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Meat Myths

Little knowledge is firsthand, especially of the internet variety.  Historical pithy quotes are especially notorious, and usually taken out of context, or lost in translation – then regurgitated with finality in an argument or rhetorical discussion, with the effect of all parties present concluding that their interlocutor is an idiot.  The conversation then ends, with the idiot now deluded into thinking their witty prose triumphant, when in reality the other parties are just choosing to disengage from an idiot.

But occasionally the idiot finds a like mind, and the quote spreads like chain mail, its original meaning lost until someone, finally, uncovers the primary text.  But by then it’s too late.  The false quote has entered public knowledge, even if factually incorrect, and continues to perpetuate.

See the Light

Cooking knowledge is not immune to “factual” misinformation.  So for the benefit of the internet, I’ve compiled a short list of common falsities that the internet’s puerile mind can digest.  Falsities I’ve seen repeated so frequently that they warrant callout, because they’ve intersected with my hobbies and I can give demonstrable firsthand knowledge.  Here they are:

  1. Smashing burger meat
  2. Cooking meat cold
  3. Flipping bacon

Burgers

First, the oft-repeated advice: “Never smash a cooking burger down with a spatula.”  The reasoning?  It makes the burger dry.

I think this advice originates from the declining quality of commercial grinds, wherein the fat is added after the fact to extruded lean beef.  This system makes fat content easy to measure and highly adjustable, but the fat isn’t part of the grind and, once heated, liquefies out and separates.  This makes it easy to push out with manual force, thus smashing burgers makes for dry burgers.

Add to this problem that commercial grinds hold most of their moisture as added water (rather than naturally within the cells), and any little pressure will rapidly dehydrate the end product.

The system by which grinds are “assembled” creates a patty whose meat, fat, and water content are only held together by the mixing process – and easily denatures with over-handling.  Thus, don’t smoosh it.

…Fuck Yeah!

A higher grind quality doesn’t suffer nearly as badly from these issues.  And in fact benefits from being smashed to intentionally dry it.

Also, not all cooking methods suffer the same problems.  Smash burgers are typically made on griddles at lower temperatures than grills.  The lower temperature prevents the meat from crisping as completely, and holds the excess fat and moisture within the burger due to the flat cooking surface, which further prevents crisping and makes for a greasy product.  Smashing a burger of quality grinds overcomes these limitations without over-drying, with the added bonus of making a cool flat diner patty.

I’d never smash a burger on a charcoal grill.  That would dry it out and cause flareups.  But it’s always better to take the smash approach when using my griddle or cast iron.

Of course, if you insist on buying cheap commercial grinds, then don’t smash your burger – fine.  But don’t say universally to never smash a burger under any circumstances.  That just tells your guests that you’re feeding them cheap meat and you don’t know how to cook.

Setting out meat

I find it especially amusing when I hear this one: “Meat should be room temperature before cooking.”  Ew.  Leave perishable food in the danger zone for hours?  The reasoning: even cooking.

Here’s why this is dumb:

  1. Uneven cooking is often desirable.
  2. Uneven cooking, when undesirable, is usually just the result of using too high a temperature.

Say I want something seared without overcooking it.  Consider again the humble burger.  How does one accomplish a crispy outer layer with a juicy interior?  Why, cook it cold of course!  I even partially freeze my burgers before they hit the grill.

And what about a roast?  I’m not leaving a 10lb turkey on the counter to hit room temperature.  And I’ve never seen a turkey recipe that calls for high heat.  The cold meat issue has never been an issue.  It’s been long figured out.  It’s okay to cook cold meat!

And consider smoking meat.  Starting cold lets the meat stay in the smoker longer.  So if you want really smoky smoked meat, no setting it out before cooking.

Flipping bacon

This one I just plain don’t get: “Only flip bacon once for even cooking.”  I don’t get it because it’s as incorrect as incorrect can be.  Unless you’re oven-cooking, which I think is blasphemous for my own reasons, pan-cooked bacon curls down, lifting the center of the slice.  The edges burn while the middle stays raw.  Constant flipping places the middle of the up side down, whereby the curling process repeats and is soon lifted, requiring another flip.

