Where’s the beef?
We were on an Alitalia jumbo jet bound for Rome from New York. Some 38,000 feet over the cold, dark Atlantic waters, the flight attendant placed a plate of piping-hot ravioli on my airplane table. My grandma, who was seated next to me, got something vegetarian.
As she started to eat, I spooned a few plump, square dumplings onto her plate.
“You’re going to love this grandma,” I told her.
“What’s this?” she asked, eyeing my meal curiously.
“It’s a kind of pasta. Just taste it,” I insisted.
Carefully, she picked one up with her fork. I could see that she was relishing it.
“Do you like it?” I asked, a twinkle in my eye.
She nodded.
“Well, it’s filled with beef,” I erupted into a peal of laughter as I disclosed that.
I was happy because I knew that I had done something naughty. No sooner than I told her that, she pushed the poor raviolis to one side of her plate.
“Didn’t I tell you I don’t eat cow’s meat?” she berated, mockingly. She immediately washed down what little she had had with sips of apple juice.
A meaty dilemma
Grandma loved seafood. She didn’t mind chicken and mutton. But beef and pork were blasphemous to her. Avoiding one and not the other seemed illogical to me as a teen. They’re all mammals, after all.
Her daughter – my mom – was an accomplished cook as well as an excellent entertainer. She would host lavish spreads that began with interesting hors d’oeuvre and ended with the most scrumptious of desserts. She never offered, ate, or even purchased beef, though. Our household knew only chicken and mutton.
So, where did I acquire the taste for beef?
A classmate’s lunch
Long ago, in a lovely school named Loreto Convent in a pretty, hilly, little state called Meghalaya, I would sit in a quiet corner of its gym, eating morsels, whose name I didn’t know. It was a forbidden treat for two reasons. For one, I was helping myself to another kid’s lunch, while she was busy playing. For another, I knew that my mom would be mad at me, if she got a phone call from the principal, a redoubtable nun.
Later, growing up outside India, I discovered something splendid called a hamburger. It was mostly in that form that I would eat beef – a patty between two buns – at McDonald’s and Roy Rogers. When we flew, I’d ask for steaks.
A brown girl learns to brown meat
Eating beef was one thing, but cooking it was another matter entirely. I had to take baby steps.
It began with cookery shows like “Pioneer Woman” (hosted by Ree Drummond) and “Barefoot Contessa” (hosted by Ina Garten), among others on Food Network. Drummond, who runs her show from a ranch in Oklahoma and makes meals that a cowboy would love, is at the other end of the gastronomic spectrum from Garten, who takes a beloved diner staple—the tuna melt—to the next level by adding Emmental, instead of Cheddar.
After watching countless hours of these programs, I’ve observed that regardless of their take on fare, elegant or hearty, they had the same technique for preparing beef.
It would start with “browning” or “searing.” Browning is the process of cooking the meat at a lower temperature, longer, until it develops a brown color. Searing is cooking the meat on very high heat and quickly, such that it develop a deep brown crust on it. You brown or you sear depending on the kind of beef you have on hand.
Becoming a beef eater
To me, ground beef seemed like an easy place to start, but there was still much to learn. For example:
- Washing ground beef (or any other ground meat) is a no-no. Under running water, it washes away, like sand on a beach.
- Ground beef cooks in its own fat, but a little oil helps it to cook better.
- Not all ground beef is the same. Ground chuck has more fat than ground sirloin and so, it’s also more flavorful, which is what makes it good for making hamburgers.
Chuck?
Sirloin?
I came from a carnivore culture, where “cut” was a verb that meant dividing a hunk of meat into pieces, with a knife or a curved blade. The butcher only needed to know three things: One: Did you want your order with bones or without bones? Two: Did you want the pieces to be cut into big pieces or small pieces? Three: Did you want a lot of fat or little fat?
Meat on the menu
In America (and the rest of the West), cut is also a noun. I had to bone up on that topic.
In the U.S., there are eight “primal cuts” (chuck, rib, loin, round, flank, plate, brisket and shank), each of which has its own unique flavor, texture and fat content. They, in turn, are cut into smaller, “sub-primal cuts,” pieces, which, in turn, are broken into “secondary cuts.”
These cuts can neither be cooked the way my mom cooked chicken or mutton, nor can they be cooked in a Teflon-coated cookware. They need to be seared in something that would tolerate the intense heat. And so, I got a skillet, made of cast iron, an object that weighs about six pounds. I also have an enameled Dutch oven.
When I started going to Whole Foods to get my meat, I learned that I had to watch for the “marbling,” which is the presence of streaks of fat interspersed between lean meat. Fat, in beef, is a good thing. In fact, the USDA grades beef on its marbling. The more the merrier. “Prime” is better than “Choice” and that is better than “Select.”
If I could invite mom over for a meal now, I know what I would have on the menu: beef bourguignon. Would she have it? Who knows?
Photo by The Castlebar: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-woman-holding-a-barbeque-on-stick-11480989/
Photo by Szabó Viktor: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-a-burger-3272281/
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