The Taste of Meat

    Since I've recently done two posts on food , I thought I would live dangerously and do a third post on food. Now I'm not a cook. Oh yes, I can make a meals. I do breakfast and lunch every day but they are not a big challenge. I can also do dinners. Now for dinners my cooking is very ordinary...meat, potatoes and veggies and throw in a salad.

     Now the other day I was talking to my son-in-law and he asked what I was having for Thanksgiving. Now when two curious teachers are talking the subject can quickly take different directions. So Robert asked if I'd ever had duck. Well yes , but I'm not that fussy about it. How about goose he asks. Well goose is pretty greasy. So we decided duck and goose was only so so. But I know the Micro Manager's favorite meal of all time is duck in orange sauce. 

    Now that shifted the topic again. I think meat should mostly stand on it's own as far as flavor is concerned. So the orange sauce completely overwhelms the taste of duck. The duck might as well not be there and you would enjoy a nice orange sauce. Some steak is marinated to death. All you can taste is marinade and there's no meat taste.

    Now what I'm trying to say, with my limited knowledge, is that I don't like meat cooked so that the meat taste is lost or overpowered by sauces. Now I'm sure people who have much more knowledge and experience will beg to differ with my biased opinion.

   I have two meals that I won't ever forget. When we butchered on the farm we always had liver for lunch. The butchering started in the morning so by noon the liver was ready to cook. There was a little salt and pepper and it was rolled in flour. The liver was absolutely delicious. 

   When I was in the north, the Eskimo kids would bring seal liver to the house. I would always take the liver and give the kids money. The seal had been killed a few hours ago and the liver was delicious. I hate old liver that you buy in the store.

   My Mom made great jellied tongue. However, I had one meal of tongue that beat Mom's. I was hunting with an aboriginal when we killed a caribou. We started butchering right away. He took the tongue out and cut it into thin strips. He used sticks to hold the meat beside the fire and we continued butchering. When the tongue was ready, we stopped and ate it.. Was it delicious! No salt or pepper. Just meat. 

   The next thing he put on the fire was strips of heart. The same thing happened. It was delicious.

   These are two foods I will never forget. I will never forget the taste.

    Oh I forgot about the frozen fish. The Eskimo eat fro

zen uncooked fish. The fish is cut in small cubes. It's delicious..just like candy!

   So my point is that we should enjoy the flavor of the meat rather than the flavor of the sauce. Can you taste the meat in chili? Sorry to all those people who have super chili recipes.

   Okay, what's your preference in how meat is done? What things do you really like?