TRIGGER WARNING: This post has pictures of delicious animal meat.
So, I’ve been “cooking for one” for about half of my time these last 2 weeks. That “one” being me, of course. “Cooking for one” can be a form of self care – a reason for being, and a place to focus positive energy. It always has been for me. I first started cooking after my breakup with Vanessa, when Bob and Chun-Mei took me in. She’s an amazing cook (Chun-Mei, not Vanessa), and she taught me a few things that ended up being a pivot point in life for me and food.
I felt like a burger yesterday after dropping The Boy off with his mother. Burger-craving happens about four or five times a year. Sufficiently infrequently that I know I don’t want just any old burger. Not a burger that I have ever had in a restaurant in North America (or Europe). Overcooked, undercooked, bound up with breadcrumbs or egg, over-seasoned, under-spiced… none of that.
The best burger I ever had was in Australia, when I was there with Liz and Gene. It was big. The patty was juicy. It was topped with a slice of beet and a cross-section of a pineapple. Like a heroin junkie always trying to get the feeling from the first high, I have since been on a lifelong quest to recreate, not the taste of that Australian burger, but the feeling of the taste of that Australian Burger.
What is left after all is stripped away.
“HONEY: I peel labels.
GEORGE: We all peel labels, sweetie; and when you get through the skin, all three layers, through the muscle, slosh aside the organs them which is still sloshable– and get down to bone…you know what you do then?
HONEY: No!
GEORGE: When you get down to bone, you haven’t got all the way, yet. There’s something inside the bone…the marrow…and that’s what you gotta get at. ”
Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
And so we begin a burger as we are yearning for bliss – and escape.
For the purposes of umami have I been known to put Shitake at the core of a burger. For the purposes of convincing someone I am worthy of their affection have I been known to put foie gras at the core of a burger. Neither really got me to Nirvana. Tasty yes, but there’s just something alien about a burger having palatable pieces of another species.
When my eye caught the beef shank, I knew its fate. At least the fate of its marrow. Mayan kings ate the hearts of children to ascend the throne. But for symbolic power (especially during a pandemic) give me marrow. Bone marrow looks like fat but it’s not actually adipose tissue. Okay to be fair, it’s about 80% fat. But the other 20% is pure immune system: leukocytes, lymphocytes, and stem cells. White blood cells, red blood cells, platelets… all of it… bone marrow is the engine of blood.,
Should raw marrow come to room temperature you can treat it like butter. But for the purpose of “centering” my burger I needed it to be more firm than that. Twenty minutes in my freezer was enough to let me carve out the marrow with a paring knife. Simple and clean.
We need to talk about eating the children of cows.
If you are going to eat beef, and there are ways to do this responsibly and locally. If you are going to drink milk or eat cheese or butter, and not eat beef you should know that you are creating veal.
Because of biology, because of evolution… just because… half of all baby cattle are male. Just like half of baby humans.
On a dairy farm, cows produce milk only by virtue of getting pregnant about once a year. There’s a 50:50 chance that the milk you drank came from a cow who birthed a male. What do you suppose we should do with all of those baby male cattle that will never produce milk? What do you suppose we should do with all of those baby male cattle, only one bull of which is needed to sire other cows? [In fact, not even that… most insemination is done artifically now to protect cows from being hurt by bulls]. Should consumers be required to pay double the price for milk and yogurt and beef in order to cover the farmers’ costs of life-long support of male cows that will never be eaten or produce milk?
We don’t eat grown-up male cows. First of all they are too tough. Secondly, they are loaded with testosterone and their meat stinks after puberty. This is true too of boar-taint and billy-goats. Trust me, the funk of adult male mammal meat is NOT a pleasant thing. But most of all, they are male cows, and they are royal pains in the ass not worth the effort… seriously, have you read Ferdinand? Any meat from “adult” male cattle comes from a steer that had his testicles removed when only a few weeks old, and was only given 18 months.
Veal cattle are not subjected to castration. And no, veal does not require that baby cows be shackled. That has been outlawed. You can be responsible and investigate the source of your food. Call the veal producers. Go visit. Those struggling businesses are populated by real people.
