Modern cooking — a rant.

[Cabinetman]

I know I’m about to get shot down for this but what the hell.
So I’ve just had a terrible nights sleep after eating almost raw meat, it started off yesterday morning with the chef on the news with a huge piece of beef and a great big smile on his face as he proclaimed that he cooked it for two hours at 128° F – hell that’s a hot afternoon in Australia! ( it looked red raw to me)
The quivering joint of lamb we had yesterday afternoon was oozing wetness and I don’t know what temperature it was cooked at but son-in-law that did it cooks by temperature, when it’s reached a temperature low enough to kill all the bugs that’s it and I maintain it’s still a long way from being cooked! And that that’s not cooking!
A quick Look on Google and it seems over here in the land of tepid food that the health and safety people say cook to a minimum of 145F, by the time it’s served up and being eaten it’s almost cold. ( probably why they have salad with it)
Delia and Marguerite Patten say roast at 375F and as they were the cooks of my lifetime that’s what I enjoy I suppose because it develops a good flavour.
And please don’t get me started on Broccoli that you can’t cut and certainly can’t chew!
Ian

 

[AndyP]

There are better cooks than I around here but the only meat I will cook with juices still red would be fillet of beef. Had 500g joint on Saturday about 6” diameter cooked at around 250°c for around 45 mins, first 30 mins under foil. The centre only still red which is best bit IMO.

As for vegetables. Any veg that can be eaten raw (crudities) should never be served soft and mushy when cooked.

You didn’t mention roast potatoes. Adrian recommended here a while back adding marmite to the water when boiling which I have done ever since. Excellent tip and works just as well with reduced salt Marmite too.

 

[Cabinetman]

Not big on veg and roast taties over here, usually only one veg and often mash, but always salad, the only time anything like a roast potato is served its little cubes with breakfast.

 

[Steve Maskery]

We've had visitors for the weekend and we went to restaurant on Saturday evening.
We both had sea bass which was delicious if a bit of a challenge bone-wise.
One of our guests ordered the duck and when asked how she wanted it, said "bien cuit" (well done). The waiter simply said "non". He suggested medium, so she acquiesced. In fact, she said it was like the well done she actually wanted.

The myth about French cuisine being the best in the world is just that - a myth. You get better food at better prices in the UK, both is supermarkets and in restaurants. France has rested on its laurels for the past two generations, while the rest of the world has caught up and surpassed it.
S

 

[NickM]

I visited a friend who was living in Paris. We went to restaurant where we both had steak. He said that if I wanted it vaguely cooked I had to ask for it carbonisé

 

[Steve Maskery]

I think it is a generational thing, Ian. We both, along with many others on here, are the post-war baby-boomer generation. We grew up on meat-and-two-veg, and cheap cuts like brisket to boot. Cooked over a candle for a week.

We live in the Limousin region, Haute-Vienne. Quite a beefy area. But beef is not cheap here (though chicken is worse and lamb almost unobtainable, even though there is a field of them just 100m from our village and when you do find it you take out a mortgage). In Intermarche today there was a sign on the butchery counter saying the "In support of our Producers we are not offering the imported lamb that is listed in this week's catalogue". It was listed as 13€/kg. Bargain. The trouble was they were not offering any French lamb at all!

I've given up trying to cook steak, it never comes out juicy for me and its too expensive to experiment with. I did, however spatchcock an organic (and therefore expensive) chicken on Friday and it was the juiciest, most flavourful bird I've ever pulled. And I now have a dish of peri-peri chicken dripping for my toast for the rest of the week. Yum.
S

 

[Cabinetman]

I think it is a generational thing, Ian. We both, along with many others on here, are the post-war baby-boomer generation. We grew up on meat-and-two-veg, and cheap cuts like brisket to boot. Cooked over a candle for a week.

We live in the Limousin region, Haute-Vienne. Quite a beefy area. But beef is not cheap here (though chicken is worse and lamb almost unobtainable, even though there is a field of them just 100m from our village and when you do find it you take out a mortgage). In Intermarche today there was a sign on the butchery counter saying the "In support of our Producers we are not offering the imported lamb that is listed in this week's catalogue". It was listed as 13€/kg. Bargain. The trouble was they were not offering any French lamb at all!

