Cooking With Mystery Meat |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Sally Fallon |
| February 14 2008 |
|
In this modern age, when so many children (and lots of adults as well) are picky eaters, getting organ meats into your family can be a daunting task. Even adventurous eaters quail at preparing those soft, blobby organs. A recent discussion on the WAPF chapter leaders listserv revealed an ingenious solution—pet food! Many of our grass-based farmers are now packaging a blend of ground organ meats (even including the udders!) and meat scraps as pet food. It looks something like ground beef, only darker red and of smoother texture. Prepared with a view to hiding it behind spicy flavors, your family will never know they are consuming the dreaded organ meats. Cooking With CunningI first tried using pet meat in meat loaf, mixed half and half with regular ground beef. The loaf was very spicy so no taste of organ meat was detectable; however, the texture was smoother than that of meat loaf made only with ground beef, and one of my eagle-eyed sons noticed this right away. "I think I put too much breadcrumb in this time," I said, and the meat was quickly gobbled up. The next time I wanted to use pet meat, my farmer had sold out of the beef blend, so I tried his chicken pet food—and almost blew my cover! I used the ground up chicken pet food blend in chili, not realizing that it contained numerous small pieces of bone. The chili was reluctantly eaten but a pile of bone chips ended up on the plate. "I'll never use ground chicken for chili again," I said. "His grinder must have been set wrong." The beef pet food blend does not contain pieces of bone, but may contain chunks of gristle—a dead giveaway. The solution to this is to squish it through your fingers after it has thawed, removing any lumps. If you are careful to go through this initial screening process, combine your beef pet food blend with regular ground beef, and use it in spicy recipes, you can expect to enjoy many years of surreptitious organ meat feeding without detection. SourcesMany grass-based farmers who advertise in Wise Traditions or participate in food clubs are now doing pet food blends. Lindner Bison sells a pet food blend that is 10 percent kidney and liver plus tallow. At $5 per pound, it is not cheap; but it is reported to be very tasty and not as lean as regular ground bison. If you have a meat grinder, you can make your own blend, adding liver, kidney, heart, spleen and even pancreas to muscle meats. Spleen and pancreas contribute to the dark red, "bloody" look and were apparently added to ground beef in the past to make it look redder. The following recipes will nourish your body while fueling your talent for clandestine activity. Mystery Meat ChiliServes 6 1 pound red meat pet food organ blend Sauté the pet food blend in a large cast iron or enamel pot. (The blend produces a lot of beautiful yellow fat.) Add the ground beef and onion and saute until browned. Add red wine or beer and stock; stir well. Add beans, tomatoes, garlic and seasonings to taste and stir until well blended. The chili should be fairly soupy, not too thick, so add more stock or bean juice as needed. Simmer over very low heat for about 1/2 hour. Meanwhile, cut the tortillas into strips and sauté in lard until crisp. Serve the chili in heated bowls with tortilla strips, grated raw cheese, chopped cilantro and sour cream. Mystery Meat Pan CasseroleServes 2 Thanks to Mary Jewett of Alexandria, Virginia, for this ingenious, spur-of-the-moment recipe. Ingredient amounts are approximate! 2 potatoes, washed, dried and sliced thin Sauté the potatoes in lard in a large cast iron skillet. When they are browned on one side, flip them over and spread them evenly in the pan. Meanwhile mix the organ meat blend, ground beef, onion and seasonings. Distribute over the potatoes and sprinkle on the cheese. Blend the egg and egg yolks with dash of cayenne pepper and pour over the cheese. Place in a 350-degree oven and bake for about 15 minutes. Pretty Good Shepherd's PieServes 6 3-4 cups leftover mashed potatoes, at room temperature Sauté organ blend in a cast iron skillet and remove to a bowl with a slotted spoon. In the remaining fat, sauté the ground beef. Remove with a slotted spoon and mix with the organ blend. Sauté the onion in the remaining fat and add to the meat. Season with ginger, cayenne and salt and pepper to taste. How Native Americans Prepared Mystery MeatSamuel Hearne, an explorer writing in 1768, describes the preparation of caribou: "Of all the dishes cooked by the Indians, a beeatee, as it is called in their language, is certainly the most delicious that can be prepared from caribou only, without any other ingredient. It is a kind of haggis, made with the blood, a good quantity of fat shred small, some of the tenderest of the flesh, together with the heart and lungs cut, or more commonly torn into small shivers; all of which is put into the stomach and toasted by being suspended before the fire on a string Why Organ Meats?Compared with muscle meats, organ meats are richer in just about every nutrient, including minerals like phosphorus, iron, copper, magnesium and iodine, and in B vitamins including B1, B2, B6, folic acid and especially vitamin B12. Organ meats provide high levels of the all-important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, especially if the animals live outside in the sunlight and eat green grass. Organ meats are also rich in beneficial fatty acids such as arachidonic acid, EPA and DHA. Organ meats even contain vitamin C—liver is richer in vitamin C than apples or carrots! Even if you add only small amounts of organ meats to your ground meat dishes, you are providing your family with super nutrition. . . in ways that everyone likes and are easy to consume.  This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2007. About the Author
She joined forces with Enig again to write Eat Fat, Lose Fat, and has authored numerous articles on the subject of diet and health. Through her New Trends Publishing label, she publishes books on nutrition and health, such as The Fourfold Path to Healing (by Dr. Tom Cowan), Honoring Our Cycles (by Katie Singer), The Untold Story of Milk (by Ron Schmid) and The Whole Soy Story (by Kaayla Daniel). The President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and founder of A Campaign for Real Milk, Sally is also a journalist, chef, nutrition researcher, homemaker, and community activist. Her four healthy children were raised on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat.
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email this
Hits: 5112 Comments (3)
would love an article on traditional cuts to roast or stew
written by Mary Light, Jan 16 2012
Not sure where to begin on this, but would like to stew out the collagen and elastin inherent in more sinewy bony cuts - meats which are not mysterious, just the lesser used cuts.
Wanting organ meat, but.....
written by AP, Dec 23 2011
Is this labeled "pet food" because it's organ meat and we don't eat it in our culture? That is we throw it to the dogs and cats, which eat better than us.
Or is it labeled "pet food" because it's preparation and storage doesn't meet "fit for human consumption" standards? Thanks. Take care, Al
Just Tried Pet Food written by Sarah, Oct 28 2010
I just tried cooking "pet food" for the first time. (It was beef organ blend marked pet food by my meat supplier, just as described in this post.) My family loved it, but my husband asked me to please refrain from making any more jokes about eating pet food.
 Thanks for this article, which gave me the courage to overcome the feeling the pet food label conveys!
Write comment -
|
| Last Updated on Tuesday, June 09 2009 15:30 |
Sally Fallon Morell is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats (with Mary G. Enig, PhD), a well-researched, thought-provoking guide to traditional foods with a startling message: Animal fats and cholesterol are not villains but vital factors in the diet, necessary for normal growth, proper function of the brain and nervous system, protection from disease and optimum energy levels.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
