Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Give the Gift of Real Food
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
This delicious holiday meal of grassfed prime rib, pan-roasted potatoes, and sautéed cabbage was a joy to cook and eat.
This holiday season, like all holiday seasons, is a time to give and receive.
Gifts are a wonderful way to express your appreciation of another person, whether it is a relative or a friend. Some people are impressed by expensive, fancy gifts. I prefer gifts that give a real benefit, and the price or status of the gift is not important to me. A gift that shows something of the giver is often the best of all. A gift that gives pleasure, and supports joy, is a gift I cherish, both as a giver and a receiver.
Would you like to give a gift that has the following benefits:
- Gives great pleasure to the person who receives it
- Gives great pleasure to the giver
- Creates a wonderful aroma in the home
- Makes the person who receives it feel wonderful
- Improves the natural functions of the body
- Creates a wonderful feeling of contentment and satisfaction
- Warms the body and soul
For me, this most magic of gifts is real food, skillfully and lovingly prepared.
The Most Traditional of Gifts
Many decisions are being made about gifts at this time of year. In modern times, we often think of commercial products like electronics, jewelry, designer clothing, and a host of other products when we are deciding what to give. Yet in older times, one of the most popular and appreciated gifts was that of food. Not just any food, but special foods that would not only be appreciated for their wonderful taste, but would nourish the body and soul of the receiver. These special foods were not factory candies and cakes, but some of the most nourishing and delicious real foods available.
Not only was the giving of special foods a tradition, but the cooking of those foods by a skilled cook was a much-anticipated blessing of the holiday season, and great efforts were made to have this happen. This was true for almost everybody. For the poor, the holiday season might be one of the few times they actually had grassfed meat or pastured pork to eat, or another special meat such as goose, or duck, or a capon. Grassfed or pastured meat, or wild fish, were the featured highlight of holiday meals. The traditional European holiday feast dishes covered such wonderful dishes as roast prime rib of beef, pork loin roasted with the skin on, rack of lamb, saddle of lamb, roast stuffed goose, roast stuffed turkey, roast duck, and many others.
What made these gifts unique is that they actually nourished the bodies of the lucky people who ate them, improving their natural functions and creating a wonderful feeling of well-being and contentment.
Traditionally, these foods were real food, not factory food, and were exactly the kind of traditional food our bodies welcome and thrive on.
It is true that many holiday foods were special desserts. But these were different than modern desserts. They always contained large amounts of saturated animal fat such as butter, lard, and egg yolks. They were only served at the end of a meal, when the eater’s body was well-nourished with traditional fats and other nutrients that protected the body from the effects of the sugar in the desserts.
GMOs, pesticides, and artificial chemicals had no place in these wonderful, traditional foods.
While you may not find much real food in the supermarket, local farmers and ranchers, and farmers’ markets often have wonderful real food available, including grassfed and pastured meat, and organic or the equivalent vegetables and fruits. There are some wonderful Internet sources of great grassfed and pastured meat. Three of my favorites are U.S. Wellness Meats, Homestead Natural Foods, and NorthStar Bison.
Give the Blessings of Your Cooking
Even the best quality real food needs a skilled cook. A skilled cook can turn the best natural ingredients into a feast that will provide great eating pleasure and nutrients to all who are lucky enough to share in the meal. If you can cook, the time and effort you put into making a holiday feast is a wonderful gift to all who eat it, and to yourself.
If you do not think of yourself as a skilled cook, I have some good news.
Cooking wonderful real food is easy, and simple. There is an old saying, “God gives us good meat, the devil sends us cooks.†The meaning of this saying is that high-quality food should not have its great natural taste overwhelmed by fancy and complicated cooking. The wonderful natural flavors and tastes of the food will do most of the magic for you. All you have to do is bring them out. The recipes I use create wonderful food, yet most of them are very simple and easy to use. Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue are full of simple recipes for grassfed and pastured meat that result in wonderful food, cooked in an easy and natural way.
I spend a big part of the holiday season planning and cooking the holiday feasts, as a gift to my loved ones. It is also a gift to me, as I also get to share in the feast!
This post is part of Monday Mania, Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Why Grassfed Meat Is Better
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Grassfed Butter Steak, Tender Grassfed Barbecue, page 76
One of the questions I get asked most often is this—“What is different about grassfed beef?â€
Many people seem to think the only difference is that grassfed beef is “always tough,†and that grassfed beef lacks the “great flavor†that is supposed to come from “corn feeding.†I have found that properly cooked grassfed meat is very tender, has much more flavor, and a much better texture than conventional beef.
