a fine line to walk between pleasure and risk, and no free lunch.

On the positive side, in the US as well as in Europe, we have seen the development of premium segments, from grass-fed to organic, allowing us to eat less of a much better meat for the same budget. In France, you can still find the old style of small, high quality butcher shops. In the rich Bay area of the US, there are enough interested customers and enough devoted cattle and poultry farmers to support the growth of new “boutique” butcher shops. 
Meat lends itself to numerous cooking techniques, most of them designed to reach the internal temperature at which we customarily say the meat is cooked, increase the aromas either through the way the meat itself cooks or the way it is permeated by other components of the dish and maximize the visual and gustatory effects of browning (the Maillard reaction, which we also relish in many other food types. See Odds and Ends). (1)

For fast cooking methods, used for the most tender meats, the outside of the piece is always higher in temperature than the inside and cooks have to find the right balance between a cooked, moist interior and an exterior that has not dried out too much and started losing some of its flavor. 

Long cooking techniques are adapted for tougher cuts that will benefit from that process and become more moist and tender in the end.
Spit-roasting i.e. regularly exposing every part of a piece of meat to radiant heat until fully cooked, was the first obvious and basic way to cook meat or birds before we invented new improved techniques and it is still a wonderful way to extract the best taste of most meat cuts.

In terms of flavorful results and pure cooking enjoyment as well, spit-roasting is unmatched. It can work for squab as well as a pork roast… or a full cow! However it is not adapted to our urban lifestyle. It requires space, time (cooking a chicken may take an hour and a half, but cooking a lamb may take 4 or 5 hours) and commitment.

It can still be done if you have a large fireplace and if you accept the unavoidable mess which goes with using it. Actually, it offers the health advantage over grilling in that the heat source is on the side. Thus the fat spilling out from the meat does not drip on embers, creating harmful carcinogens. (2)

Grilling, over an open barbecue or an open fire is much easier, but you should be attentive to the medium you use. Natural fruit tree wood embers are better than natural charcoal, itself better than most briquettes (follow what your nose tells you on the chemical smells that accompany the starting process).

Meat being static and close to the fire or embers, you have a higher risk of burning your meat, creating these blackened bitter-tasting carcinogen-laced sections that, unfortunately, too many people seem to relish! 

Are there any instructions to do it right? Brillat-Savarin famously wrote that “you can become a sauce-maker, but roasting experts are born.” By this, he meant that, beyond experience, you must be gifted for this activity, intuitively know how much time has elapsed since you checked last, appreciate the visual and tactile changes in the meat, and what is still needed before completion, manage the distance from the fire or rekindle it to accelerate. Only experience, passion and confidence can help you with that. And once you know, you will know forever. 



Using an oven to roast your meat is going to be much faster and can deliver appetizing results, though not as perfect as a spit-roast for the balance between a nicely browned appetizing outside and a juicy, moist inside.

With experience, you will choose your favorite balance between time and temperature which might be different for different types of meat. Poultry presents another difficulty as white meat cooks faster than thighs: You will either have to protect the breast with aluminum foil after a while or to detach the thighs from the body slightly so that all sides are exposed to heat. Some oven roasting can be quite long on low heat if you are looking primarily for tenderness, for a turkey, for example, or the famed “Gigot de 7 heures”, a leg of lamb which will melt in your mouth 7 hours later if you have the patience for that. 

Oven-roasted meat and poultry can be served with different vegetable accompaniments, from string beans to potatoes to a zucchini/tomato tian.
This is probably the most frequently used method for quickly cooking meat, whether it is a tender sirloin steak or chicken legs. It offers a very efficient heat transfer and allows Maillard browning to take place. 
Stewing is adapted for most tough meat cuts but also for chicken which can be safely overcooked. In this process, after a quick browning, cooking is switched to low heat, in general in the same pot, with some vegetables and most of the time some liquid (wine or stock) added. This type of cooking may take more time overall but requires less attention and leads to appetizing flavor exchanges and sometimes entirely new tastes which you will want to share with friends. (3)

A stew will be a meal in itself with the addition of white rice, pasta, or some other complementary cereal. 





(1)    Again, the underlying chemical and physical processes associated with cooking different kinds of meat (and fish) are extensively described by Harold McGee in his book, On Food and Cooking. 
(2)    This would not go well in most of the kitchens you see in architectural magazines, which look so sleek and clean that only microwaving can be allowed.
(3)    Most stews use white wine or some variation. Red wine confers its specific flavor on two famous French stews, Boeuf Bourguignon and Coq au Vin.

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