Tourtière is made differently in every home, and can incite intense feelings of loyalty to ones mother. I will proceed cautiously with a definition, but I warn you: there are lots of qualifiers in this post.
Tourtière is meat pie. It is often based on pork, though veal and game are also common. If anyone tells you that it was traditionally made with pigeon, you can politely dismiss their story as folklore. A false etymology has developed because of the similarity between the words for the pie tourtière and the Quebecois word for the now-extinct passenger pigeon, tourte. Certainly many a pigeon has been baked into pie, but the similarity between the two words is entirely coincidental. Tourte also … Continue reading.
The theory behind trussing is that birds, in their natural, irregular shape, do not cook evenly: the slender, exposed limbs, the wings and the legs, cook faster than the breasts. This is true, no doubt, but the legs, made of dark meat, need to reach a higher temperature than the breasts to be cooked through. By leaving the legs un-trussed and exposed, they reach their higher finishing temperature at pretty much the same time as the breasts. For this reason the only thing I do to prepare a bird for roasting is bend the wingtips and tuck them behind the bird’s back.
At any rate, Thomas Keller holds trussing as a fundamental skill, so I … Continue reading.
Smoking meat is without exaggeration one of the most rewarding food experiences. The smell is bewitching, and the meat goes through a remarkable transformation in taste and colour. If you have a fire-pit or some type of wood-burning oven, you already have a smoker. Simply build a fire, let it burn down, then toss some hardwood twigs or wood chips onto the coals. This post is about some simple ways to use common backyard barbecues to smoke meat.
Most of the commercial smokers I’ve used suck. Especially the ones that come with little pucks of sawdust that are somehow bound together. The smoke produced by these pucks has a harsh, ashen quality reminiscent of cigarettes. The joke Mike and I … Continue reading.
This post is about the most expensive cuts on a side of beef: the standing rib, the striploin, the tenderloin, and t-bone and porterhouse steaks.
A Cow’s Skeletal Anatomy, Briefly…
The skull is connected to the neck, which connects to the backbone. At the front of the back bone are the shoulder bones that connect to the front legs. Farther down the backbone are the ribs. A cow has thirteen ribs. Backbones with ribs connected to them are called thoracic vertebrae. Between the rib cage and the hip is a section of backbone that has no ribs. These backbones are called lumbar vertebrae. Then there is the hip bone, which connects to the hind legs.
This is a forequarter of nouveau beef from Nature’s Green Acres. A side of beef is split into a forequarter and a hindquarter by cutting between the twelfth and thirteenth rib, which is the last rib.
Cutting beef is more complicated than cutting pork, and I find I sometimes lose my way and forget where I am and what piece of meat I’m looking at. To give you some idea of what we intend to accomplish in this post, here is a picture of the forequarter afterwards, broken into its subprimals.
The first cut I make is between the fifth and sixth ribs. At the top right of the picture below, above the backbone, is the standing rib … Continue reading.
Fried chicken should be eaten off the bone. Following is the classic way to break down a whole chicken into boney pieces that can be dredged and deep-fried. Traditionally there is a lot of cutting through the bones, which is fun but can leave little shards in the meat. I’ve cleaned up the method somewhat by separating at the joints where possible. Even so, I wouldn’t cut this way if I were feeding small children.
We start by removing the legs at the hip. Bend the leg backwards to expose the joint, then cut with a knife.
To separate the thigh and drumstick, bend the knee against it’s will until it snaps, then cut through the joint. These are the … Continue reading.
Pâté is fancy French meatloaf: it’s ground meat, bound with dairy, eggs, and bread. The only difference is that pâté usually contains some liver, and it’s usually eaten cold. If it’s baked in a special ceramic dish, it can be called a terrine.
Within that definition, there is a spectrum of pâtés that runs from rustic to refined. The two qualities that decide a pâté’s place on the spectrum are texture and ingredients. Rustic pâtés are coarser in texture and made with cheaper, heartier ingredients, like liver. They are often described by words like campagne (“country”), grandmère (“grandma”), and maison (“house”). Refined pâtés have a finer, creamier texture and feature meat more prominently than liver. … Continue reading.
I’ve given details on preparing tongue a couple times (here for buffalo, here for pork). This corned beef tongue was brined with curing salt and lots of pickling spice. As you can see in the picture, the tongue has some insanely thorough fat marbling. It actually looks a bit like Wagyu beef! Fantastic sandwich…
After this year’s Eat Alberta conference, I had a few people ask me about giving some kind of “advanced” sausage-making class. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert sausagemaker, but at Nomad I got to make them almost every week, so I picked up lots of tricks. I thought I’d compile some of those ideas in this post.
The following are notes on refining ingredients and techniques to better tailor your sausages to your liking.
Ingredients: The Meat and Fat
Every book on sausage-making says pretty much the same thing: use shoulder. Maybe jowl, maybe belly, and maybe a bit of trim from around the carcass, but shoulder is the undisputed sausage-making cut. The reasons are this:
This happened ages ago, back in September, and Kevin has long since posted a fantastic video about it, but I want to write about a pork butchery workshop that took place out in Sangudo, Alberta. The workshop was put together by Kevin Kossowan, and hosted by Jeff Senger of Sangudo Custom Meats. The day started with the killing and processing of one of Jeff’s own pigs. Since it was Saturday and there were no inspectors present, the kill took place on Jeff’s farm, then the pig was processed at Sangudo Meats. The day continued with a hands-on meat-cutting class, and finally some demonstrations of sausage-making and other charcuterie preparations. … Continue reading.
The personal website of Edmonton chef Allan Suddaby
Tourtière is made differently in every home, and can incite intense feelings of loyalty to ones mother. I will proceed cautiously with a definition, but I warn you: there are lots of qualifiers in this post.
This post is about the most expensive cuts on a side of beef: the standing rib, the striploin, the tenderloin, and t-bone and porterhouse steaks.