There are many important differences between grassfed and conventional meat. The very composition and content of the meat is very different.
Because of the vast difference in the qualities of the meat, grassfed meat is best when cooked differently than conventional, “corn-fed†meat.
How Grassfed Meat Is Different
Grassfed Meat Is an Ancient Food
Grassfed meat, coming from herbivorous animals eating their natural diet of grass and meadow plants, is one of the oldest foods of mankind, maybe the oldest. This means that the human body has adapted over uncounted thousands of years to digest and process this meat. Our bodies know the composition of grassfed meat, and how to absorb nutrients from it, and expect to find all those nutrients there when they digest the meat. Conventional meat has a totally different nutritional profile, and had not been eaten by humans until the twentieth century. Grassfed meat, fat, and bones are perhaps the most primal of foods.
Grassfed Meat Has Superior Nutritional Value
Grassfed meat has the proper balance of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6 fatty acids, containing far more omega-3s than conventional meat. Grassfed meat is also rich with CLA, a valuable nutrient that has many benefits. Conventional meat has a much higher ratio of omega-6 fatty acids, one that does not occur in naturally-fed meat. Conventional feedlot beef has far less CLA and omega-3 fatty acids than grassfed meat. Grassfed meat is also richer than conventional meat in many other nutrients.
Grassfed Meat Has Far Less Water and Should Be Cooked Differently
Grassfed meat is denser than conventional beef, and shrinks far less in cooking. Conventional meat is often quite watery, and that water cooks away when the meat is cooked, resulting in much more shrinkage. The need to deal with the water has led to the development of modern meat-cooking techniques, which will ruin grassfed meat. Because grassfed meat has far less water, it is best when cooked differently than conventional beef.
Grassfed Beef Tastes Much Better
Properly cooked grassfed meat is not tough, but tender, and has much better flavor than conventional meat. I can no longer stand the taste and texture of conventional meat, because grassfed meat tastes so much better. Grassfed meat from different breeds and producers taste different, in many wonderful ways, providing a wonderful variety of deep, rich flavors. The best comparison is with the many varieties of fine wine, which have many different tastes. Conventional beef always tastes the same—blah.
Grassfed Meat Cooks Faster and Easier
Grassfed meat cooks much faster than conventional meat, and is much easier to cook. This statement may surprise some people, but grassfed meat has so much flavor that it needs far less in the way of spices and sauces to be absolutely delicious. When you know the right techniques for cooking grassfed meat, it is very easy to cook. Tender Grassfed Meat: Traditional Ways to Cook Healthy Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue: Traditional, Primal and Paleo are both full of easy ways to cook delicious grassfed meat.
There are many other differences, but these are the major ones. Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue both cover the subject in detail, pointing out the many differences in the composition and cooking qualities of grassfed and conventional meats.
This post is part of Monday Mania, Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
My New Podcast at the Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore!
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
By Stanley A. Fishman
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jimmy Moore about my new book, Tender Grassfed Barbecue: Traditional, Primal and Paleo. We had a blast talking barbecue, the grassfed kind!
We talked about many things, including: how traditional barbecue avoids the factors that create carcinogens, how traditional barbecue differs from modern grilling, and is ideal for grassfed beef, bison, lamb and pastured pork. About how grassfed meat is ideal for Paleo and low-carb diets, and how the book supports those diets in the best possible way—delicious food. And we discussed “The Jimmy Moore†and many other things. Here is a link to the podcast:
518: Authors Stanley Fishman and Norm Robillard on Barbecue and Heartburn
Presenting Tender Grassfed Barbecue: Traditional, Primal, and Paleo
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Tender Grassfed Barbecue: Traditional, Primal and Paleo
I am happy to announce the availability of my second book, Tender Grassfed Barbecue: Traditional, Primal and Paleo. It is now available at Amazon.
Traditional
This cookbook adapts traditional methods of barbecue to modern times, making it easy, yet so delicious. The recipes are specifically designed for grassfed beef, bison, lamb, and pastured pork, using a wide variety of traditional flavorings and marinades from all over the world.
Grassfed meat is different from factory meat, and should be cooked differently. This is even more true in barbecue than other cooking methods, because charring a grassfed steak over a very hot fire will ruin it. The methods in this book are adaptations of traditional methods of barbecue that work beautifully with grassfed meat, bringing out its naturally wonderful flavor and tenderness.
