Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Traditional Food Combinations, and What They Mean
One of the oldest traditional Chinese food combinations: ginger, garlic, and green onion.
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Our culture looks at the nutritional value of each type of food separately. For example, we are told the amount of calories, and the nutrients contained in a potato. Or we are told to eat a certain group of foods daily, with little attention paid to what they are actually eaten with, or how they are prepared, as long as certain “bad” foods are avoided.
Yet our ancestors paid enormous attention to combining different foods, herbs, and spices, and to how they were prepared. Thousands of combinations and preparation methods were developed, and food was always eaten and prepared in harmony with these traditions.
Why did they go to so much trouble and effort, and follow these very distinct rules and traditions?
When they wrote about it, or passed down the tradition verbally, our ancestors were clear that these traditions were developed to enhance nutrition and health, with taste being a secondary though important consideration.
In my opinion, this is precious knowledge, often reflecting thousands of years of human experience and testing, and well worth preserving, and using.
How Food Combinations Work
When you eat several kinds of foods at one meal, your body does not process each food item separately, but processes the combination of what is eaten. We know that combining different substances often changes their effect, and can create a combined effect.
For example, let us look at the potato. Potatoes are classed as carbohydrates, and believed to cause hyperglycemic effects. But few people eat potatoes in isolation. In traditional Europe, potatoes were usually eaten with a large amount of animal fat. Some studies have indicated that eating potatoes with fat can counter the glycemic effect. No doubt eating potatoes with other foods also changes the effects of the potatoes, in ways that have not been scientifically studied.
Different cultures would eat many different things with potatoes as well as fat. For example, it became a widespread tradition in Europe and the U.S. to often combine meat and potatoes. In fact, the combination became so widespread and common that the phrase “meat and potatoes” Â meant the foods that were essential for a complete meal.
Later research has established that meat is essentially an acidic food, and that potatoes are essentially an alkaline food. We know that it is important for our health to maintain the right acid/alkaline balance in our bodies. I suspect the tradition of eating meat and potatoes (or meat with alkaline foods), stems from old knowledge of how to combine foods. Knowledge learned without the benefits of chemistry or studies, learned instead through long experience.
One of the oldest and most common Chinese food combinations is to use, ginger, garlic, and green onions together, in a multitude of dishes. We know that each of these foods has beneficial effects individually, but no one appears to have studied them in combination. Yet the Chinese tradition of combining them reflects a belief that they are far more effective in combination than alone, which may very well be true.
How to Learn and Use Traditional Food Combinations
Fortunately, many of these combinations have been preserved as recipes and traditions. We can get the benefits just by using these recipes, with real food ingredients. We do not even need to know what they do, to get the benefits.
There are so many of them that I will not even attempt to list them, but I do use them in cooking. Not only does this usually result in a delicious meal, but I believe the nutritional and beneficial effects of the food is enhanced by using these traditional combinations. I am working on a new cookbook that is based on using some of these traditional combinations in easy recipes, using only real food ingredients. Testing the recipes for this book has been absolutely delicious!
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Grassfed Hamburgers Are Not Boring!
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Hamburger with Kebab Flavors—ready to cook.
I used to hate hamburger, and ground beef in all its forms. Factory beef makes terrible hamburgers, in my opinion. But that all changed when I switched to grassfed ground beef, and found that I loved it.
As one of my favorite grassfed ranchers once said, “These are hamburger times, not steak times.” Many people think hamburger is boring and uninteresting. Yet many cultures celebrate traditional ground meat dishes, and often prefer them to more expensive cuts.
The beauty of ground grassfed meat is that you can do so much with it. You can add all kinds of ingredients, and the variety is limited only by your imagination and research ability. I have found that traditional ground meat flavor combinations can make the plain hamburger into a delicious, nutritious, delight.
Traditional Ground Meat Delights
I first learned of the value that other cultures give ground meat mixtures when I went to an ethnic restaurant with a friend who wanted to introduce me to his native cuisine. There were many grilled items, and I asked him what he liked best. I thought it might be the lamb kebabs, or the marinated chicken kebabs. Instead, he enthusiastically recommended the ground meat kebabs, which he said were the best thing on the menu. I took his recommendation, and was astonished by how flavorful and good they were.
Many cultures have their own unique traditional ways of preparing ground grassfed meat. The meat is almost always mixed with other ingredients. In Germany, the meat could be mixed with eggs, breadcrumbs, cream, and a little nutmeg. In Poland, a ground onion might be mixed into the meat, with some bread that was soaked in milk, squeezed dry, and incorporated into the burger.
Armenians could mix finely chopped parsley and onions into the meat, along with various spices. In India, curry spices and other ingredients could be mixed into the meat. The combinations are endless.