Maybe this advice came from oven bacon, or those who use a bacon press.  But whatever the reason, it’s now accepted as universal fact, and leads to burnt and raw bacon with the classic pan fry method.

Conclusion

Don’t blindly accept cooking advice.  It can lead to lackluster results, but more importantly it can be a food safety issue.  But most important of all, it can make you look like a real doofus.

–Simon

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Lilly pondered the plot of earth at her feet

Lilly pondered the plot of earth at her feet. The plants no longer bore the spotted blight that had destroyed the prior year’s crop. There were contingencies, of course, but she missed the potatoes. The soft golden variety had always been a favorite of her mother’s, with the churned creme and topping of the wild onions she was so fond of gathering.  The village had never grown domesticated onions, probably because they were more for seasoning than raw caloric fuel.  And Lilly had been on one of those foraging ventures when mother had gone missing. The town’s militia had mobilized a search, but no trace was ever found. Perhaps it was better that way. Without closure, there was hope.

But for now, the nostalgia of that simple potato recipe occupied Lilly’s consciousness. She bent down to examine the plant in greater detail, aware that her skin-tight blouse and short skirt (donned to cope with the day’s heat) was putting on a show for the young men in the field. But it was a small village, and reputations were eternal, so they pretended not to notice and turned a gentlemanly gaze back to their own crops. Inwardly, Lilly smiled. She enjoyed the attention.

Her cool exterior, however, was shattered when her shouldered rifle slipped out of place. She made a fumbled attempt to control it, but only managed to hook a forearm through the sling. The weapon crashed into the potatoes. She cursed, and inspected the damage. A snapped stem and some dislodged leaves. But potatoes were resilient to physical punishment, so it was a minor injury.

This was also why those working in the fields chose pistol weapon variants. But the rifle was her mother’s (mother was a much taller woman), and she stubbornly insisted on carrying it as her required small arm. Her father, recognizing his late wife’s stubbornness, had long since ceased to argue on the practicality. And besides, she was an exceptional aim with it, never having effectively wielded a pistol.  Why take what you can use?

One of the young men had made a move towards her after witnessing her momentary plight, but had aborted once determining his presence would be unnecessary. He resumed his work, hoeing weeds—efficient and practical sidearm holstered at the belt line on his back—practical and out of the way. He pretended not to notice Lilly’s glower as she examined his weapon choice. She sneered, and made a mocking assessment of his manhood through the obvious correlation.

Sensing the silent hostility, the man moved further down the row and resumed working.  The other men now too resumed, having reflexively flinched away from the dropped rifle’s aim and its inherent hazard to life and limb.

Lilly turned back to her own potatoes. This batch was starting to brown. It was about time to harvest. Prematurely, she dug her hands into the sun-hardened dirt and felt for a tuber. Successful, she severed it with her knife and withdrew a fist-sized potato. She smiled, examining its blight-free exterior, and became giddy in anticipation of the harvest pre-party. She would need to go on an onion search, but first she wanted to show father. He too would reminisce. He had also been deeply disheartened by the prior year’s failed crop, and appeared to have taken it be final confirmation his wife had indeed taken the Grey Path. This would raise his spirits.

She stood, shouldering the oversized rifle once again, and grabbed her linen bag. She placed the potato within, then shouldered it too. Off she marched, along the row, careful to avoid trampling any desirable plants, and quite successful through years of practice. The rifle almost comically hung to the back of her knee, but it too was a burden overcome through practice. A breeze sent her skirt fluttering and she smiled again, knowing her egress was being monitored.

Father was on the roof of their brick cottage, his own sidearm affixed to the hip.  It was bright yellow–old manufacture, from before, and not suited for outdoor combat. The last rainstorm had brought hail, and while the damage had been insignificant to the crops, the slate roof tiling had suffered casualties. He was carefully fitting squares, securing them with tar. It was hot and difficult work. And father was getting old. Lilly felt the need to point this out.

“The alternative is to enlist the help of someone younger, but for that, you’d have to make a friend.”  Father’s reply.

“I assume you mean one the local degenerates?”

“They won’t be young forever. Time mellows a man, and you’ll find them more to your liking once they get older. Perhaps you should go into town and meet some.”