And yet, if if you are a vegetarian and you drink milk or eat cheese, we have to manage half of the offspring of cattle. There is a choice. We can just “take” males at birth (how many male chickens do you think you have ever eaten? Zero), or we can remove their testicles, or we can give them a decent life that ends before puberty.
Veal cows are taken at 6 months. Heifers and steers castrated at 2 weeks, are taken for beef at 18 months. Leave a cow alone and it lives 12 years. So we’re quibbling about 5% versus 10% of a natural life span? Trust me that none of the milk, cheese or yogurt cows you depend on as a vegetarian are dying of old-age (they are destined to be beef too, but after 6 yrs). And no one is eating beef from a cow that died of old age. No one is getting yogurt from a cow that is about to die of old age.
I am not trying to promote anything here except intellectual honesty. It is not logically consistent to consume milk products on the one hand and be morally apposed to beef consumption on the other.
I like beef. Not too much. Local. Grass-fed if possible. Moreover, I believe local cattle farmers deserve to survive. Trust me when I say that eating veal does NOT create a market for veal. Eating veal helps a struggling farmer make ends meat… I mean “meet”.
Dentistry has made filet mignon obsolete
There is no restaurant in the world in which I would choose filet mignon over beef cheeks. Close your eyes … filet mignon tastes of almost nothing but the salt and butter it is served with. And the chef added the butter because filet mignon has zero fat (and almost zero taste).
The problem with eating veal is that it tastes less like cow (that is the point after all, to not taste like adult male). From a culinary point of view you want a grown up cow! Indeed for a beefy flavour you want chuck or shoulder or rib or shank. It is the toughest cuts that taste the best. I think eating only filet mignon is unethical… how much waste of beef is generated by those who will only eat the choicest cuts? Can you imagine? Honest butchery is nose-to-tail refusing to sell another filet until someone buys the cheeks of the last one, all sourced within 100 miles.
A primary reason filet mignon is expensive might be that octogenarians with money haven’t got the teeth or bite force to eat real beef. No, it’s not because it’s a “rare” and small part of the cow. Cheeks are few, too. So are eyeballs. Both taste better… both require teeth.
Veal has a tenderness that can be matched with the less-tender beefiness of other cuts.
Sacrificing taste and joy to the false god (golden calf?) of “low-fat”?
My burger was half ground veal and half 85/15 ground beef. Beefy taste is in the fat and connective tissue. Ground beef that is 95% lean is not necessary. A quarter-pound burger that is 95% lean has 0.2 oz fat. A quarter-pound burger that is 85% lean has 0.6 oz fat. It is unscientific to think that the 0.4 oz of fat differential in a 1/4 pound burger is what is compromising your health. Eat some broccoli, but make a burger with some fat.
In any case, the balance of veal and beef was intended to balance flavour and tenderness knowing that the delicate and subtle marrow at the center was the to be star of the show. My guess was that ground chuck would not allow the marrow flavor through, and that ground veal alone would not be beefy enough to avoid the off-putting mixed-species cognition.
Achieving Nirvana
Assembled, with a healthy dose of shitake powder and salt in the two halves of the patty, the burger simply could not be conventionally grilled or fried or broiled. The external heat needed to get the ground beef to medium would utterly destroy the marrow and render it superfluous. Worse, getting the raw marrow to temperature would destroy the ground beef surrounding it.
Instead I went sous-vide (see above). The assembled patty with a marrow core I sealed in a bag, and brought to 54 C for an hour. Then I took it out of the water bath and let come back down to room temperature so that the marrow would become semi-solid again. Finally, a hard sear fast on a screaming hot cast-iron pan got the job done.
The bun-on condiments were matched to the eccentricity of the burger prep.
A slice of beet (sous vide 90 min; earthy, and and some toothiness)
Salt-“cooked” nopales (needs another post; but acidity and freshness).
Onion jam (because onion jam exists for this purpose).
Most of the marrow cannot be seen in the end … it has melted and basted the burger from the inside-out. I assure you that none of it left the burger until it was inside of me.
Comfort food, like heroin, is the antidote to feeling alone and unloved.
As with everything I create, I will never make this burger again. But you should.
And if you, like me, are in a place of self-care, and maybe a little alone, please reach out. We can do this shit together, while joking and having a glass of wine.
mark@marksiddall.net