Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Primal Fuel, Primal Meat, Total Satisfaction
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Barbecued Grassfed Bone In Porterhouse
The taste of the most basic and primal of foods, grassfed meat, cooked with one of the oldest and most traditional fuels, 100 percent hardwood charcoal, is the best. Not only to me, but to countless millions of people.
The Primal Taste of Primal Meat
There is something about the taste of this food—one of the oldest taste combinations known to humanity—that calls to us, awakens old primal memories, and is satisfying like no other food. When we smell this meat cooking, we instinctively salivate, as our bodies recognize that the smell means good food is on the way. The salivation signals our bodies to get ready to eat, and the digestive system prepares for action. We get hungry and our sense of taste and smell is somehow enhanced. We become hungry, and hungrier, as the smell changes as the meat finishes cooking. When we finally bite into the tender meat, and taste the primal flavor of the charcoal-imbued meat, the satisfaction is unequaled, we want more, and the meal becomes a joy to be savored.
Somehow, this meat is incredibly easy to digest, and we do not feel stuffed or bloated. We eat with eager hunger until we have had enough, and the hunger ends. The feeling of satisfaction and well-being we get from such a meal is unique, not matched by any other food.
Why Primal Meat Cooked with Primal Fuel Tastes So Good
Meat and fat have been prized by most of humanity for countless thousands of years. This may be our oldest cooked food. I have studied the traditional cooking of almost every European, North American, Asian, and Latin American nation in the world. I have also studied some of the cooking of the Middle East, Micronesia, and Africa. Just about every traditional cuisine treasured meat cooked with charcoal or wood coals, though people were often unable to get it. Even today, barbecue excites people like no other food.
I believe that barbecued meat is so popular because humanity has been eating it for so long. The love of it may be in our very genes, and our bodies have adapted to recognize and digest it easily.
We now have a fear of barbecue, created by studies claiming that barbecued meat contain substances that could cause cancer. However, none of those studies involved primal meat that was cooked with primal fuel. The traditional peoples studied by Dr. Weston A. Price cooked meat this way, and cancer was unknown to them.
Much of what is now called barbecue is a sad imitation of the real thing, scorched, tasteless, or sooty.
We can recreate the primal taste of primal meat cooked with primal fuel. All we need is primal meat, primal fuel, and the right method.
Primal Meat
This can only be 100 percent grassfed and grass finished meat, or wild game, or omnivorous animals such as pigs eating their natural diet.
Most of the meat eaten in the United States is processed through a feedlot, where the animals are fed a diet of foods they would never eat in their natural habitat, and altered by chemicals and antibiotics, among other things. This causes the meat of feedlot animals to taste different, and to behave differently in cooking. Humanity never experienced this kind of meat until the 20th century.
Primal meat is the kind of meat humanity has been eating for uncounted thousands of years. Meat from animals eating their natural diet, unaltered by chemicals, drugs, and species-inappropriate foods.
Fortunately, we can get such meat today, thanks to a small but noble band of intrepid farmers and ranchers.
Primal Fuel
The kind of primal fuel we can easily get today is 100 percent hardwood lump charcoal, or the same charcoal in the form of briquets. We can also burn unsprayed, chemical-free wood down to coals.
No other fuel will do to recreate the wonderful combination of primal meat and primal fuel.
The Right Method
This involves cooking the meat in front of a fire of coals, without scorching, charring, or clouds of smoke. Traditional peoples never let the flames hit the meat, and some old time cooks warned about how too much smoke and flame would impart a nasty taste to the meat.
Interestingly enough, the substances found hazardous by the studies are created by direct high heat, especially when the flames hit the meat.
I am finishing a book on barbecuing grassfed meat that shows a method that works beautifully to create the magnificent taste of primal meat cooked with primal fuel. The book adopts traditional methods of cooking this food to our time, and the results have been absolutely delicious. I have barbecued almost every day this last spring and summer, and I have been blessed by the wonderful flavor and satisfaction of eating primal meat cooked with primal fuel.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday blog carnival.
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