Posted by Robyn Lee, May 5, 2008 at 7:30 PM
If you went to yesterday's Cinco de Mayo street fair in New York City's Harlem like Olia, you may have been face-to-face with this massive rotating tower of al pastor, or marinated rotisserie pork. Aside from feasting on tacos al pastor, Olia ate many other delicious Mexican foodstuffs that make me feel like a failure for having spent my whole Sunday doing laundry and catching up on work.
Related
Photo of the Day: Just A Humongous Bucket Of Eggs And Meat
Photo of the Day: Meaaat Whoaa
Photo of the Day: Lechon
Posted by Raphael, April 21, 2008 at 10:30 AM
In vitro meat: is it meat? PETA is set to announce on Monday a $1 million prize to the "first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012." The decision caused a "near civil war" within the organization "since so many PETA members are repulsed by the thought of eating animal tissue, even if no animals are killed."
Previously
The Meat of Tomorrow
'Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow' at the Museum of Modern Art
Posted by Raphael, April 13, 2008 at 1:00 PM
Wired covers a three-day meeting of the In Vitro Meat Consortium in Ås, Norway, detailing the possibility of test tube meat. Cheaper to produce and more environmentally friendly, in vitro meat production may arrive in grocery stores within 5 to 10 years:
"The general consensus is that minced meat or ground meat products -- sausage, chicken nuggets, hamburgers -- those are within technical reach. We have the technology to make those things at scale with existing technology."
The New York Times' Dot Earth blog also covers the meeting:
A paper presented at the meeting concluded that, for the moment, the costs of cultured meat can’t come close yet to competing with, say, unsubsidized chicken. The paper noted the reality of the climb up the protein ladder as countries move out of poverty, with global meat consumption at about 270 million metric tons in 2007 and growing at about 4.7 million tons per year.
Posted by Erin Zimmer, April 4, 2008 at 11:30 AM
After a sweaty workout, don't you just wanna reach for that refreshing bottle of liquefied Hungarian Goulash? When the fruity flavors get old, this chunk-less papriky stew should do the trick. Though authentic gulyás recipes call for water, this seems a bit excessive. If you're more of a liquid bread crumbs person, Meat Water also has an energizing Weiner Schnitzel formula. (No cutlery necessary)
Posted by Robyn Lee, April 3, 2008 at 6:00 PM
"When I was a kid, this whole field was lush with beautiful green trees and grass."
"Yeup."
"And now there's that...what is that?"
Continue reading »
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 27, 2008 at 12:45 PM
Your favorite cereals reimagined as meat cereals, from webcomic xkcd. I'd be all over those pork loops.
Previously:
'F*** Grapefruit'
Pork: It's the Meat Of Kings
Pork Recipes
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 18, 2008 at 12:00 PM
The Estonian meat industry of the 1980s entices you to indulge in bounteous quantities of ground chicken by chanting, "Kana, kana, kana, hakkliha" ("Chicken, chicken, chicken minced meat") alongside nightmare-inducing clips of ground chicken slowly flowing out of a meat grinder and women eating deep-fried ground chicken lumps.
After the jump, prepare to have your salivary glands tingle with unease.
Continue reading »
Posted by Robyn Lee, March 14, 2008 at 3:15 PM
It's not as popular as football, but it's just as competitive—the Wall Street Journal profiles the 82 year-old world of intercollegiate meat judging. This year, about 40 colleges will compete in six competitions, leading up to a final competition in November in Dakota City, Nebraska. What do students do at these competitions? They "spend most of a day staring at whole and dismembered carcasses. They score meat quality, leanness and butchering technique in detail; then, meat experts grade their work." [via MetaFilter]
Posted by Raphael, March 3, 2008 at 11:30 AM
Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow, James King
On display as part of the Museum of Modern Art's Design and the Plastic Mind exhibit is a piece by James King called "Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow." This exhibit explores the technique that allows edible meat to be grown in a laboratory from sample cells. King discusses the process and what this meat might look and taste like:
"A mobile magnetic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit scours the countryside looking for the most beautiful examples of livestock. The elected specimen is scanned from head to toe, and accurate cross-sectional images of it inner organs are generated... to create molds for the in vitro meat. We... might still want to re-create a familiar shape to better remind us where the 'artificial' meat came from."
