Category Archives: Meat

Beef, Canadian, Charcuterie, Meat, Québécoise

On Smoked Meat, Montreal, and the Gout

September 16, 2012 allansuddaby 5 Comments

I have a certain old friend. Technically we went to high school together, but I first got to know him in Lister Hall, then at the Kappa Alpha house on university row. He studied philosophy, and after graduation he followed a girl to Montreal. There he fell victim to many of the city’s seductions: strong beer, girls, and cocaine, yes, but above all these, smoked meat.

For a while he lived only a few blocks from Schwartz’s, that Mecca of Montreal smoked meat. For a while he ate there every day: a sandwich, a pickle, and a cherry coke.

Montreal smoked meat is that city’s answer to New York’s pastrami: beef, cured with a concoction of spices similar to those … Continue reading.

Bacon, Canadian, Charcuterie, Meat, Pork

Peameal Bacon

September 15, 2012 allansuddaby Leave a comment

It’s always confused me that Americans call back bacon “Canadian bacon,” when it’s much more associated with Britain than Canada. To my knowledge the only uniquely Canadian form of bacon is peameal bacon: cured pork loin rolled in ground split peas, which keeps the surface of the meat dry and inhibits microbial growth. Sometime over the past century cornmeal has taken the place of peameal, but the name hasn’t changed.

This week I made two forms of peameal bacon: the contemporary favourite – lean, centre-cut pork loin, fat trimmed down, brined and rolled in cornmeal – and a rustic recontruction, inspired by the fantastic book The Art of Living According to Joe Beef. I left an inch or two … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Meat, Pork

Smoked Pork Loin – Kassler Rippchen

August 30, 2012 allansuddaby Leave a comment

This is hands down my favourite preparation of pork loin: brine-cured, smoked, and sliced into thick ham chops.

While the eye of loin is a very lean, mild-tasting muscle, it is surrounded by large slabs of fat: fatback on top, and the streaky side meat that becomes bacon. Grilling or pan-frying a large pork chop with all this fat usually results in either overcooked meat or under-rendered fat. By slowly bringing this roast up to temperature over several hours in a smoker, we render all that fat without overcooking the meat. The final dish is somewhere between bacon and ham.

In Germany this preparation goes by the name Kassler Rippchen, which literally means “little ribs from Kassel”.

Details. Use … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Meat, Pork, Seasonal

A Fall Dinner, in August

August 26, 2012 allansuddaby 2 Comments

I had to doublecheck my calendar: it’s still August, isn’t it?

This past Saturday I stood on my deck, wearing a sweater, tending a barbecue that was puffing applewood smoke into the yard. Within the ‘cue was a cured pork loin. Within the house, on the kitchen counter, was a head of cabbage. Beside it, a jug of cider, weakly alcoholic, tart, sweet, faintly effervescent.

I have high hopes that there will be a few more weeks of heat, and a few more summer storms, but the last few days at my house have felt like fall.

A Fall Dinner, in August

Part One: Windfall Hard Cider (Lisa’s Special No. 8)

The cider was the inspiration, the centre of … Continue reading.

Meat, Poultry

Cutting Poultry

August 1, 2012 allansuddaby 2 Comments

The latest in the “Cutting Whole Animals” series on Button Soup: a general approach for cutting poultry.

The general skeletal and muscular structure is almost identical for all meat birds. Proportions of wing to breast to leg will vary, but the following procedure will work for chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and guinea hens, as well as game birds like pheasants, grouse, partridge, and so on.

This is a whole chicken. It’s from Four Whistle Farms. It weighs about 3 kg.

Removing the Legs

The legs pull easily from the body. You can see a good deal of loose skin between the leg and body.

Cut the skin and pull the leg farther from the body.

Bend the leg behind … Continue reading.

Meat, Pork

Crackling

July 14, 2012 allansuddaby 1 Comment

Crackling is pig skin, cooked so that it’s crisp. Since skin contains, and is often adjacent to, a good deal of fat, it benefits from a long, slow, rendering process, followed by a quick, high-heat crisping process.

You can form perfectly good crackling while cooking a skin-on pork roast, so long as the meat beneath the skin is a cut that also benefits from a long, slow cook. Pork head, shoulder, and hock come to mind. After the slow cook, raise the oven temperature to 425°F and bake until the skin becomes brittle, almost glass-like.

You can also cut the skin from the meat, then render and crisp it on its own. This yields a product more like commercial pork … Continue reading.

Meat, Pork

Rendering Lard and Making Grammeln

July 3, 2012 allansuddaby 8 Comments

I’ve rendered animal fat many times, but I recently learned that I was doing it wrong. Or rather, not in the most effective manner.

Rendering is the process of turning raw, fatty tissue from animals into pure fat. We render pieces of raw pork fat to get lard, and raw beef fat to get tallow. I used to quickly cut up, say, pork leaf lard, or beef suet, or duck breasts, then throw them in a pot over low heat and leave them for several hours. This works, but I was always surprised by the low yield.

My exploration of an improved rendering method began last summer, in Austria, while eating at a Heuriger. I was served light rye … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Meat, Sausages

A Survey of Commercial Sausage Additives

July 1, 2012 allansuddaby 3 Comments

Reading the ingredients list of an industrially-produced sausage can be daunting. We’ve been trained to mistrust “scientific sounding” ingredients, and there are ongoing discussions about the health risks associated with many common additives. I don’t wade into that debate too much in this post, partly because I know so little about it, but also because there are few reliable studies on the subject. The fields of nutrition and health are so tied up with industry that it’s hard to know what to believe. I’ll leave it for you to decide what ingredients are okay and which are not. In this post I simply describe the role the additive plays in the sausage-making process. Interestingly, most them are used to accelerate … Continue reading.

Austrian, Charcuterie, Meat, Pork

Alternative Pork Primals: Belly-Loin Combo

June 24, 2012 allansuddaby 3 Comments

I first learned the pork primals in culinary school, and for years I considered that information dogmatic. Then in an Austrian grocery store I saw this:

It’s called Carinthian farmer bacon (Kaerntner Bauernspeck). Carinthia is a province in southern Austria, known for its rustic food. It took me a few moments to realize where exactly this cut would have come from on a pig. It is in fact a pork loin, with the side or belly still attached, cured as one large piece, cold-smoked, and sold in thick slabs.

Novel cuts like this are just as easy to butcher as the classics. Following is a quick tutorial, with photos, to prove the point.

Here is a side … Continue reading.

Meat, Pork

Pork Cutting: Head

June 24, 2012 allansuddaby Leave a comment

So. This is the pig’s head. It is not a true primal cut, but deserves some special attention. I’ve written about a few preparations that involve cooking the head whole, either simmered to become headcheese, or roasted for its own simple enjoyment. This post will discuss cutting the raw head into its various constituents, namely the jowl and ear.

By far the largest piece of meat and fat on the head is the jowl. It is a gorgeous cut, very similar to bacon, though a bit fattier. I remove the jowl by following the jaw bone with my knife.

The meaty circle in the centre is the cheek muscle.

The main difficulty in dealing with the jowl is the … Continue reading.

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