Traditional peoples cooked with fire very differently than modern Americans. Tender Grassfed Barbecue adapts some of their methods to modern times. These methods are actually safer and easier to use than modern techniques. The book explains how to use these simple methods in great detail, using clear illustrations to demonstrate exactly how the coals, meat, drip pan and grill should be arranged, and providing clear and precise instructions as to how to barbecue this way. Even if you have not barbecued before, the clearly presented methods used in this book will make it easy!
The recipes in this book use traditional flavors from many cultures, ranging from Ancient Rome and China to the Native Americans, Koreans, French, Italians, Sardinians, Romanians, and many more. This includes several “lost†barbecue secrets that have been rediscovered, and were used traditionally by many peoples. These wonderful flavors give a wonderful enhancement to the great natural taste of barbecued grassfed meat, resulting in tender meat that is absolutely delicious. The book also offers different traditional ways of preparing American barbecue favorites such as brisket and spareribs.
Primal
The flavor of meat cooked with fire is one of the oldest human flavors, enjoyed over countless thousands of years, stimulating our taste buds in a way no other food ever does. The traditional cooking techniques in Tender Grassfed Barbecue create this primal flavor, using lump and hardwood charcoal to awaken the primal taste memories, imbuing the meat with the unforgettable tang of wood flavor. Many of the recipes are simply seasoned to bring out the primal flavor of wood and charcoal. Methods for using herbs and wood to provide a deeper smoky flavor are also included.
Paleo
The meat of grass-eating animals cooked with fire is one of the oldest human foods, eaten widely in the Paleolithic period and earlier. In contrast, the grain-feeding of grass-eating animals was not adopted until the 20th century and created a meat that is very different in composition and content from the meat enjoyed by humanity over most of history. Most of the meat recipes in Tender Grassfed Barbecue are very useful for those on Paleo diets, as they are designed for barbecuing grassfed meat. The ingredients used for flavoring are very basic foods, and allowed on most Paleo-style diets.
Lower-Carb
While this is not a low-carb cookbook, most of the recipes are very low in carbohydrates. A section on low-carb side dishes is also included.
Weston A. Price Style Diet
The recipes in this cookbook are faithful to the teachings of Dr. Weston A. Price. Sugar and soy are not used in the recipes. Refined food ingredients are rare, and the benefits of using animal fats in cooking are not only discussed, but shown in a number of recipes. Butter is a key ingredient in a number of recipes, and modern vegetable oils are not used.
Safer Barbecue
There have been a number of studies that raise health concerns about barbecued meats. The traditional techniques used in Tender Grassfed Barbecue avoid the risk factors identified in the studies.
Compared with Tender Grassfed Meat
If you liked Tender Grassfed Meat, you will enjoy this book if you barbecue. All the recipes are brand new, as are the techniques and cooking methods. The marinades in this book could be used to cook indoors as well, using the timing for roasts and steaks contained in Tender Grassfed Meat. One major difference is the inclusion of recipes for pastured pork, which was not included in Tender Grassfed Meat.
I am very happy to present this book. You will find cooking and barbecuing tips here that are just not available elsewhere. The recipes are easy to prepare, nourishing, and delicious. My family and I have been enjoying the recipes in this book for most of the past two years, whenever the weather allowed barbecuing. I hope that you too will enjoy the wonderful flavors and tastes in Tender Grassfed Barbecue.
Related Post
Traditional Barbecue Methods Are Worth the Effort
This post is part of Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday blog carnival.
Traditional Barbecue Methods Are Worth the Effort
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Pastured pork spareribs barbecued the traditional way.
Convenience has a high price. I just threw out an old cookbook that was all about making cooking easier by using prepackaged mixes, canned soups, broth cubes, microwaves, and other modern ways to make cooking easier. The main cooking skill you needed to use this book was the ability to open packages. Nothing was mentioned about the miserable nutritional profile of such “foods,†or about the effects of all the chemicals and preservatives. Or the fact that real cooking tastes so much better.
Convenience is a big part of modern American barbecue. Gas grills, pellet grills, premade factory sauces, premade factory rubs, premade factory marinades, all make barbecuing so convenient. The problem is that this convenience destroys the very factors that make true barbecue so delicious and nourishing.