Posted by Robyn Lee, February 19, 2008 at 12:45 PM
Los Angeles-based artist Victoria Reynolds specializes in painting detailed pictures of meat. When have viscera ever looked so beautiful? You can view and buy her paintings at Richard Heller Gallery (the above bacon painting is $5,000 if you're interested) and read more about her at Señor Enrique. [via bb]
Posted by Ed Levine, January 28, 2008 at 7:39 AM
Mark Bittman had a remarkable piece in the New York Times yesterday about the true costs associated with all the meat we consume. According to Bittman, growing more industrialized meat, growing the feed the associated animals eat, and eating the resulting animal flesh, are collectively having dire consequences on the environment and our health. Bittman's story even gave a passionate, enthusiastic carnivore like me pause, and that's saying something. Bittman makes a compelling case for eating less meat, which of course people like Michael Pollan have been advocating for some time now.
I've been eating less meat on my diet, and I must admit I feel better. I don't miss the meat "hangover" that I used to get after polishing off a steak. Last night I went out for my birthday and brought home half the portion of delicious pork I was served at my favorite neighborhood restaurant.
Here are a couple of eye-opening lines from the story:
Continue reading »
Posted by Raphael, January 27, 2008 at 10:30 AM
Both a vegetarian's nightmare and meat lover's dream: bacon, sausages, ground pork, and hot dogs, all formed into a pirate ship.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, January 1, 2008 at 3:00 PM
I like to think I'm serious about food, but every so often, someone or something comes along to make me question the extent of my devotion. Like when a friend returned to the States from a trip home to Singapore, toting three pounds of bak kwa (Chinese barbeque pork). Stopped at customs and threatened with confiscation and destruction, he said, "I need a minute," before proceeding to eat his entire booty of pig.
Continue reading »
Posted by Robyn Lee, December 6, 2007 at 8:00 PM
In photographer Alex Lucka's series "Food & Beauty," models' faces are embellished with different kinds of meats. Now you have new uses for that salmon steak and ham you have lying around.
If the world were made of meat, it might look like this ad campaign from Negroni, a processed meat company based in Italy, portraying a world where one can frolic through snow covered valleys made of mortadella and walk on roads of salami. [via notcot.org]
Posted by Ed Levine, August 23, 2007 at 8:05 AM
Here's the Beef: Prime steaks age in Master Purveyors' dry-aging room. From Adam Kuban's trip to the meat supplier.
The Serious Eats Steak Grilling Quiz:
Rib-eye, sirloin, or filet?
Bone in or out?
Prime or choice?
Dry- or wet-aged?
Weber Kettle or fancy-pants grill?
Charcoal or gas?
Salt and pepper or spice rub?
Eyeball, finger, or instant-read thermometer for telling when a steak is done?
So many questions to answer about grilled steak, so little time to do so with summer fleeting fast.
Mark Bittman gave his usual minimalist, reductive take on grilling steak in the New York Times, and he did end up answering many of the questions posed above. But since I had grilled a three-inch thick bone-in rib eye on Tuesday night, right before his story appeared, I did not have the benefit of his wisdom or yours when I wrestled with my hunk of red meat.
Continue reading »
Posted by Robyn Lee, June 26, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Check out The Food Section's interview with plush meat creator Lauren Fleischer for a glimpse into the mind behind plush meat superstore, Sweet Meats. Why does she think people like plush meat so much?
Meat, especially red meat and pork, is often seen as a vice these days and people love to be subversive. There's also an instinctual, biological urge to grab a piece of meat. Meat is one of those foods, like chocolate, that people have intense cravings for and of which they will go out of their way to find the best piece, unlike, say, milk or cabbage. Also, cuddling up to something that is normally bloody and cold is pretty funny.
My reason for wanting to cuddle a squishy pork chop is mostly the last one, but her other reasons make sense too. Go to Sweet Meats to get your own huggable pork chop, t-bone, rack of ribs, links, ham bone, or even vegetarian-friendly block of tofu.
Posted by Robyn Lee, June 12, 2007 at 1:00 PM
The newly launched Meatpaper is not actually paper made of meat, but a quarterly magazine composed of writings and art dedicated to edible animal flesh without taking the stance of being pro- or anti-meat.
Meatpaper is an investigation into what we see as a growing cultural trend of meat consciousness. It explores a category of food that inspires intense emotions and reactions. Meatpaper is about meat as a provocative cultural symbol and phenomenon....
Meat isn’t a straightforward or neutral topic. In conversation it tends to ruffle feathers and provoke debate. We hope you’ll join in.
Join the meat fray, read articles, or subscribe to the magazine at meatpaper.com.