Turning Grassfed Hamburger into a Delicious Masterpiece
The key to having a flavorful variety in burgers is to mix other ingredients into the meat.
I have tried traditional flavor combinations with grassfed ground beef, grassfed ground bison, grassfed ground lamb, and pastured ground pork. I have used olive oil, all kinds of minced vegetables, eggs, egg yolks, toasted sesame oil, milk, cream, fish sauce, and a huge variety of spices from all over the world. By using traditional flavor combinations as a guide, I have come up with a variety of wonderful burgers that are very distinct in their taste and flavors. The ground meat recipes I have published in Tender Grassfed Barbecue include:
- Great Plains Cherry Bison Burger
- Balkan Burger
- Transylvanian Garlic Burger
- Cinnamon Burger
- Curry Burger, and
- Cajun Burger, to name a few. They are all different, yet delicious.
My upcoming cookbook will include many new recipes for grassfed ground meat, including this one that I have already shared on the Internet:
Ground grassfed meat need never be boring, and can be delicious in so many ways!
This post is part of Fat Tuesday blog carnival.
Science Verifies Health Benefits of Traditional Food Combinations
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Traditional Chinese seasoning combination of garlic, ginger, and green onions.
In researching my upcoming book on traditional cooking, I was fascinated to see how many cultures ate particular food combinations. Certain foods and spices would always be eaten together. I saw this in the traditional cuisines of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America, almost everywhere. Why were these foods always combined in a particular cuisine?
I did a bit of research and was delighted to find that science has verified the health benefits of some of these traditional food combinations.
Our ancestors were remarkably well informed about the foods they ate, even without science and research. They had their traditions, which represented the collected knowledge of their ancestors, passed down from father to son, from mother to daughter, over the centuries. Not all of these traditions have been verified, but some of them have been.
Some Verified Benefits of Traditional Food Combinations
Throughout traditional Europe, bread was always eaten with butter. In areas were butter was hard to get, bread was always eaten with some other fat. In many areas it was pork lard or pork fat, often spread on the bread while still raw. Bread was also fried in bacon grease. Olive oil was sometimes used, especially in Southern Italy. But some kind of fat, usually a lot of fat, was always spread on the bread.
Potatoes were also always eaten with fat, including butter, cheese, cream, lard, bacon, chicken fat, duck fat, beef tallow, lamb tallow, and other animal fats.
Bread and potatoes are very high in carbohydrates, and can cause glycemic effects that can harm the body.
Science has verified that fat slows the absorption of the sugar from carbohydrates. This can slow down and often prevent the harmful “sugar rush” effect of eating carbs and sugars. Thus the traditions of always eating these carb-heavy foods with fat had a definite health benefit.
Another example is the Chinese seasoning combination of garlic, ginger, and green onions, which is used in a huge number of traditional Chinese dishes. All of these vegetables have proven antibacterial and blood purifying effects, and ginger is known to help digestion. There was an old Chinese belief that ginger drove “the devils” out of the food. The numerous health benefits of garlic have been proven by science, as have the antibacterial effects of green onions. The combination of all three has not been tested, but I suspect that they are even more effective in combination.
Turmeric has proven antibacterial and anti-inflammatory qualities, and recent research has shown that it may help the natural processes of the body avoid Alzheimer’s disease. Even more recent research has shown that the helpful effect of turmeric is substantially increased when it is consumed with black pepper, which has a substance that works to increase the beneficial effects of curcumin (the active ingredient in turmeric).
Turmeric is a very common spice in India, being a component of almost every curry spice combination. Turmeric is nearly always combined with black pepper in these dishes.
India may have the lowest rate of Alzheimer’s disease in the developed world.
These are just a few of the traditional food combinations whose beneficial qualities have been verified by science. There are many others. There are other food combinations that have not been tested, but I suspect that they are very beneficial as well.
Hippocrates, the greatest of ancient physicians, said it best, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.â€
Words of wisdom.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
The Magic of Meat and Potatoes—and Fat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Grassfed meat and organic potatoes roasted in grassfed beef fat.
Meat and potatoes were once so popular that the very term came to mean the very essence, the indispensible part of anything, the “meat and potatoes.†In terms of a good main meal, meat and potatoes were always there, and anything else was optional.
The attempts to ram grain and vegetables down people’s throats, as exemplified by the ridiculous food pyramid, changed this. Meat has been demonized as unhealthy in a myriad of ways. Potatoes, with their high glycemic index and starch content, have also come under attack, and are avoided by the low-carb movement.