I've given up trying to cook steak, it never comes out juicy for me and its too expensive to experiment with. I did, however spatchcock an organic (and therefore expensive) chicken on Friday and it was the juiciest, most flavourful bird I've ever pulled. And I now have a dish of peri-peri chicken dripping for my toast for the rest of the week. Yum.
S

Yes I think you’re right about it being us baby boomers, I was surprised by the not so good food in Restaurants when I was last there about 20 years ago, but then when I visited Belgium more recently I was overwhelmed by the quality in a small restaurant we found.
Re your chicken I hope you will be making stock from all the bits left over. I’m sure it was the good quality stock that made the Belgian meal so good.
Ian

 

[Inspector]

We get a butchered steer from a rancher every year and all the roasts are either slow cooked in the wood pellet smoker or cooked vacuum bagged (sometimes overnight) with a sous vide thing my wife bought a couple years ago. Even takes the frozen roast and tosses it into the water bath and the sous vide brings I up to the set temperature and holds it there until we take it out to the barbecue for a 10 minute sear to brown the outside. Cut it with a fork it is so tender, not bloody or tough. I grew up with meat cooked well done and dry because of a fear of bacteria or worms. I presume because of lack of refrigeration and eating whatever could be found during the War. I prefer meat medium rare. Well done is for shoe soles. I like either potatoes or rice and a couple three cooked vegetables, steamed or stir fried. Salads occasionally except when the garden is producing, then lots while fresh. Life is too short to eat processed convenience dung.

Pete

 

[Spectric]

We grew up on meat-and-two-veg, and cheap cuts like brisket to boot. Cooked over a candle for a week.

There was a time when cooking was just something done without any fuss and things had to be prepared, vegetables peeled and time spent in the kitchen but now the newer lot want less time in the kitchen and use frozen stuff as well as eating total carp from takeaways. They are also more easily led by what they see so eating meat that is barely dead is not questioned. I have not eaten anything that has walked, crawled or flown for over thirty years, just don't like the idea of bowel cancer which is linked to excess red and processed meat.

 

[Gill]

Food shouldn’t be homework. Nobody should have to put effort into eating, be it chewing undercooked broccoli or sucking the brains out of a prawn’s head. This is a hill I am prepared to die on, probably due to salmonella.

 

[Stuart]

I detest ‘raw’ meat but will accept some pink in a decent steak. I’m well aware that others regard this as heresy but frankly, I don’t give a damn.

I refuse to be told how I should have my food cooked when I know how I want it cooked. I’ve had arguments with ‘chefs’ about this and even left restaurants when they’ve insisted they won’t cook to my taste. I think you’ll find I’m paying for it so I can have it how I want!

Yes Ian, - a fully justified rant!

 

[Sheffield Tony]

To my taste, the Greeks have it right where roasting lamb is concerned. Long, slow. Until it is close to falling apart. To me the joy of meat is in the caramelised flavours from cooking, it is unappealing raw.

Having seen a range of cookery programmes on TV (DW watches all of them, I think), I have come to the conclusion that the taste for undercooked meat and the conviction that this is the correct way to do it comes from restaurant cookery - they don't have time to cook it any more if preparing fresh, so have managed to convince people that barely half-cooked is the only correct way.

Artificial haste seems to be a widespread problem in TV programmes on any sort of craft. Frantic skills tests. Baking cakes without enough time for it to cool before decorating. Preparing ice-cream without enough time for it to freeze. Limitations of restaurant situation that you don't need to take home.

 

[John Brown]

To my taste, the Greeks have it right where roasting lamb is concerned. Long, slow. Until it is close to falling apart. To me the joy of meat is in the caramelised flavours from cooking, it is unappealing raw.

Having seen a range of cookery programmes on TV (DW watches all of them, I think), I have come to the conclusion that the taste for undercooked meat and the conviction that this is the correct way to do it comes from restaurant cookery - they don't have time to cook it any more if preparing fresh, so have managed to convince people that barely half-cooked is the only correct way.

Artificial haste seems to be a widespread problem in TV programmes on any sort of craft. Frantic skills tests. Baking cakes without enough time for it to cool before decorating. Preparing ice-cream without enough time for it to freeze. Limitations of restaurant situation that you don't need to take home.

Lamb kleftiko! It's making my mouth water just thinking about it!

 

[spb]

Having seen a range of cookery programmes on TV (DW watches all of them, I think), I have come to the conclusion that the taste for undercooked meat and the conviction that this is the correct way to do it comes from restaurant cookery - they don't have time to cook it any more if preparing fresh, so have managed to convince people that barely half-cooked is the only correct way.

Yes and no.

Fatty cuts of meat with lots of connective tissue, say a shoulder of lamb or a beef brisket, need to be cooked long and slow to break down the collagen and render the fat. That fat and collagen will keep it moist and juicy when cooked thoroughly and slowly. Lean cuts like most steaks, or a rack of lamb, don't have that benefit, and if you cook them all the way through they dry out and get tough.