Posted by Adam Kuban, May 16, 2007 at 5:50 PM
If you want to talk about the importance of knowing where the ingredients you cook with come from, it turns out that at the restaurants owned by David Burke, all the steaks are from cows sired by a bull named Prime that he bought in 2005: "The purchase made perfect business sense, he said, because by breeding the same bull, the restaurant guarantees its steaks are of the highest quality. 'We bought his genes, basically,' said Burke, whose customers tell him his steaks are the best they've ever eaten."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, May 4, 2007 at 12:45 PM
Donald Trump, billionaire, owner* of the world's most famous combover, and now purveyor of over-priced meats? He recently launched his latest venture, Trump Steaks, selling USDA Prime Certified Angus Beef filet mignon, New York strip, rib eye, porterhouse, and steak burgers, to be distributed exclusively through his website and, as Grub Street said, the "appropriately eighties" Sharper Image. The meats are packaged in four collections: Classic, the cheapest, includes four steaks and twelve burgers, and costs $199; the priciest is Connoisseur, which has sixteen steaks, twenty-four burgers and will set you back a whopping $999—and that's before shipping, which is presumably not free.
Trump touts the fact that his steaks are "selected so that their beef meets nine additional quality standards not even required of USDA Prime" (which, by the way, is not that great) but doesn't say what these nine standards actually are, and says they're "aged to perfection" without saying how long they're aged for and by what method, wet or dry—you know, the little details that people who are serious about their meat would care about. I enjoy your hair, Mr Trump, but I'm staying away from your steaks.
* Or should that be "perpetrator"?
Posted by Lia Bulaong, May 2, 2007 at 9:00 AM
The food writer Nigel Slater says he feels that killing animals to eat them is wrong and wants desperately to be a vegetarian, but confesses that "I eat meat because I like it. No, scratch that. I eat meat because I love it. I like the feel of it in my hand, the way my carving knife slices through the raw flesh, the smell of it crackling and spitting in the oven. I love the way the fat crisps and the flesh stays pink and bloody, the way the juices dribble out when I carve it, the way the Yorkshire pudding soaks up the beefy gravy from my plate. My love of roast pork and its crackling, and of the potatoes that roast in its juices, of a glossy, sticky sausage at breakfast or a grilled lamb cutlet in my fingers, always gets the upper hand."
I can't remember the last time someone's guilt made me so hungry!
Photograph from iStockPhoto.com
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 27, 2007 at 6:28 PM
My friend Rion Nakaya is an amazing photographer who now lives in Paris and takes train rides across the continent for short weekend trips, just like a good European. This photograph is from a set she put up recently of the wares on display at Bilbao's Riverside Meat Market; I love this photo in particular because most of us are so disconnected from the realities of what we eat, with supermarket aisles full of plastic-wrapped ground beef and freezers packed with boxed chicken nuggets, and this shopkeeper's display leaves you no choice but to consider that yes, your pork chops came from an actual animal because here is its head right in front of you. It's both real and beautiful.
Previously: The Fish Vendors of Bilbao's Riverside Market
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 12, 2007 at 8:27 AM
In yesterday's T Style Magazine, Oliver Schwaner-Albright says "the meat slicer could be the first appliance to earn a place on the kitchen counter since the espresso machine. That’s because American artisans are no longer hiding the salumi — Italian for cured meats. The process by which cuts of meat, usually pork, are salted and aged in a place that’s cool, dark and drafty, like a mountain cave (the traditional method) or a well-ventilated meat locker (the Food and Drug Administration’s preference), is now being mastered on these shores." Prosciutto we all know by now, but he also discusses seven other kinds of salumi—bresaeola, coppa, lardo, mortadella, salame, soppressata, and speck—as well as where you can find them online.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 9, 2007 at 6:01 PM
Johnny from Popgadget discusses how beef with a pedigree could make us safer: "TraceBack is a new system for DNA testing cattle and swine, and then recording the movements of the butchered meat. A butcher would be able to take a small sample of beef and cross-reference the DNA against an IdentiGEN database to verify that the meat is from a healthy animal." Alternately, health departments can use TraceBack to identify the source of contamination during outbreaks, from the point of sale all the way back to the farm and to which particular animal was sick.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 1, 2007 at 7:42 AM
If you've ever wondered which part of the pig your favorite cut of pork comes from, thank Wikipedia user GameKeeper for working up diagrams of both the British and American common cuts of pork, as described in Larousse Gastronomique. Personally, nothing comes close to the pork belly. Mmmm, delicious bacon.
Posted by Alaina Browne, January 18, 2007 at 4:19 PM
At the Carnivore Project, meaty thugs battle it out, tournament style: "The tournament will be a series of one-on-one (meato-y-meato) match-ups. Each dish has a champion, who will talk about their meat and explain why it deserves to be the Ultimate Meat. The viewing public will then decide which dish is worthier, by means of a vote."
Round 1 has begun. Serious Eats site A Hamburger Today takes up the gauntlet (against lamb) for what else?
