Meata America

Man’s quest to be the biggest, strongest, and fastest has led us to behold some pretty amazing things. Tonight, I was doing my usual google searches for some pretty random thing; alternative bacon usage, beef facts, masters of meat (don’t do this one at work!) and so on.  Well, I decided to search worlds largest hamburgers, and let’s just say, things got a little weird. I found this video on CBS of some dude that spent 4 months making/planning the worlds largest hamburger.  Not only will you live forever in our hearts, and I mean that in the literal sense, with clogged arteries and such, but you will go down in the history books.

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There are few things that make me cry. The last part of Rudy……ok, really just that.  BUT, this little slice of heaven really gets the waterworks-a-flowing!  It’s basically a manag a trios (however you spell it) between every type of pork on the open market.  The only thing that’s missing is a BBQ sauce IV Drip.

Let me introduce the players.  All you have to do is go to the closest grocery store and buy everything that has pork in it.  Pork Back, Hot Dogs, Bacon….the list goes on, but you get the idea.

The next steps I’ll skip but what you wanna do is form the pork into a pig-like shape.  Once you have a rough swine like subject, you wrap the whole thing in bacon.  WONDERFUL!

Once you have formed the pig and wrapped it in bacon, you toss that little piggy into the last market it’s ever gonna see.  Cook it until it’s safe to eat (which technically is right away, because I’m pretty sure you can eat pork raw, right?) Take it out of the oven, and get a stick to keep the women off of you.

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I’m sure by now we have all seen that super yuppy talking about his business card is the BEST BUSINESS CARD IN THE WORLD!  Well, you Patrick Bateman wannabe douche nozzle, your BEST BUSINESS CARD IN THE WORLD has been taken down a peg.  There’s a new player on the court, and this one brings the heat meat!

It’s not Die Cut, it is not Foil Stamped, it’s not anything other than pure USDA Beef Jerky!

I love beef jerky, and I love when people give me things.  So why not combine the two? Brilliant!

There is a massive paradigm shift in the business card world, and the forerunner is sweet sweet beef jerky!!!!!!!  Thank you god!

**Below is an artist rendering of what this guy should be touting!

Here is what he would say

You see that card?  It is THE most delicious business card I have ever seen. It’s mine.  It took me 24 hours to cook this.  This card is expensive, about $4 a card, because of the quality of beef.  It doesn’t fit in a roladex, because beef jerky doesn’t go in a roladex.  It’s the kind of thing where your card should be so delicious if they don’t like you, they’ll at least eat your business card. Because it demonstrates incredible dehydration capability.  Life is not about being liked, it’s about eating beef jerky.  My card is made of beef.  My card is dehydrated.  My card is teriyaki flavored.  Beef Jerky Guarenteed, your kidding? My card, instead of telling you I’m a CEO, because who care about my title, is FREAKING MADE OF BEEF JERKY!!!! I make cards out of beef jerky! GUARANTEED! WHAT DO YOU DO GUARANTEED?!?!?!?!?!

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That’s right my fellow meatatarians.  It’s friday night and instead of going out to a bar, or taking a beautiful woman on a date, I decided to stay in and work on my meat blog!  What the hell happened to my life?!?!

Ok, back to the topic at hand.   I’ve got some sweet new threads available at my cafepress store.  So go buy some stuff and help me pay my electric bill for god’s sake!!!!!!!!!

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When you’re hungry things can be complicated. You know you want to eat, but don’t know what to eat, and you can’t make up your mind because you’re blood sugar’s gone down the Marianas trench. We’ll worry no more with the handy and ALWAYS APPLICABLE UNDER EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE Bacon Flowchart.

Yeah, you’re like SERIOUSLY welcome.

[via ilovepork.wordpress.com and flickr.com]

Bacon Bacon, choice, decision, flow chart, flowchart, hungry, indecision, instructions, meata, meata america

I don’t have a lot of condiment packets lying around, but if I did, I’d be tempted to try this recipe for pulled pork: Condiments Packet Pulled Pork. (Sounds like this woman is all set: The Condiment Packet Problem.) I’d also maybe add some red pepper flakes and/or garlic or something — whatever spices are on hand, I suppose — to give it a little extra oomph.

The whole concept reminds me of the 99¢ Only Stores Cookbook…and while I don’t have a copy of the book in front of me, nothing I saw online indicated there are any meat recipes in it (which is not to say you couldn’t find good ingredients for a marinade at the dollar store…the cookbook Web site has images of ketchup, capers, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and diced jalapenos — so I’d imagine an innovative marinader could come up with something).

I was trying to dig around for other recipes using condiment packages, but didn’t find a lot. There’s a chicken wrap for backpackers and a copycat version of Church’s chicken.

And, not surprisingly, good ol’ Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee has a (sort of) condiment package-y recipe for a burger. (And I can’t mention Sandy without also paying homage to that infamous Kwanzaa cake: Sandra Lee’s Kwanzaa Cake.)

But what was perhaps *most* interesting to me about my condiment search was uncovering the Condiment Package Museum. (I really like that one of the reasons he says you should send him packets is because it will absolutely make his day.)

And…perhaps most useful to meat fans is this whole other kind of packet that makes grilling a snap. Which is timely, no?