Restaurants that cook to order don't have time to do long and slow, so they don't serve the cuts that need it. The cuts of meat they have in their kitchen are the ones that can be cooked quickly, and those cuts benefit from being left pink so that they don't dry out. They have more than enough time to cook a rib eye to well done if that's what you really want, but what they don't have time for is to slow roast a lamb shoulder to order. Even the most die-hard "death before well done steak" fanatic won't eat a rare brisket out of choice.

Until quite recently those lean cuts were also infeasibly expensive for every day home cooking, and restaurants were so expensive as to be a very rare occasion, so those that grew up in most of the 20th century did so with almost exclusively slow-cooked cuts of meat and undercooking is unfamiliar. Those that grew up with restaurant meals being commonplace and lean cuts being relatively affordable will find that style of quick cooking the most familiar, and I think that's the real generational shift.

 

[Cabinetman]

Yes and no.

Fatty cuts of meat with lots of connective tissue, say a shoulder of lamb or a beef brisket, need to be cooked long and slow to break down the collagen and render the fat. That fat and collagen will keep it moist and juicy when cooked thoroughly and slowly. Lean cuts like most steaks, or a rack of lamb, don't have that benefit, and if you cook them all the way through they dry out and get tough.

Restaurants that cook to order don't have time to do long and slow, so they don't serve the cuts that need it. The cuts of meat they have in their kitchen are the ones that can be cooked quickly, and those cuts benefit from being left pink so that they don't dry out. They have more than enough time to cook a rib eye to well done if that's what you really want, but what they don't have time for is to slow roast a lamb shoulder to order. Even the most die-hard "death before well done steak" fanatic won't eat a rare brisket out of choice.

Until quite recently those lean cuts were also infeasibly expensive for every day home cooking, and restaurants were so expensive as to be a very rare occasion, so those that grew up in most of the 20th century did so with almost exclusively slow-cooked cuts of meat and undercooking is unfamiliar. Those that grew up with restaurant meals being commonplace and lean cuts being relatively affordable will find that style of quick cooking the most familiar, and I think that's the real generational shift.

That’s a fair summary especially with regard to Restaurants.
But with a family meal that can just be put into the oven a bit earlier I feel they are missing out on not knowing how good it can taste.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

This is why I eat out infrequently. The food is much better at home. Perhaps because DW is obsessed with cookery programmes !

 

[AJB Temple]

Given that people regularly enjoy steak tartare (raw), the issue to me is far more about quality of produce than anything else. The older generation (my parents for example) are often wedded to quite well done meat and refuse to consider anything else. If you cook A5 wagu (say) to well done, there will be very little left at the end of cooking.

Restaurants can and do frequently use slow cooking techniques. Whether this be temp controlled ovens, cold smokers, rotisserie or sous vide, not everything is cooked to order by any means.

The quality issue is interesting. A lot of supermarket meat (beef, lamb for example) is now injected with potato starch and water. UK and US. Hence it shrinks and rapidly dehydrates when cooked. Check the small print on the backs of pre-packed joints. You will frequently find potato starch mentioned. If so, then you are buying adulterated produce and paying meat prices for water.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

The quality issue is interesting. A lot of supermarket meat (beef, lamb for example) is now injected with potato starch and water. UK and US. Hence it shrinks and rapidly dehydrates when cooked. Check the small print on the backs of pre-packed joints. You will frequently find potato starch mentioned. If so, then you are buying adulterated produce and paying meat prices for water.

Sadly this is believable. Having worked at a research institute in the Agri-Food area, one of my former colleagues was told by someone from a supermarket I won't name but that you might expect better of, that their job was to sell as much air and water as possible.

 

[AJB Temple]

It is a fact unfortunately.

Our restaurant meat supplier is also a beef farmer friend. Meat producers are well aware of this. Tesco is referenced in the video but they are not the only culprit by any means. I never buy meat from supermarkets and never buy meat that has been packed in shrink wrap plastic. The cheap meat outlets that you see on markets and in garden centres, mainly sell imported meat. I only ever buy from a traceable supply chain (farm, slaughterhouse, butcher) where I can see the animals in the field if I want and know the producers. Good quality unadulterated meat, properly aged and hung is expensive. Just eat less is my motto. Support proper butchers and fishmongers!

 

[AndyP]

Always wanted to try steak tartare but never had the nerve. Raw meat combined with raw egg is a step too far for me.

 

[AJB Temple]

Its very safe Andy - unless you are pregnant. Anyone who has ever eaten fresh mayonnaise (way better than the stuff in jars) has eaten raw eggs. Tartare is generally made from good beef fillet and as long as the knife is clean, there is no bacteria to worry about inside the fillet (which is why rare beef is fine).

