Do You Like Chewing Gristle?

[plumtreeblossom]

I know I'm going to annoy foodies here, but I have to say this. I've been feeling less enthusiastic about trying new restaurants because of what I perceive to be a current culinary obsession with ultra-fatty cuts of meat. I actually could put quotes around the word "meat" without being hyperbolic, because some of what I've been seeing were essentially cuts of fat with a little bit of meat on them. Specifically, I reference the offerings of Highland Kitchen and Five Horses Tavern, both very highly-regarded American fine dining establishments in Somerville.

Please deliver me from pork belly, tasso ham, pancetta, bacon-steak and other vehicles of gristle that have become the shining stars of certain menus. Yes, I know they are all bacon in various unsliced fashions, and I do eat bacon, but I cook it so crisp that it would shatter if tapped lightly on the counter. The food trend seems to favor rubbery gristle, the likes of which makes my stomach ill just looking at it.

I'm not trying to challenge this trend. If you like this sort of thing, by all means enjoy. For me there is still chicken, lean fish and vegetarian dishes, and that's fine, you can have all of the gristle if it tastes good to you. I like steak, though I think I would be afraid to order one nowadays unless I could see it before ordering.

But I'm curious. If you love fatty cuts of meat, what about it do you love? What appeals? And why now are we holding the fattiest cuts of meat up as the gold standard of omnivorous cuisine? Is it the bad economy encouraging us to wean off of leaner and more expensive cuts of meat?

I'm just trying to understand.

Comments

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Ick. I hated fat and skin and gristle even when I used to eat meat.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I'm having difficulty understanding the appeal. Chunks of gristle are an automatic spit-out food when I occasionally get one in fried rice or other dish. I'm told that when I was a tiny child I used to ask for slices of fat from the roasts, but I certainly grew out of that. I can't even remember how I could stand to have it in my mouth.

Last weekend at Highland Kitchen, I saw a neighboring diner be served a plate of short ribs that made me want to throw up. They looked like a large human hand composed of pure gristle and bone.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

I eat my bacon exactly the way that you do. And I do love very thin sliced pancetta, pan fried until it's crisp. Though I haven't seen the plates you're referring to yet, I don't want such cuts in front of me either.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I learned what pork belly was a few months ago, when I mistakenly ordered something called 'bacon steak" at the East Coast Grill in Cambridge. I guess I was imagining a steak-from-a-cow, maybe cooked with bacon crumbles. What arrived was a pan-seared brick of gristle with the thinnest ribbon of meat running through it. I couldn't believe I'd been served such a thing, and I did take a tiny taste (spit out into napkin) just to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Then I passed it down the table (it was a large birthday brunch) so others could inspect and try if they wanted.

I totally support using the whole animal whenever we can, but I would have hesitated feeding this thing to a dog. Yet, people seem to love it. I don't get it.

[komos.livejournal.com]

Honestly, as long as we're taking an animal's life, I believe that's it's our responsibility to use the whole animal and not just 'when we can.'. The trouble is, as a society we're spoiled, generally expecting to be able to get prime cuts whenever we want without having to trouble with anything not on an animal's mid-section.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I do agree, and I wish my mouth would cooperate. This is why I turn a blind eye to what's in hot dogs, sausage, luncheon meat, etc. I tell myself that I'm helping eat the whole animal. It's the fruits of growing up with an Ugly American palate. :-/

[komos.livejournal.com]

In most cases, there's perfectly good meat in everything you've listed. Grinding is the mechanical method of altering tougher muscle into something tasty. The lips and assholes thing gets horribly overstated, and just for peace of mind, it's actually more cost-efficient for the large processing houses to put the truly unpalatable parts into pet food than into sausage and the like.

[jicama]

Gristle to me means cartilage, tendon or fascia, not fat. Nobody wants to eat gristle.

Fatty cuts of meat can be quite tasty when prepared properly; pork belly particularly. But you only ever want to have a small amount of it or it gets overwhelming. And it certainly shouldn't be tough to chew.

yeah

[cthulhia]

gristle ain't the same thing as charcuterie.

fat adds flavor, as long as it's not actually gristle.

also, I suspect it's a result an conscientious omnivore movement, which suggests that one should eat every bit of animals killed for food, and also encourages better farming practices that make this option less dreadfully unhealthy.

(Also, lower carb diets encourage people to sate their hunger with fat. Although, it doesn't much apply in restaurants, since most of this stuff is served with toast).

