meat.pro is meat you can’t beat

Filed under: Vegetables, Asia, Spices, Meat

I’ve never been the type to insist that no two foods on my plate touch each other. Whether it’s pancake syrup leaking onto the bacon or cornbread crumbs in my turnip greens, I love for the mingling of ingredients to continue even after the cooking ends. Yet all my life, I ate each piece on a kebab separately. I just didn’t know better–until last summer.

At a tiny, unassuming restaurant called Çiya Kebap near the Asian banks of Istanbul, a knowing waiter, kindly sensing our ignorance, took a few moments to show my mother and me how a kebab ought to be eaten. He’d just set before us a tantalizing skewer of ground lamb, charred eggplant and red onion, nearly liquid tomato, and sweet-hot chili–but in less than a minute, he mashed everything together so thoroughly that the components were hardly recognizable. Then he sprinkled a spice blend called baharat over all of it and instructed us (nonverbally, since we couldn’t speak the same language) to mop up portions of the mash with the paper-thin flatbread stacked alongside.

Turns out Çiya Kebap, along with two other Çiya restaurants with different menus located just steps away, is world famous. If I’d eaten my kebab in my usual manner, I wouldn’t have any clue what the fuss was all about. Instead, I experienced some of the most revelatory mouthfuls in recent memory. The splendor of the combined flavors would be impossible to exaggerate, even with words like “symphony” and “revelation.”

Of course, a kebab anywhere, not just in Istanbul, would benefit from such intervention. The key is to glob everything together. Don’t be too dainty about it, and don’t worry about appearances. Just enjoy the big sloppy mess, and spread the word.

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With salt and patience, an Iowa couple are transforming their state’s bounty into world-class prosciutto.

With salt and patience, an Iowa couple are transforming their state’s bounty into world-class prosciutto.

The Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors “the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes,” has swept the Internet.

With this marinated steak, you can taste the sweet spices and the rich red wine immediately.

With this marinated steak, you can taste the sweet spices and the rich red wine immediately.

A recipe for Really Old-Fashioned Marinated Rib-Eye.

Filed under: Meat

When trying to get rid of leftovers, it’s easy to throw them into a stew, salad, or some other bowled smorgasbord of flavor. It can be a bit trickier to make a meal out of them that doesn’t look like leftover land.

Granted, these leftovers aren’t the pre-cooked kind, but what remained after a week of cooking and a journey through the freezer. We’ve got an eye of round dry-rubbed with a mixture of random spices, fingerling potatoes tossed in olive oil, herbs, and shallots and roasted in the toaster oven, and garlic and shallot-based saute of chard and bok choy.

The roasted shallots came off crispy, which made them the perfect topping to cover some old chevre. Now, I’m usually not a big fan of masking steak with other flavors, but when you’re talking about a thick piece of meat, one that’s been frozen for a few months, a little cheese and shallots go a long way. They swim with the juice of the meat, and team perfectly with garlicky greens and herby potatoes.

For a quick and simple meal, it really can’t be beat.

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Filed under: British Isles, Meat, Foodie Flicks

In celebration of yesterday’s Robert Burns Day, I thought I’d introduce you all to the world of haggis.

Now don’t recoil and run screaming in the other direction. Haggis’ urban legend bark is much worse than any bite you could take of the Scottish food. Really, the whole anti-haggis stance doesn’t make much sense. Usually larger versions of foods get applauded and loved, but haggis gets the pointy end of the leftover meat sword. It doesn’t have the widespread appeal of its cousin, the hot dog, nor the culinary adoration of cousin #2, the sausage.

But it’s just a spicy, tasty meatloaf sort of food stuffed in innards, whether they be intestines, stomach, or other lining. In fact, if you’re like me, your first bite of haggis will make you think that you’re being played and fed ground beef instead. Scots knew what they were doing. This isn’t a food where you try to bring out the delicate flavors of the pluck. It’s boiled, ground with tasty bits like onions and oatmeal, and heavily spiced so that it slides down with deliciousness, rather than revulsion.

Slop it on a plate with neeps and tatties, and you can’t go wrong.

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Filed under: Meat

When trying to get rid of leftovers, it’s easy to throw them into a stew, salad, or some other bowled smorgasbord of flavor. It can be a bit trickier to make a meal out of them that doesn’t look like leftover land.

Granted, these leftovers aren’t the pre-cooked kind, but what remained after a week of cooking and a journey through the freezer. We’ve got an eye of round dry-rubbed with a mixture of random spices, fingerling potatoes tossed in olive oil, herbs, and shallots and roasted in the toaster oven, and garlic and shallot-based saute of chard and bok choy.

The roasted shallots came off crispy, which made them the perfect topping to cover some old chevre. Now, I’m usually not a big fan of masking steak with other flavors, but when you’re talking about a thick piece of meat, one that’s been frozen for a few months, a little cheese and shallots go a long way. They swim with the juice of the meat, and team perfectly with garlicky greens and herby potatoes.

For a quick and simple meal, it really can’t be beat.

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