Dead Animals with Salt - YUMMY!

[Guest guest]

Here is an article that I came across...

Stupid Vogue

http://tinyurl.com/39juj

http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds171.html

Dead Animals With Salt

by Brad Edmonds

In an old Ren & Stimpy cartoon, Ren and Stimpy babysat a 400-pound, bearded

toddler

named Kowalski. Ren: " What to you want to eat, Kowalski? " Kowalski:

" MEAT. " Ren: " What do you want to drink, Kowalski? " Kowalski: " MEAT. "

Marilyn Mach vos Savant, whose IQ measures over 200, was asked by a reader her

idea

of the ideal food. Her reply: Anything with the flavor, texture, and

nutritional value of meat.

Up until maybe the mid 1600s, " meat " for the English was an idiom for " meal " or

" food. "

They referred to " sitting down to dinner " as " sitting down to meat. "

This linguistic practice no doubt, and wisely, lasted for hundreds of

years.

Allow me to digress: Until the 1600s, English was considered a gutter language

by Eurotrash

literati. Anyone of English blood, to prove herself sophisticated,

learnt French. Shakespeare and the King Bible changed that. Each

of these monuments of Western culture contributed probably an equal

share to making English a respectable language on the Continent. Until

the King Bible, those who translated the Bible into English were

usually executed for it by the English. So a group of scholars

approached , begging his approval of an " official " English

translation. Upon being granted that approval, the scholars pieced

together the King version mostly by cannibalizing earlier English

versions, selecting sometimes the most poetic things, sometimes the most

accurate. Such a story makes me appreciate the beauty of, and dedication

and sacrifice represented by, the KJV at the same time that it should

give fundamentalists pause regarding whether the KJV is an accurate

translation against more recent ones.

But back to meat:

Beef gives you zinc, iron (some people report that we get too much iron, so be

sure to drink some Italian dry red wine), niacin, potassium, and more.

Mainly, it gives you vital complete proteins, combinations of amino

acids that allow you to use the protein you eat. You can get complete

proteins if you combine whole grains with whole legumes, or if you do

some other dietary sleight-of-hand, but why chew laboriously through a

giant bowl of beans and rice, as I misguidedly did years ago, when you

could get it all from a three-ounce minibite of tenderloin? You need

some of the fats that come with meat, too, by the way.

A muscular and vigorous vegetarian is possible, but is the rare exception. Most

vegans,

and I’ve known a bunch, are weedy and limp (if strident). College and

pro football players eat nearly their weight in steaks monthly. Beef is

what’s for dinner. Pork is the other white meat. A day without

pepper-crusted venison tenderloin is like a day without sunshine. But

how to prepare it all, with the modern threats of e-coli, mad cow, and

long lines at the best restaurants?

Smoke!

Allow me to digress: Coal- and oil-fired electricity-generating plants are fine

with me.

Yes, they produce acid rain, but guess what: They’re not liable for

damage to your property if they’re within EPA guidelines. Ain’t

government great? Another point: If every drug user in the US stopped

using drugs today, pushers would voluntarily find other employment

tomorrow. If every drug pusher were killed today, they’d all be replaced

with new ones tomorrow if the users kept wanting to use. So, unless you

generate all of your own electricity from geothermal, wind, or solar,

you might as well sue yourself for acid rain.

Back to smoke:

Borrowing (as I borrowed the title of this article from a stand-up comedian)

from

Alton Brown, the oddball but excellent TV food scientist, I use a cheap

name-brand water smoker designed to hold a charcoal fire in the bottom

with a water pan midway between the coals and the meat. The clever part

Alton originated is doing away with the fussy charcoal fire. I use two

$8.76 Wal-Mart hot plates (hence the above digression into electric

power generation) and an iron skillet at the bottom of the smoker, with

water-soaked hickory chips in the skillet. My garage smells like Nirvana,

probably permanently. (N.B.: I put a candy thermometer next to the meat

to make sure the temperature is right.)

You can even use a cheap cut of meat, such as chuck roast. Just salt the

outside,

if you want an extra-smoky crust, and let it get to room temperature for

a bit (I go 15-30 minutes tops), and put into the smoker once the

smoker’s up to temperature and making lots of smoke. Consult your

owner’s manual for cooking times, but about 75-90 minutes per pound is

probably typical at an inside-the-smoker temperature of 200-215 degrees

F. Of course, the time depends not only on the weight of the meat, but

also on the shape. Play around with it, secure in the knowledge there

are basically no bacteria inside the meat (unless it’s ground), and

tests have shown that even injecting bacteria into the meat is bad for

the bacteria. Just don’t let the meat dwell at room temperature for too

long before smoking. Let the meat rest at room temperature after

removing from the smoker, another 20 minutes or so. These instructions

will usually yield medium to medium-rare results.

Sauce? You can improvise one better than you can purchase. My basic ingredients

are wine, vinegar, black pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic, then butter or

cream (if butter, remove from heat before incorporating at the very end).

Reduce the sauce until it’s little more than a film on the bottom of the

pan before adding butter or cream. My last sauce used 4 ounces of shiraz,

4 ounces of kosher blackberry-flavored wine, two ounces of white wine

vinegar, a teaspoon of minced garlic, as much black and cayenne pepper

as I wanted, and at the end about a tablespoon of butter. Of course, if

you make (or buy) your own beef stock or broth, you can reduce that to a

thick film ( " demiglace " ) as part of the sauce for an even savorier

result.

But with or without sauce, coal-fired electricity, or English-language

instructions,

just eat yourself some dead animals. With salt.