Chilling methods could change meat tenderness
Science Daily is reporting that a recent study is showing that "blast chilling" of pork, ("Blast chilling is a rapid cooling of the muscles for at least 45 minutes at less than negative ten degrees Fahrenheit," said Steven Shackelford of USMARC.) leads to a tougher meat after it was removed from storage. The reason pork was used is that pigs are particularly susceptible to stress reactions on the kill line. John Barlow, in Everything But The Squeal points out that in Spain, pigs are killed using carbon monoxide, in order to minimize stress reactions. But then, Spain produces the finest ham in the world (the jambon iberico negro), and North America produces, well, lots of cheap pork.
Showing posts with label hogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hogs. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Sunday, August 5, 2012
500,000 Scoville Units--That's Not Too Many, Is It?
I'm making lunch today (a big lunch that will take the place of dinner), and I thought it was a good time to try a few new things. You know, now that my significant other is out of the house and can't try and change my mind. Like poaching tongue the other day. That was a decision she suggested might have been in error....
That's really unfair. Paula is very supportive when I cook, but there are some things she just has no interest in (like tongue, or offal of any sort). And also, our spice palette differs. I like to pull out the spice weasel occasionally and "kick it up a notch." And that notch is sometimes over her limit. So the time to try a ground chili powder that comes in a test tube and is rated at 500,00 scoville units is probably when she is out of the house.
I picked about five pounds of veg yesterday from the community garden plot we have, and thought I should do something with it. So, lunch. And what am I having? Well, baked potato (allegedly from BC, but how do you really know?). A pork chop--again, supposed to have been grown on the Island and certified cruelty-free. This one I trust a bit more because the store is small and local, the meat comes in once a week and is cut on premise, and I know the owner. So I pay a bit more, more secure in trusting that I'm getting what I pay for.
And I went out in the backyard yesterday and picked small purple plums. Sun-warmed, beautifully ripe, I ate most of what I picked. Even though I was disturbing one of the residents--a hummingbird flew up, tick tick tick-ed angrily at me about being in front of his favourite flower, and then perched a little more than arm's length away to watch what the crazy ape was doing.
That's really unfair. Paula is very supportive when I cook, but there are some things she just has no interest in (like tongue, or offal of any sort). And also, our spice palette differs. I like to pull out the spice weasel occasionally and "kick it up a notch." And that notch is sometimes over her limit. So the time to try a ground chili powder that comes in a test tube and is rated at 500,00 scoville units is probably when she is out of the house.
I picked about five pounds of veg yesterday from the community garden plot we have, and thought I should do something with it. So, lunch. And what am I having? Well, baked potato (allegedly from BC, but how do you really know?). A pork chop--again, supposed to have been grown on the Island and certified cruelty-free. This one I trust a bit more because the store is small and local, the meat comes in once a week and is cut on premise, and I know the owner. So I pay a bit more, more secure in trusting that I'm getting what I pay for.
And I went out in the backyard yesterday and picked small purple plums. Sun-warmed, beautifully ripe, I ate most of what I picked. Even though I was disturbing one of the residents--a hummingbird flew up, tick tick tick-ed angrily at me about being in front of his favourite flower, and then perched a little more than arm's length away to watch what the crazy ape was doing.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Nose To Tail 1
Spent my Sunday in the kitchen, dodging the Significant Other, who was baking bread and cinnamon rolls. I, on the other hand, was trying my hand at a couple of new things.
First up was rolls. I had meant to pick up some won-ton wrappers at the local market (Victoria is extremely lucky in that we have both a large Asian community and a local grocery chain that caters to them. This means access to a lot of items that are more difficult to find in the majors—like the black-skinned Silky chickens that are the breed used in traditional Chinese cooking). Instead of buying the won-ton wrappers, I found egg roll wrappers. The ingredient list was short (five items, only one of which was a preservative), and they were cheap (around two bucks), and they had a suggested use recipe on the front. So, I was sold.
So, lunch was pretty simple. Ground pork, spiced and flavoured, fried up. Added rice flour to thicken the juices. Flipped it out onto a plate. Put the skillet back on the stove and added about 25mm of (GM free) canola oil and let it heat. Peeled a wrap off the stack, wet the edges with a flour/water paste, and began building. I kept it pretty simple; spiced meat, enoki mushrooms, and bean sprouts.
Created the roll (following the folding instructions on the package, but really, it is pretty straightforward), slipped it into the hot oil, and went back to make another. Apparently I heated the oil just right. As I put one in, the previous roll was ready for flipping or removal. No smoke, no excessive browning. Just nice, crisp, deep-fried rolls.
With lunch under our belts (and the rolls were good enough that it was difficult to stop eating them, so the belt was a bit strained), my next chore was poaching tongue. I had bought two pork tongues Friday, and, on getting them home, put them in brine for about twenty-four hours as per my guru of nose-to-tail eating, Jennifer McLagan.
First up was rolls. I had meant to pick up some won-ton wrappers at the local market (Victoria is extremely lucky in that we have both a large Asian community and a local grocery chain that caters to them. This means access to a lot of items that are more difficult to find in the majors—like the black-skinned Silky chickens that are the breed used in traditional Chinese cooking). Instead of buying the won-ton wrappers, I found egg roll wrappers. The ingredient list was short (five items, only one of which was a preservative), and they were cheap (around two bucks), and they had a suggested use recipe on the front. So, I was sold.
So, lunch was pretty simple. Ground pork, spiced and flavoured, fried up. Added rice flour to thicken the juices. Flipped it out onto a plate. Put the skillet back on the stove and added about 25mm of (GM free) canola oil and let it heat. Peeled a wrap off the stack, wet the edges with a flour/water paste, and began building. I kept it pretty simple; spiced meat, enoki mushrooms, and bean sprouts.