Re: yeah

[komos.livejournal.com]

Cooking pork belly doesn't really do much as a conscientious choice since it is effectively a prime cut at this point, and previously would have ended up being used for bacon anyway. Truly conscientious menu items would be things like trotters, hocks, jowls, or various pates/mousses made from off cuts (think pate de campagne and head cheese). Extra special bonus points for house-made stock and use of back fat, leaf lard, and rind.

Hope this helps a bit

[komos.livejournal.com]

That pork belly has become ubiquitous on 'new American' menus is an outgrowth of our obsession with bacon, which, in turn, wouldn't have gone to the current absurd levels without the internet. Over the past few years, a lot of Restaurants have been trending towards either following (or paying lip-service to) snout-to-tail philosophy or cooking foods from south of the Mason-Dixon (or both), and the result is a run on what had been a relatively overlooked cut of meat.

Less cynically, it's great protein for busy chefs because it is easy to prepare in advance, easy to portion, and no diner is going to balk at a 4-6 oz. piece as a complete entree (as opposed to, say, a 10-12 oz steak) because it makes an incredibly rich dish. Fat is filling, tends to carry a lot of flavor on its own, and serves as kind of the perfect vehicle for whatever flavors you pair with it. And fatty is ok, but if it's actually gristly, they're doing it wrong. Pork belly should pretty much melt to the tooth.

Minor side-point #1: if you are cooking your bacon to a brittle crisp, please make sure that you are not using bacon that was cured with nitrates/nitrites. When you burn cured meats, these will break down into compounds that are known carcinogens, and that's bad juju.

Minor side-point #2: Tasso is made from the shoulder, not the belly. Shoulder is most familiar as pulled pork, or, for the less scrupulous, the pork chops that you find with multiple bones in them. In charcuterie, it becomes coppa. In large meat-packing operations, it often ends up as ground pork.

Re: Hope this helps a bit

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Good info! There's a lot there I didn't know. Especially about the nitrates/nitrites in cured bacon. I like me some crisp bacon, so I will seek out bacon cured without those. Thanks!

[komos.livejournal.com]

Look for anything that lists "uncured" on the label. Although all bacon is technically cured, "uncured" has become industry shorthand for not using nitrate/nitrite salts. In some cases, you'll see naturally occurring nitrates in the form of celery/celery powder, but these are significantly safer. Applegate Farms makes the most ubiquitous of these, but there are plenty of others that even the huge, non-WF supermarket chains will carry.

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

I would second Jason's comment. Gristle implies something other than fat, such as cartilege. But the reason gourmands like a well marbled cut of meat is because fat is more flavourful and, when cooked properly, makes the meat's texture more succulent. The leaner the cut, the drier and less flavoured it is. But a hunk of gristle isn't really going to add anything to the meat.

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

As has been mentioned, there is a huge difference between gristle and a well marbled cut of meat. People say fat "adds flavor", but what does that mean? The human body, as we have evolved, has an innate desire for food that gives us energy and can easily be stored in the body. Thus we think of particular foods that satisfy these urges as "flavorful" or "tasty". Fat (not gristle) and skin of critters is a perfect example of such a food.

Many people have self-conditioned themselves to dislike the texture of some foods. Such is the case with fat. To some, it looks like protein jello, i.e. gross. To others, it can smell heavenly and causes otherwise bland cuts of meat to melt in your mouth (properly cooked corned beef, for instance).

It's all a matter of what you grew up with and what you have conditioned yourself to like.

[beowabbit]

I'm all about well-marbled cuts of meat, but this was just a large cube of fat, with a couple thin veins of muscle running through it. (Yes, that describes bacon, too. :-)

I'm definitely in the “protein jello” camp except that I utterly love actual jello. I do think my dislike for large chunks of fat (as opposed to marbling) is largely about texture (which is why I like bacon — cooking it crispy changes the texture, as well as changing the flavour), but it’s a little more complex than just a dislike for the rubbery chewiness of fat.

My father, on the other hand, would have loved current culinary trends. He always used to ask the rest of us fro the scraps of fat we cut off our steaks. I think he liked the fat more than he liked the meat.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Speaking of fatty meat, on the Mad Men website I just saw a recipe for Pigs in Blankets, and now I must have them. We should to make these soon. All we need are some cocktail wieners and a tube of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. :-)