Yet the combination of meat and potatoes is a very old tradition in Europe, one that goes back centuries, back to the introduction of the potato. It was the foundation of the diet (when people could get meat), and they thrived on it. However, the European tradition had a third component, perhaps the most important of all—fat. Fat that was almost always from animal sources, like butter, bacon, lard, beef tallow, lamb tallow, etc. Of course, animal fat is the most demonized food of all.
Demonization aside, the combination of meat, potatoes, and fat is one of the most nutritious and delicious combinations you can have in a meal. Most of our main meals feature this combination, and we thrive on it.
But it is crucial to use the right meat, the right potatoes, and the right fat. Together they create a wonderful balance, both in nutrition and pH balance, and are one of the tastiest food combinations.
The Right Meat Is Raised in a Pasture, Not a Feedlot
When most Americans think of meat, they think of the relatively tasteless, watery, mushy, greasy, nutrition-light factory meat that comes out of feedlots, having been fattened on GMO corn, GMO soy, and a variety of other unnatural feeds that can easily include rendered chicken manure. While this kind of meat is considered safe to eat, safe is not enough. This meat just will not work as part of the traditional trilogy of meat, potatoes, and fat.
Grassfed and grass finished meat, the same kind of meat that was eaten when the meat-potatoes-fat tradition began, is a very different substance. Grassfed meat has incredible flavor, has a nice meaty texture, is not greasy, and is nutrient-dense, having the right ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids, and a number of valuable nutrients that are often missing in factory meat.
Grassfed meat is the right meat.
The Right Potatoes Are Not Saturated with Pesticides
The potatoes eaten when the meat-potatoes-fat combination began were not sprayed with pesticides. Most potatoes in the United States are heavily sprayed with a multitude of pesticides, and are one of the most pesticide-heavy foods you can get. The only way to avoid this is to get organic potatoes.
Dr. Weston A. Price studied some of the traditional peoples of Peru, and found them to be free of chronic diseases and tooth decay. Organic potatoes were an important part of their diet, though they ate many animal foods and seafood as well.
The right potatoes are organic potatoes.
The Right Fat Comes from Animals, Not Factory Crops
The fat eaten when the meat-potatoes-fat tradition began in Europe was the fat of grassfed animals, or the fat from their milk. The one exception was olive oil, though olive oil was often combined with animal fats in cooking.
The fat that comes from modern vegetable oils just will not work for this combination, as it did not even exist when the meat-potatoes-fat combination began. These oils have a very high ratio of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids, which is very undesirable. The fats that should not be used include: soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil. An excellent article on this subject is Know Your Fats Introduction.
It is crucial that the fat comes from grassfed and/or pastured animals, eating their natural food, so the fat will be similar to the fat available when the meat-potatoes-fat combination began. This includes butter, full-fat cheese, full-fat milk, full-fat cream, full-fat yogurt, full-fat sour cream, full-fat cultured cream, natural unhydrogenated pork lard, grassfed beef tallow, lamb tallow, bison tallow, and the fat from pastured chickens, geese, and ducks. These fats are extremely nutritious and lend an incredible flavor to food.
The right fat is the fat of grassfed animals, the fat from their milk, and the fat of pastured animals.
Meat, Potatoes, and Fat Balance Each Other
I have come to understand that traditional food combinations stand the test of time because they are beneficial. Time and time again, science has confirmed the wisdom of these traditions.
For example, it is known that it is important to maintain a body pH balance that is not too acidic or alkaline, with slightly alkaline being ideal. Meat is acidic, and potatoes are one of the most alkaline foods you can eat. They are a perfect balance for each other. This may explain why the meat and potato combination was so popular, as traditional peoples always seemed to know what foods should be eaten together.
The adverse effects of the high glycemic index of potatoes are avoided when the potatoes are eaten with plenty of good fat. The fat changes the way that high glycemic foods are digested and absorbed. Again, traditional peoples seemed to know this. In Europe, potatoes were always eaten with plenty of good, natural, traditional fat. Potatoes were baked with cream and milk, fried in lard, fried in butter, fried with bacon, made into casseroles with butter and cheese, covered with sour cream or butter, and combined with cheese and baked into pies. These are just a few of the thousands of ways fat and potatoes were combined. Even the poor would dip their boiled potatoes into butter, or eat them with full-fat milk or cheese.
All of the potato recipes in Tender Grassfed Meat contain plenty of good fat, and they are intended to be eaten with meat, following the tradition.
The food trilogy of grassfed meat, organic potatoes, and natural fat provides the body with an incredible combination of nutrients—leading to satisfaction and contentment.
The taste benefits of meat, potatoes, and fat are just as incredible. I know because I eat this combination almost every day, in many delicious variations.
Here’s to meat and potatoes—and fat!
Related Post
Steak and French Fries—Still My Favorite Meal
This post is part of Monday Mania and Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday Blog Carnivals.