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| Enoki Mushrooms--Photo by Chris 73 / Wikimedia Commons |
Created the roll (following the folding instructions on the package, but really, it is pretty straightforward), slipped it into the hot oil, and went back to make another. Apparently I heated the oil just right. As I put one in, the previous roll was ready for flipping or removal. No smoke, no excessive browning. Just nice, crisp, deep-fried rolls.
With lunch under our belts (and the rolls were good enough that it was difficult to stop eating them, so the belt was a bit strained), my next chore was poaching tongue. I had bought two pork tongues Friday, and, on getting them home, put them in brine for about twenty-four hours as per my guru of nose-to-tail eating, Jennifer McLagan.
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| Odd Bits cover from Jennifer McLagan |
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
This Little Piggie
Was dubbed the Enviropig by researchers at Ontario's University of Guelph.
It was developed (when it's a genetically modified organism, can you really use the word "bred"?) in 1999 to deal with the problem of too much phosphorus in swine manure spread on fields. Phosphorus is linked to massive, river-choking, algal blooms, and run-off from manure-treated fields have been point sources for phosphorus.
Of course, this is only a problem when you have too much swine manure to spread--typically a problem with industrial scale hog rearing operations. These operations can house upwards of 500,000 hogs on one site. When the Enviropig (dubbed "Frankenswine" by detractors) was developed, one of the creators enthused that industrial hog operations would be able to support twice the hogs on the same footprint of land. Oh, and with no increase in phosphorus run-off.
This is typical of factory farming; Each problem caused by industrial farming practice has to have a technological solution that allows the same type of farming to continue. That the problem might be the raising of too damn many hogs on to small a space is never addressed.
That there are feed additives that can reduce swine manure phosphorus levels are also unacceptable as they would raise the cost per carcass (according to the Globe and Mail article) by ~$1.70Can. The money put into developing Enviropig, on the other hand, would be diffused over millions of hogs per year. But the public never came on board with eating GMO animals. Quoted in the Toronto Star,
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| From the University of Guelph website |
Of course, this is only a problem when you have too much swine manure to spread--typically a problem with industrial scale hog rearing operations. These operations can house upwards of 500,000 hogs on one site. When the Enviropig (dubbed "Frankenswine" by detractors) was developed, one of the creators enthused that industrial hog operations would be able to support twice the hogs on the same footprint of land. Oh, and with no increase in phosphorus run-off.
This is typical of factory farming; Each problem caused by industrial farming practice has to have a technological solution that allows the same type of farming to continue. That the problem might be the raising of too damn many hogs on to small a space is never addressed.
That there are feed additives that can reduce swine manure phosphorus levels are also unacceptable as they would raise the cost per carcass (according to the Globe and Mail article) by ~$1.70Can. The money put into developing Enviropig, on the other hand, would be diffused over millions of hogs per year. But the public never came on board with eating GMO animals. Quoted in the Toronto Star,
Cecil Forsberg, an emeritus professor of molecular and cellular biology at the university who was in charge of the project, said he agreed with the decision.I'm not convinced that we will "catch up." I suspect that the violent swings of global climate change over the next 20 years will give us a lot more to worry about than how much pig we have to eat. The question is more "will we be able to acquire enough calories to maintain life?" Industrial farming may be at it's historical high-water mark.
When the first such pig was created in 1999, he said, “I had the feeling in seven or eight or nine years that transgenic animals probably would be acceptable. But I was wrong. It’s time to stop the program until the rest of the world catches up,” he said. “And it is going to catch up.”
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Good News / Bad News
The good news: an application to develop a 25,000 head pig farm has been turned down by a municipal council. It may not be the death knell for this particular farm, but it is a significant set-back.
The bad news? Regretfully, this took place in South Derbyshire on a greenfield site west of the historic village of Foston. Industrial pig farming is still alive and well in North America.
And really, it is absurd; there have been a numbert of studies in Canada that show that mega-farms like this actually damage the local economy and lower a municipality's tax revenue when adjacent property values are lowered because of the mega-farm.
image sourced from The Guardian
When I raised pigs, I worried about not having farrowing crates for my sows (as in the photograph above). What I discovered is that pigs have perfectly good instinctual behaviour that keeps them from laying down on their young--which is what the farrowing crate is supposed to prevent. Pigs will walk in an ever-tightening circle before laying down, pushing their iglets into the centre of the circle. Then, when they are certain that ll the little ones are in a heap, they flop down to the outside of the circle, at which the piglets charge to attach to a nipple. Just like only bored and overcrowded pigs will bite each others tails, so docking isn't necessary. Pictures like the one above are artifacts of imposing an industrial production model in place of natural behaviours.
The bad news? Regretfully, this took place in South Derbyshire on a greenfield site west of the historic village of Foston. Industrial pig farming is still alive and well in North America.
And really, it is absurd; there have been a numbert of studies in Canada that show that mega-farms like this actually damage the local economy and lower a municipality's tax revenue when adjacent property values are lowered because of the mega-farm.
image sourced from The Guardian
When I raised pigs, I worried about not having farrowing crates for my sows (as in the photograph above). What I discovered is that pigs have perfectly good instinctual behaviour that keeps them from laying down on their young--which is what the farrowing crate is supposed to prevent. Pigs will walk in an ever-tightening circle before laying down, pushing their iglets into the centre of the circle. Then, when they are certain that ll the little ones are in a heap, they flop down to the outside of the circle, at which the piglets charge to attach to a nipple. Just like only bored and overcrowded pigs will bite each others tails, so docking isn't necessary. Pictures like the one above are artifacts of imposing an industrial production model in place of natural behaviours.
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