I used to barbecue on an electric-powered grill that used wood pellets as fuel. You could actually set the temperature for how hot you wanted it, in degrees just like an oven. All you had to do was make sure the hopper was full of pellets, and then turn it on. It was easy to use. I thought the food cooked on it had a nice flavor, much better than any gas grill.
Well, a funny thing happened in the two years I spent writing my upcoming barbecue book. I decided to try to recreate traditional barbecue methods. This meant making a real fire, with real lump charcoal, or hardwood briquets that were made completely from hardwood, or burning hardwood down to coals. This meant making all my own marinades and bastes, from scratch. I got a common kettle grill that was powered by nothing but my own body and the fires I built in it. I used this grill to cook every meat recipe in the book, at least twice. And the barbecue I produced on this traditional style grill was so much better than the pellet grill, there was no comparison.
It was less convenient, and took a bit more effort. But it was worth it.
I decided that I was going to make the most traditional American sparerib barbecue I could, for a friend who came over two days ago.
I made an heirloom baste that was developed in the 1930s, by simmering various fresh vegetables and spices for hours, straining the liquid, and refrigerating it overnight, then adding a few traditional seasoning liquids, and simmering it again.
I used this baste as a marinade for some pastured spareribs, which sat in the baste for two days.
I built a fire out of hickory wood and hickory charcoal, and burned it down to coals, using tongs to move various pieces so they would fit properly in the fire bed.
I drained the ribs, boiled and strained the baste that had marinated them.
I made a rub out of various traditional spices, and sprinkled it all over the ribs.
I cooked the ribs slowly, first with moderate heat, then with low heat, basting them every 20 minutes, for two and a half hours.
We were rewarded with spareribs that were so good it is hard to describe them. So tender, with a nice pink smoke ring, and the kind of deep, smoky barbecue taste that can only be created by real barbecue, with a real fire, made with real fuel. That taste was so outstanding and memorable that I am still savoring it, two days later. It was the real thing.
No gas grill, no pellet grill, no processed condiments will ever come close to producing the real thing.
It was well worth the effort.
This recipe for spareribs is advanced, but I was trying to make the best ribs I possibly could, in the old style.
I intentionally kept most of the recipes in my upcoming barbecue cookbook simple and easy to make. All of these recipes rely on the magic of real fire, real fuel, real seasonings, and real grassfed and pastured meat to make totally delicious and nourishing food.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday and Monday Mania blog carnivals.
Collard Greens Make a Great Side Dish for Grassfed Meat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Ingredients for traditional organic collard greens with natural uncured bacon, organic hot sauce, and unfiltered raw organic apple cider vinegar.
While grassfed meat is my favorite food, part of the pleasure comes from eating it with delicious side dishes. Some of these side dishes are so good they become favorites, and are made time and time again. The recipe in this post is one of my favorites, and I have made it often. It goes wonderfully with every kind of grassfed meat. I love to make this dish with collard greens that have deep green, firm leaves.
Collard greens originated in West Africa, and are loaded with nutrition, with many vitamins and minerals concentrated in their deep green leaves. They are a staple of traditional soul food. Traditionally, collard greens are cooked for a very long time, with some kind of fatty pork. More modern versions cut the fat, but not mine. I keep the pork fat but reduce the cooking time.
I happened to mention this recipe during an Internet chat on Twitter that was sponsored by Seeds of Change, a wonderful organic seed company that is preserving real organic seeds and making them available. My good friend Kimberly Hartke, of the blog Hartke Is Online, asked me to post the recipe, so here it is.
Quick Collard Greens with Bacon
Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
2 thick slices fatty uncured bacon, or 4 thin slices, (if the uncured bacon is not salted, add 1 teaspoon of unrefined sea salt)
2 cups filtered water
1 large bunch fresh organic collard greens, with deep green leaves
3 tablespoons unfiltered raw organic apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon thick red organic hot sauce of your choice
1.     Wash the collard greens well with filtered water, making sure any soil or sand is washed off. Remove the leaves from the stem, tearing the leaves into 2 to 3 inch pieces. Discard the stems.
2.     Pour 2 quarts filtered water into a stainless steel pot with the bacon, and bring to a slow boil. Cover, and cook for 10 minutes. This will cook a lot of the fat into the water, where it will really flavor the greens.
3.     Add the greens, vinegar, and hot sauce to the pot. Bring the pot back to a strong simmer. Cover, and cook for 20 minutes. Remove the greens to a serving dish with a slotted spoon.