Carpaccio (venison, tuna, beef, salmon ...) is also raw and delicious. As long as you go somewhere doing top quality produce and has 5 star hygiene!

 

[Dr.Al]

I've had carpaccio before and enjoyed it a lot (and ditto sashimi). I'd be willing to try steak tartare if the egg was omitted but the idea of the raw egg puts me off completely. Mayonnaise is fine as it's beaten enough to not have the texture of raw egg. I don't eat eggs with a liquid yolk so there's no way I'm eating egg with a liquid "white" as well.

 

[AJB Temple]

I've had carpaccio before and enjoyed it a lot (and ditto sashimi). I'd be willing to try steak tartare if the egg was omitted but the idea of the raw egg puts me off completely. Mayonnaise is fine as it's beaten enough to not have the texture of raw egg. I don't eat eggs with a liquid yolk so there's no way I'm eating egg with a liquid "white" as well.

The white or clear albumen is removed anyway. The yolk is either beaten in with a fork or beaten in advance with a whisk. Hence no texture of raw egg at all. It's more of an emulsifier. Plus there are seasonings such as capers, tabasco, smoked paprika, salt and pepper.

 

[NickM]

On honeymoon we were in a restaurant in Italy that had a very badly translated menu.

I chose steak in red wine sauce.

My wife chose steak in tartar sauce. It was of course steak tartare. She was surprised but didn't mind at all as she's always up for that sort of thing. The real issue is why she wanted steak in tartar sauce in the first place...

 

[Dr.Al]

The white or clear albumen is removed anyway. The yolk is either beaten in with a fork or beaten in advance with a whisk. Hence no texture of raw egg at all. It's more of an emulsifier. Plus there are seasonings such as capers, tabasco, smoked paprika, salt and pepper.

Well, maybe one day I'll be brave enough. Ideally I'd wait for my other half to order it & just have a taste to see what I thought, but she's allergic to eggs so that'll never happen!

 

[RogerS]

Always wanted to try steak tartare but never had the nerve. Raw meat combined with raw egg is a step too far for me.

And you living in France an’all

 

[AndyP]

Will be out on Saturday for our annual birthday bash (4/5ths of our birthdays fall at this time of year) so maybe, just maybe if it’s on the menu.

 

[AJB Temple]

Will be out on Saturday for our annual birthday bash (4/5ths of our birthdays fall at this time of year) so maybe, just maybe if it’s on the menu.

As a first timer ask them to prepare it for you - rather than you mixing at the table.

 

[Gill]

Last night I tried to brown turkey mince I’d bought from Lidl. Supposedly 7% fat. No matter how long I had it on the heat, all I could get was water! There was absolutely no browning whatsoever. It’ll be the local butcher for me in future, even if it the extra costs means eating less meat in future.

 

[Guineafowl21]

We made some steak tartare from the fillet of a Highland we slaughtered. The recipe we were following said it should be ‘an assault on the senses’. Very nice, but somehow also very rich. I can eat a pound of steak no problem, but not so much of the tartare.

Bear in mind, the brown-ness of meat is not a built-in indicator designed for us - meat is ‘cooked’ or safe long before it goes brown. The idea of rare, etc., is to retain some of the juiciness inside while getting the toasty brown flavours outside, the best of both worlds. What I don’t quite get is the primarily US habit of rare or medium-rare burgers - contamination would mainly be on the outside surface of the meat and be cooked away in steak form, but the mincing would bring it to the inside. The fillet tartare would be fine in this respect since it’s extensively stripped and trimmed before going into the mincer.

I used to order steaks blue in restaurants, but found they never got the grill hot enough to get it right. Now, I prefer medium-rare for ribeye (my favourite) - the longer time renders the fat better and breaks down the connective tissue somewhat. Perhaps rare for fillet, although I rarely order that.

 

[AJB Temple]

I agree ^. if I cook ribeye though, I like to break the fat eye up. I am fortunate in that I have both a Green Egg which gets seriously hot, and a Tepinyaki hob. Personally I am a fan of 70 day (ideally, 45 otherwise) dry aged fillet beef from our favoured supplier. It's worth experimenting with sous vide and reverse sear for steaks if you are foodie inclined.

Agree re burgers - but you can only safely have them rare if you hand chop or mince the meat yourself - not using shop bought mince. We are not a burger place at all though for guests. I used to eat steak blue as well - but these days for fillet I always go for rare. Partial to a bearnaise.

