Volume 12 , Issue 44

Meats & Meat Specials (1934)

According to Home Comfort Cookbook of 1934, page 64, here is what they suggested to young cooks cooking on the Wrought Iron Range in the 1930s when it came to the cooking of Meats and Meat Specials. Did your grandparents or parents have a special meat preparation, recipe that you would like to share? We would love to hear about it and share with the rest of our readers. Just email Linda (Email: mcwagner.lk@gmail.com).

When properly cooked, meat becomes one of the most readily digestible of foods. When improperly cooked, it is perhaps the most difficult to assimilate. Good cooking can make any meat tender, juicy and nutritious. Bad cooking can make any meat tough, destroy its nutritive value, and render it impossible of digestion, leaving illness and trouble in its wake.

The secret to proper cooking of meats, therefore, is to retain its natural juices, reserving to it their full flavors and nutrition, and neither allowing them to escape not become over-cooked. This applies whether the method is frying, broiling baking, boiling or roasting.

The exception is in the cooking of some meats, as salted or cured, meats. Those for soup-making or stewing; or those for blending as in braising -- when the object is to extract a part, or all, of the juices, instead of retaining them altogether.

To accomplish this result, two basic rules must be observed. The natural juices of meat are albuminous in character and, when meat is cut some of these juices escape, forming a thin film on the outer surface. Like the albumen of eggs, this coating may be quickly coagulated, or hardened, by the sudden application of high heat (searing), whether from boiling water, direct fire, or heated oven. On the other hand, this coating may be quickly dissolved and dissipated by contact with cold water, allowing the juices to be extracted.

Since all meats should be cooked by a moderate heat for the length of time required according to the degree of tenderness, the above basic rules are applied thus: When meat is cooked with the intention of retaining its natural juices -- as for joints or fowl -- its surface should be "seared" by the application of high heat at the beginning, and the temperature lowered to moderate to complete cooking. But . . . When meat is cooked with the intention of extracting a part or all of its natural juices -- as for soups or stews -- it should be started at low heat at the beginning, and the temperature raised to moderate to complete cooking. In both cases, the cooking temperature should be just right to properly set the juices, care being taken not to harden or over-cook them.

With this basic principle in mind, and a knowledge of the proper control of the heat of the range, young cooks should soon master the art of preparing juicy, wholesome, perfectly cooked meats.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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