Most meat needs a certain amount of fat in it to prevent it from drying out during cooking. Barbeque connoisseurs will never look for lean steaks; they look for steaks with good marbling. Barding is a fancy word for a technique you probably already practise. You tie a piece of fat, such as suet or…
Meat
Blessed Thomas Bellacci
Thomas Bellacci, a patron saint of butchers, was a butcher’s son. Despite being a Patron of Butchers, he himself in later life ate only bread, root vegetables, and water.
Collop Monday
Collop Monday is two days before Ash Wednesday. It is a day to use up any meat in the fridge, serving it in thick slices called “collops.”
Collops
Collop is an older English word that means “slice”. It’s typical applied to meat, most often bacon.
Curing
Curing, whether done to meat or olives, means treating something with salt to help preserve it. When curing meat or fish, the salt draws the moisture out, leaving bacteria less moisture to grow on. It also penetrates the meat, making an inhospitable environment for bacteria. Curing must be done in coolish places or the meat…
Dredging
Dredging is coating something, usually meat, with a flour before browning the item. The purpose of dredging is to make a meat’s surface a more attractive brown colour, and to create flavourful carmelized [1] flour bits in the pan that can be used in making a thick sauce through deglazing. It’s a myth that it…
French Trimmed
French trim is a decorative preparation method done to meats, so that a bone protrudes from it. Often fancy paper frills are placed on the bone for serving aesthetics. To make a French trim, fat, meat or skin is cut away to expose a piece of bone, so that it sticks out. It also means…
Galantine
Galantine is a way of preparing and presenting meat. It is meat (fowl or other), or fish, that is boned, flattened, then has a layer of stuffing put on top of it, then it’s rolled up like a Swiss roll (aka jelly roll) and poached. Often it’s wrapped in cheesecloth before poaching to hold it…
Jacquarding
Jacquarding (aka Needling) is a mechanical way of tenderizing meat (as opposed to tenderizing it “chemically” with a marinade.) Commercially, Jacquarding is done with machines called “Jacardi.” Meat is passed through rollers with needles on them. The idea is that the needles pierce and break up the connective tissue in the meat, making it kind…
Larding
Larding is the cooking technique of inserting strips or pieces of fat into a piece of meat that doesn’t have much fat of its own. Fat is important in cooking, as it melts and keeps the meat from drying out. It’s a myth that braising or even boiling meat will keep meat moist. There was…
Meat Cooking Techniques
Meat Cooking Techniques © Denzil Green Meat can be cooked by moist heat or dry heat. What method is used will depend on what type of meat it is, what part of the animal it is from, and what the desired taste and appearance outcome are for the dish being prepared. Moist heat cooking methods…
Meat Tenderization Techniques
The best way of tenderizing meat is still to attack it physically. The most extreme method, grinding, will shred all the muscle tissue into tiny bits. This is what makes tough cuts of beef into tender minced beef. Pounding will also break down muscle tissue, but it is really only good for thin cuts. The…
Meatloaf
Meatloaf © Denzil Green Poor Meatloaves — who ever thinks to take pictures of them? When was the last time you saw one featured in a four-page food magazine spread-out? Meatloaf is ground meat, with a binder such as egg and a starch such as bread or cracker crumbs, along with chopped vegetable and seasonings,…
Pâté
Pâté is a ground meat or fish mixture, similar to forcemeat and meatloaf. It is highly flavoured, and often made in layers. Mousse ones are made from liver or fish, and are very rich. They are often topped with a layer of aspic, which has a decorative function, plus a more important one of giving…
Safe Cooking Temperatures
Safe cooking temperatures are the minimum temperatures that you are advised to cook meat to in order to ensure that it is safe to eat. Here are some absolute base minimums that lab results have show researchers will kill nasties. Beef130°F54°CEggs140°F60°CLamb and Seafood140°F60°CPork150°F66°CPoultry and Stuffing165°F74°C The temperatures that Health Authorities give out are almost always…
Searing Meat
Searing Meat gained popularity with a theory originally put forward by Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, in a book he published in 1847. Von Liebig believed that he had proven that searing meat creates a “crust” on the surface of the meat which would keep juices in. Auguste Escoffier, a French food writer, believed…
Self-Basting
Self-basting is an expression used to describe a piece of meat that has been prepared or cooked in such a way as to negate the need for basting. Normally the meat is fowl, particularly turkey, which in consumers’ minds is renowned for being dry. The self-basting turkeys at stores are injected with mixtures of broth,…
Smoking
Smoking meats and fish is a way of flavouring them, or helping to preserve them, or both. The meat or fish is first cured in salt, either “dry-cured” by having salt rubbed into it and let stand, or “wet-cured” in a brine. The salting before smoking is necessary because the meat or fish will have…
St Anthony’s Day
The 17th of January is the Feast Day of St Anthony of Egypt the Patron Saint of Butchers. He is often depicted with a pig at his side.
Stuffing
Stuffing is a mixture which is used to fill the insides of poultry, rolled-up meat, fish, seafood or vegetables. In British, Irish and North American tradition, stuffing is usually based on white bread (stuffing was the default use for stale bread), usually includes onions and herbs such as sage for seasoning, and can include meat,…
Tumbling
Solid meat (as opposed to hamburger or sausage meat) is placed into a mechanical tumbler along with a cold, seasoned liquid such as brine or crushed ice. The liquid needs to be cold to keep the meat at a safe temperature. The Tumbler is a drum that rotates slowly, about 10 to 12 rpm. Often…