 

[Guineafowl21]

I agree ^. if I cook ribeye though, I like to break the fat eye up. I am fortunate in that I have both a Green Egg which gets seriously hot, and a Tepinyaki hob. Personally I am a fan of 70 day (ideally, 45 otherwise) dry aged fillet beef from our favoured supplier. It's worth experimenting with sous vide and reverse sear for steaks if you are foodie inclined.

Agree re burgers - but you can only safely have them rare if you hand chop or mince the meat yourself - not using shop bought mince. We are not a burger place at all though for guests. I used to eat steak blue as well - but these days for fillet I always go for rare. Partial to a bearnaise.

Interesting. ‘Aged’ is a term to watch, I seem to have found. It could mean the steak is vac-packed and put in a fridge for the duration, which is nowhere near as good as ‘dry-aged’, which means hung whole in the conventional fashion. I recently went to a fancy Aberdeen steak restaurant which boasted 50-day aged steaks - they were nice, but no way were they from 50-day hung carcasses. We hung our Highlands for 60 days and the meat was dry, almost purple.

Sous vide - I have a sous vide thing, sort of a water-bath controller, and a vac-packer. For a ribeye, would you say 56* for 1 hr would be right? I remember having trouble with how wet the steak was before final sear.

Reverse sear - 90* oven for a long time, then bang it up high, or sear on a griddle?

Argentinian chimichurri is very good, too.

 

[Inspector]

Do you people have mechanical tenderisers in the supermarkets and meat processing plants? Meat is feed in one end of the machine and rows of needle like blades stab the meat as it passes under. Whenever beef is recalled for bacterial contamination it is usually because they used a machine that wasn't properly sanitised. Ground beef is the same but different if you get me. I have only seen boneless cuts of beef tenderised this way and that's why if I have to get beef from a supermarket I only buy bone in cuts.

Pete

 

[Guineafowl21]

Do you people have mechanical tenderisers in the supermarkets and meat processing plants? Meat is feed in one end of the machine and rows of needle like blades stab the meat as it passes under. Whenever beef is recalled for bacterial contamination it is usually because they used a machine that wasn't properly sanitised. Ground beef is the same but different if you get me. I have only seen boneless cuts of beef tenderised this way and that's why if I have to get beef from a supermarket I only buy bone in cuts.

Pete

I don’t think so. It sounds like a good way of stab-inoculating bacterial colonies into the middle of the cut.

I do have a meat hammer, used to batter bavette steaks to translucent-thin. After some drying, 45 seconds per side on a bouncing-hot griddle does them to a nice medium, served sliced thinly after resting. Wife likes them so much, so doesn’t mind cleaning up the globs of meat distributed around the work area.

 

[Inspector]

I don’t think so. It sounds like a good way of stab-inoculating bacterial colonies into the middle of the cut.

That's exactly what happens.
Pete

 

[Lons]

...........I have both a Green Egg which gets seriously hot, and ...........

Having little interest in cooking, couldn't eat a runny egg let alone raw and same with meat I have no idea what a green egg is and therefore couldn't be bothered to look it up. This vision will haunt me though.

 

[Guineafowl21]

Having little interest in cooking, couldn't eat a runny egg let alone raw and same with meat I have no idea what a green egg is and therefore couldn't be bothered to look it up. This vision will haunt me though.

You’re like my mum - food is fuel, and as interesting as the stuff you pump into the car to make it go.

That said, she fed dad and three sons for all those years, not inventively, but pragmatically. But… my brothers and I are all keen cooks, academically interested in the subject. As my eldest brother said, ‘necessity is the mother of invention!’

In contrast, I know several women who are keen, experimental cooks, who have children who couldn’t boil an egg, and have lots of funny ‘can’t eat this, can’t eat that’ disorders. Perhaps my brother had a point - we all eat everything.

 

[Lons]

You’re like my mum - food is fuel, and as interesting as the stuff you pump into the car to make it go.

Yep that's me. My wife on the other hand loves food though there isn't a picking on her, always out with her mates for lunch which interests me not one jot.
The times I do is only to meet palls for a catch up and the food is a incidental.

 

[Inspector]

Having little interest in cooking, couldn't eat a runny egg let alone raw and same with meat I have no idea what a green egg is and therefore couldn't be bothered to look it up. This vision will haunt me though.

The Green Egg is a type of BBQ/Smoker. https://biggreenegg.ca/?utm_term=gr...MI8vq1lZPikwMVvz0IBR0idh7rEAAYASAAEgL9mvD_BwE A little out of my price range.

Pete

 

[RogerS]

“The secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.” – Mark Twain

“I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.” – W.C. Fields

“How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” Charles de Gaulle