Serve and enjoy with the grassfed meat of your choice. This recipe goes perfectly with the recipes for grassfed meat contained in my cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat.
This post is part of Weekend Gourmet, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Champion’s Portion for Saint Patrick’s Day
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Fresh ingredients and Jameson Irish whiskey for the green marinade
Saint Patrick’s Day is the ultimate Irish holiday. Ireland produces some of the best grassfed beef on Earth. The excellence of this beef is most gloriously set forth in the form of majestic roasts and thick steaks. Yet Saint Patrick’s Day in the United States is celebrated with corned beef and cabbage. This corned beef is usually a highly processed product made from factory beef.
This injustice cannot stand. This recipe celebrates the most legendary cut of Irish beef, in a marinade rich with green vegetables and green olive oil, crowned with the magnificent flavor of traditional Irish whiskey.
Ireland has always been a paradise for cattle. The rich soil and the wet climate have produced some of the greenest grass ever to grace the Earth. Ireland is so famous for its beautiful green landscapes that it is known as the “Emerald Isle,†and the color of the nation is green. The Irish tradition of raising fine grassfed cattle goes back thousands of years. The old stories make it clear that the most prized cut of beef was the chine, also known as “the champion’s portion.†This cut was reserved for the best warrior, and some of Ireland’s greatest warriors fought to the death for the honor of being served this revered piece of meat.
What is the modern equivalent of this dinner of champions? Grassfed prime rib, of course. Fortunately, we do not have to fight anybody or anything to enjoy this wonderful meat, except the always high price and some misinformed processors who trim off every bit of the magnificent fat.
Most of the beef raised in Ireland is still grassfed, and I have read it is magnificent in taste and a very satisfying thing to eat, indeed. While I do not have access to Irish beef, grassfed American beef works perfectly with this recipe.
Green is always associated with Saint Patrick’s Day, and every ingredient in the marinade is green, except the whiskey, and the plants that the whiskey was made from were green once, too.
Champion’s Portion with Green Marinade
Ingredients:
1 (4 to 5 pound) 2-bone grassfed prime rib, with fat cap
For the Marinade
1 organic green onion, finely chopped
¼ cup finely chopped green organic leek leaves (optional)
2 tablespoons flat leaf parsley, very finely chopped
1 teaspoon organic dried thyme leaves, crushed
4 tablespoons unfiltered organic extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons Jameson Irish whiskey
For the Cooking
1 teaspoon unrefined sea salt, crushed
Directions:
1.     The day before you plan to cook the roast, make the marinade. Combine all ingredients and mix well. Place the roast in a large glass bowl. Cover all surfaces of the roast with the marinade. Cover, and let rest at room temperature for 1 hour, then refrigerate overnight.
2.     Remove the roast from the refrigerator at least 1 hour before you plan to cook it, so the meat can come to room temperature.
3.     Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. When the roast is at room temperature, brush most of the marinade off the roast. Sprinkle the sea salt over the meat. Place the roast in a shallow pan large enough to hold it, bone side down. Cook in the preheated oven for 15 minutes.
4.     Baste the roast with the drippings, and cook for another 15 minutes.
5.     Turn the heat down to 250 degrees. Baste the roast with the drippings. Cook for another 15 minutes.
6.     Baste the roast with the drippings, and cook for 15 minutes more. Test the roast for doneness. If the roast is not done to your taste, continue cooking at 250 degrees, testing for doneness at 10 minute intervals.
This is a great roast to celebrate Saint Patrick‘s Day. Tender Grassfed Meat contains a recipe that provides yet another delicious way to celebrate this holiday with grassfed beef, entitled Irish Whiskey Steak.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
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.
Related Post
Traditional Barbecue Methods Avoid Risk Factors
My Podcast Interview at Our Natural Life
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jon and Cathy Payne of the Our Natural Life blog. Jon and Cathy are amazing people. After retiring from successful careers, they became farmers. They describe their fascinating new life as homesteaders in their fine blog. I really enjoyed the interview.
In this interview we talked about how I used real food to resolve my health problems; the crucial role grassfed meat played in restoring my health; how I learned to cook grassfed meat by researching traditional cooking methods; health and cooking characteristics of grassfed meat; and a little preview of my upcoming book on barbecuing grassfed meat.
The interview was a lot of fun to do, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Jon and Cathy also have a giveaway contest for a copy of Tender Grassfed Meat. Here is the link to the podcast and the giveaway:
Cooking Tender Grassfed Meat (Podcast ONL072) and a GIVEAWAY!
