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Steak and Kidney Pudding is a classic English dish, and the ultimate comfort food. The dish’ll serve six people. It’s relatively easy to prep, but cooks gently over several hours.

This beef stew recipe will serve four people ? it’s a nice and quick wintery stew to get ready, but cook it nice and slowly over a period of several hours for maximum flavour.

British food technicians checking “New Zealand lamb mince” being sold in England allege it has four times the legal level of added water.

County analysts for Lancashire Trading Standards said their tests had found the imported…

British food technicians checking “New Zealand lamb mince” being sold in England allege it has four times the legal level of added water.

County analysts for Lancashire Trading Standards said their tests had found the imported…

Air New Zealand is axing 200 jobs in a new cost cutting drive.
More than 200 ANZ National “banking operations” staff have been told the bank's outsourcing proposal will slash their positions from the current 403 to 165.
The country's…

Filed under: Business, Meat, Health & Medical, Food News

More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile (C. diff), a bacteria that can cause intestinal distress and, very rarely, death. About 40 percent of the cooked products and nearly 48 percent of the ready-to-eat products showed evidence of C. diff. Nearly 30 percent of the tainted samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and ready-to-eat meats were identical or closely related to a super-toxic strain of C. diff that’s a growing problem in hospitals across the country.

But there are no proven cases of humans getting C. diff from food; it’s almost always hospital transmitted. And if food-person transmission is possible, it’s not known if the levels of bacteria in the supermarket meat are high enough to cause infection. But it does seem to add to the growing evidence that overuse of antibiotics, both at home and in meat processing plants, are leading to nasty superbugs. Yet another reason to eat sustainably-raised hormone and antibiotic-free meat.

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Filed under: Poultry, Roasting, Fall Flavors, America, Meat, Thanksgiving, Fall

The centerpiece of every Thanksgiving table is a gargantuan roasted turkey, preferably glistening golden brown and smelling incredibly good. This site gives the basics for defrosting and roasting the bird, but I have a few touches that I personally enjoy.

Herbs: Slowly and gently, slide your fingers between the turkey breast and the skin. They should come apart fairly easily. When you have created a good-sized space, you can insert fresh thyme, rosemary, or (my preference) sage. Not only does it look really cool when you serve the bird, but the herbs add a little extra flavor to the breast. You can also, if you wish, sprinkle a little salt and pepper in there for flavor.

Salt and Pepper: When preparing the bird for the oven, mix a batch of kosher salt and pepper in a small ramekin. After rinsing out the cavity, rub in some of the mix. After brushing melted butter into the skin, rub the outside of the bird with the salt and pepper mix.

Fatback: Buy a slab of fatback or salt pork and cut off four 1/4″ thick slices. Before roasting the turkey, tuck one behind each wing and each drumstick. This will lend a nice smoky flavor to the bird and will also help keep it juicy. You can use the rest to make southern-style string beans.

Roasting Bag: Reynolds’ plastic cooking bags make roasting a turkey much, much easier; for that matter, they also help keep it moist.

Stuffing: Over the past few years, stuffing the turkey has gone out of vogue. Personally, I still believe that a flavorful stuffing can create an exchange of flavors that is amazing. Unfortunately, Pepperidge Farm bread crumb stuffing, which my mother always used as a base, and which I used until a few years ago, has started adding high fructose corn syrup. This year, I’ll be looking for a fresh recipe; right now, I’m leaning toward modifying this one from Alton Brown.

The Wishbone: If you want to break the wishbone on Thanksgiving day, pull it out while carving the turkey. Boil it for a half hour or so, then hang it on a cabinet handle to dry. If you boil it sufficiently, it should release a lot of its oils and harden up pretty nicely. Of course, the best method is to let it dry out for a few days, but I always have a hard time waiting!

While I tend to be a big fan of experimentation, I’d have to argue that Thanksgiving dinner is one of the few places where one should try to be traditional. With this in mind, I tend to stick to more mellow flavors and a Western European spice palette. Save the banana-bread stuffed turkey with cranberry lime glaze for Christmas; at Thanksgiving, stick to butter, salt, pepper, and sage!

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Filed under: Beef, Poultry, Pork, Meat, Tip of the Day

When buying raw meat, it’s important to consider storage. Looking for a quick and easy guide to storing various kinds of raw meat?

Continue reading Tip of the Day: Store raw meat appropriately

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Filed under: Meat

Having one lamb shoulder piece left over from my Lamb, Hunter-Style, I sat down and wondered what I could do with it. I didn’t want to just reheat it and make a side. That seemed boring. Suddenly it dawned on me — a salad sandwich. I’d never had lamb salad before, and I knew just what to do with it — give it a Greek twist!

Next time you have some leftover lamb, chop it up, add some vegetables like diced onion and roasted red pepper, and then use tzatziki to bind it, rather than mayo. The light flavor of the cucumber is perfect for the lamb, and it’s a great twist on the regular mainstays like tuna and chicken salad.

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Filed under: Dinner, Recipes, Italy, Meat

Some of the most memorable and delicious dishes are the ones that revel in simplicity. As much as completion of a difficult culinary feat can be rewarding, there’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of amazing flavor growing out of relaxing ease.

This works two-fold for recipes that require minimal, basic ingredients., like Lamb Hunter-Style from Biba’s Italy. Making this dish is an absolute treat because it takes less effort than some of my more oft-made meals. There’s just a little chopping, searing, and sauteing before the whole thing gets put in the oven to roast. What comes out is the juicy meat you see above — meat so tender that it’s falling off the bone and melting as it hits the tongue.

The adapted recipe is after the jump.

Continue reading Terribly easy and terribly tasty Lamb, Hunter-Style

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