Lilly grumbled.  He was at it again.  Father had never been overly-protective, in spite of events. But he was also never hesitant to suggest she consider starting her own family, not that he felt she wasn’t capable of solitary survival of course, but as he had often said, the world was a lonely place. He was right of course, and it was irritating.

She changed the subject. “The potatoes are almost ready.”  She withdrew the potato from her bag and held it aloft as if it were a sacred icon.

Father smiled. “It’s about that time of year, isn’t it?” He didn’t mean the time of harvest. He meant it was when mother had gone missing. It was why Lilly had brought home the potato a week early. It was the exact calendar week of that incident, though she hadn’t realized it consciously.

Lilly paused.  Father, knowingly, said nothing further, but didn’t avert his gaze, either. He had grown patient, and always waited for Lilly to finish her thoughts, even though at the moment, she wouldn’t. Gradually, his stare softened.

“I have some fresh milk.”  He, too, had thought of the potatoes this week, and had bought what they didn’t normally keep in-house.

Both knew where the conversation would go next, but father made Lilly say it anyway. “I have to go get another ingredient…” Father silently interjected, but the words failed him. He meant to protest, but made no motion to stop her, eventually yielding with a simple nod before breaking eye contact and resuming placing shingles.  The woods had never been welcoming.

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An old man sat on a log with a fishing pole

An old man sat on a log with a fishing pole.  The ravages of arthritis plaguing his stiffening joints, he attempted repeatedly to replicate the fishing knot he had tied thousands of times before.  The rabbit went through the hole twice, then around the tree half a dozen times or so, then…through a hole in the tree?  It was there that the metaphor always faltered, and he chuckled at both failures–the metaphor and his manual dexterity.

The log on which he sat was, in a former life a tree no doubt, though the old man failed to recollect the moment in which it had passed between its states of existence.  Many a times had he explored these woods; hunted here, practiced marksmanship, forestry, horticulture…fishing.  The present embankment was in fact well-known to him, as it had escaped both time and the erosive forces which normally accompanied waterside terrain.  With its calm and clear waters, shaded by the overhanging canopy, it had always been an ideal fishing spot.  Fishing–the clichéd pastime of the aging man.

Finally succeeding at the rabbit–hole–tree routine, he concentrated now on the knot-tightening.  It was the more difficult step in the process, as it required a three-point tension be applied in a precise manner, else the knot culminate in a Gordian tangle of synthetic fibers rather than the exacting coil of tensile strength its perfected design predicated.  The hook, the line, and the loop (the hole in the tree): a trinity.  The old man had long ago learned it was far easier and safer to embed the hook in a fixed object whilst applying the required tension, as it had an unpleasant tendency to instead embed itself in the skin of the man holding it.  But on this day, perhaps as a challenge to the universe which granted him the arthritis, he instead held the hook, which promptly slipped and embedded itself in his thumb.  The old man laughed at his own expense, extracted the hook, completed the knot, noted the bead of blood which now welled up from ancient tissue, and took solace in his observation that the knot was indeed tied properly.  He skewered a worm and cast it into the upstream side of the deeper waters, still in the shade–a spot most likely to garner attention from the water’s ichthyoid inhabitants.  Clicking the reel to its locked position, he gazed toward the sky and its waning light.

The land on which he now sat had belonged to his family for generations, but was now defunct.  Even if it had still been producing, its value alone rendered it pointless to maintain.  No new generation would tend crops here.  Crops themselves were semantic.  No, the youth of this day would seek its place out there.  And the old man held fast his lingering gaze.

At present he stood, with no small force of willpower required.  His failing hearing might ordinarily have precluded the ability to perceive the approach, but it was a clear evening.  They were coming for him, yet still a ways off.  They would again appeal to his logic, but their logic was that of youth.  A man’s greatest fear is obsolescence, yet it was also his greatest ambition.  To no longer be needed in any function was a great achievement.  And besides, he was far too old to travel.

He glanced now again at the water.  It seemed so serene in its stillness.  Less like water than a dark mirror.  And he had always fancied swimming.  Another adventure would always remain, and he had no intention of answering the summons of the approaching figure.

He set down his fishing pole and smiled one more time.