The Pleasure of Pastured Pork
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Scored roast pork.
I have often been asked why Tender Grassfed Meat has no recipes for pork. The answer I always give has been the same—conventional pork, even organic pork, is just too lean, lacks flavor, and is always fed a large amount of soy. Soy feeding, in my opinion, will ruin the taste of any meat. These pigs were specially bred to be lean, and have no real flavor. Nearly all the traditional ways of cooking pork were designed for fatter pigs, with every roast having the skin and a thick layer of fat attached. Traditional ways of cooking pork just did not work with the modern pig, a creation of fear, the fear of the fat we need to be healthy.
I knew there were some creative, intrepid farmers who were actually raising pork in the old way, by letting them roam in the forests, letting them root in harvested fields, giving them the skim milk left over from making cream and butter, and giving them table scraps. But I was unable to get any of this fabled pork—until now.
My local farmers’ market now carries real pastured pork. This pork is so much better than anything I was able to get before that it seems like a different species. The meat has incredible flavor, perfect fat content, and makes me feel good after eating it, something that never happened with any other kind of pork.
Real Pork
These pigs are not penned and stuffed with soy and garbage, but roam the woods, eating their natural diet of mast, which is composed of seeds and fruits fallen from trees, various plants, bugs and the occasional small animal. They are also allowed to root in harvested organic vegetable fields and orchards, and are given the skim milk left over from making cream and butter. Even better, these pigs are from the famous Berkshire heritage breed, a breed developed for fine eating in England, long ago.
Interestingly enough, a number of Berkshire pigs are raised in the United States, but almost all of them are exported to Japan, where their meat is called kurobata. But these Berkshires were raised and available locally.
Still better is the fact that these pigs come with a nice coating of their own life-giving fat. In fact, the pork shoulder roasts come with the skin on, and with all the beautiful fat under the skin. This is something I had read about, but almost never seen. Almost all the traditional recipes for pork roasts called for the skin to be left on. Now I would have a chance to taste why pork was so loved in traditional European cooking.
Roasting Real Pork, or Rediscovering the Lost Art of Scoring
I made the first pork roast. I roasted it carefully in a traditional way. I was surprised to see that there was very little fat in the pan. The meat was very good, with a nice flavor, fairly tender, and tasted nothing like the soy-fed pork that I disliked.
But something was missing. It was very good, but not great. Great is my standard for grassfed meat, not good. Good is just not good enough. It is not that I am a great cook—it is that traditional meat does taste great, when properly cooked, and anyone can learn to properly cook grassfed meat. The greatness is in the natural meat humankind has been eating for thousands of years. In other words, the greatness comes from the meat, not the cook. There is a very old saying—“God gives us good meat, the devil sends us cooks.â€
If I cook grassfed meat and it tastes only good, then I know I have done something wrong.
I did a bit of research, and learned about the lost art of scoring. Several old books stated clearly that scoring was the most important part of cooking a pork roast. Most Americans have never even heard of it. The old books assumed everybody would do it as a matter of course.
Scoring means making long parallel cuts through the skin and fat of the pork roast, stopping short of cutting into the meat. Some books advocated making these cuts every quarter inch. I started to score my next roast, and learned that it was not easy to cut through the tough, slippery skin. I sharpened a sturdy knife, got a glove that would give me a good grip, and set to work, being careful to angle the edge of the knife away from the hand holding the pork. This went much easier, though I decided that making cuts every half inch was sufficient.
I roasted the pork the same way I had the previous roast, with the only difference being the scoring. The smell coming from the oven made me so hungry it was hard to wait for the meat to finish cooking. The taste was fantastic, like no pork I had ever tasted before. Very tender, juicy without being wet, rich without being greasy, with a wonderful deep flavor that makes me hungry just to think of it. I now understood why pork roasts were so loved in the past. I felt good and renewed after eating the roast—again a new experience.
And this was a shoulder roast, one of the cheapest parts of the pig!
It is only necessary to score large cuts of pork that have the skin on. Smaller cuts can be delicious without being scored, but trust me on this, a scored pork roast is more than worth all the extra work.
My next book, which will be on barbecuing grassfed meat, will have some wonderful recipes for pastured pork. My thanks to the heroic farmers who are reintroducing real pork to the American people.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday Blog Carnivals.
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