Beef, Chicken, Grilled, pork

Ok, so we all know that the brits are a little on the odd side when it comes to their dietary delights.  But this site really brings a cholesterol laden tear to my eye!  The site is dedicated to alternative meats.  So you can get Haggis, Crocodile, Caribou, and a load of other weird and random meats!  If someone wants to pony up £7.50 to get me and ostrich egg, I’d be more than happy to eat it!  I’m thinking about making a Ostrich Omelet.  I hear it can feed like 6 people or something crazy like that!

But the site is definitely worth checking out!  It’s awesome!

Bacon, Beef, Chicken, Fish, Lamb, Steak, pork

Two days ago I wrote a post about the BA-K-47, a replica of the assault rifle AK-47 made entirely out of bacon & wire, and toasted to perfection by the use of a blowtorch. But if only the creators of that had known about Popular Science writer Theodore Grey’s latest experiment, they could have encorporated a level of bacon complexity and technology that would have made the official Science Pig proud.

Grey constructed a variation on a “thermal lance”, a device that usually is constructed by pumping pure oxygen into a nozzle filled with iron and magnesium that ignite a high temperatures super-heating the flame, and is commonly used to slice thru scrap metal. However this time, Grey used proscuitto (a Italian variation in itself on bacon) to create a channeled grease fire at the tip of the lance, instead of flammable metal. Would it work? was question one. Would it then cut thru a metal plate? was question two. See the badass results below:

Thanks to [PopularScience.com, BaconToday.com, and @lisalacy for the info.]

Bacon Bacon, bacon blowtorch, blowtorch, meata, meata america, popular science, thermal lance

My mother is the kind of woman who caught an 80-pound halibut on a chartered fishing trip once and who flew to LA from Fairbanks, Alaska on a whim to adopt a failed show cat. So…nothing she says surprises me anymore.

Her most recent adventure? We were talking about the weather and our relatives and everything that had happened since we last spoke…when all of a sudden she said, “And I’m making my own pastrami!”

You see…she gave my dad a smoker for Christmas and she was tired of smoking pork shoulders, ribs and plain ol’ brisket. She also gets dozens of cooking magazines and loves to experiment with food…so by her own estimation she must have read something somewhere and then hit up Google for homemade pastrami recipes.

The recipe she *wanted* to use was from a deli in LA that claimed to have better pastrami than Katz’s in New York (home of the infamous “I’ll have what she’s having”-scene with Meg Ryan and Rob Reiner’s mom in When Harry Met Sally). However, the recipe called for pickling salt and she couldn’t find such a thing in Tucson, Arizona (my parents move a lot). Ironically, pickling salt was plentiful in Fairbanks…even though very few comforts from the Lower 48 are readily available up there. (But, if you think about it, with all the hunting they do in the Last Frontier – Mrs. Palin included — it makes sense that they’d have a lot of pickling salt.)

So…my mother, resourceful lady that she is, decided to use her second favorite pastrami recipe from Martha’s BFF, Emeril Lagasse. And she seemed quite pleased with the results. When I asked about it, she said it was “really good” – with BIG emphasis. Even the marinade – which included thyme, bay leaves, cloves, peppercorns, garlic and juniper berries – smelled “phenomenal,” she said. (And even though she had a devil of a time finding juniper berries, she said she’s glad she kept looking as she suspects it is the secret to good pastrami.)

But! It requires patience. After you’ve made the marinade, you have to cover your 5-pound brisket and leave it in the refrigerator for three weeks, turning it every couple of days. My mom said it was worth it though – after a couple of hours in the smoker, it was very tender and “one of those extremely memorable meals.”

In fact, it was so good she ate it right out of the smoker — still hot — even though my dad said that’s not the way you’re supposed to eat pastrami.

Beef

I recently had dinner with my girlfriend at New York steakhouse fixture Keens Steakhouse. Keens has been around since 1885 and has been a focal point of really fantastic in-house aged cuts of meat that will blow your mind. Like I just had my mind blown by their signature dish: the Keens Mutton Chop.

Known by many as the “King of The Mutton Chop” worldwide, the mutton chop is actually a specific cut from the sheep (a.k.a. lamb, a.k.a mutton, all in the same delicious family), featuring semi-lean meat on the center bone and two “wings” that look hilarious but really are mostly fat. What does that make them? Almost like sheep bacon. And they’re amazing.

I could try to go into detail on this meat, but I’d only get lost in words. All I can really say is that it was one of the greatest cuts of meat I have ever eaten. Truly. Juicy, flavorful, slightly marbled, but not too much. It was WONDERFUL.

Keens is in the slightly-pricey three-to-four dollar sign range ($$$-$$$$) for a full meal, but they are well worth it if you have the chance. It feels like a little old-world, old NY secret with low ceilings, old pictures on the wall, fireplaces, exposed brick, AND a drink menu featuring scotches in the the hundreds. With a cut of meat like that, a delicious cocktail in your hand, and a beautiful woman across the table, I couldn’t ask for anything more. The cut was so flavorful that when I was done I asked them to wrap up the remaining bone and gristle, which I took home and used to make mutton soup stock. I’ve already accented a couple of stews with that flavor and they’re knocking soups out of the ballpark. I urge anyone who has the chance, when in New York to stop by Keens and experience your own NY mutton chop.

72 W. 36th St., between 5th & 6th Ave. in New York, NY.

Lamb keens, keens steakhouse, Lamb, meata, meata america, mutton, mutton chop, new york, ny, nyc, sheep, steakhouse