Pryles - Hardcore Carnivore

HARDCORE CARNIVORE IS A PROTEIN-PACKED
COOKBOOK FOR MEAT LOVERS EVERYWHERE.

From slow smoked barbecue ribs to perfect cowboy steaks Jess Pryless recipes are meaty winners. Including an intro section on the tricks of the trade and a collection of foundations and finishes at the end, this book will have you cooking meat like a seasoned pro.

Australian by birth, Texan by choice, Jess Pryles is a professional Hardcore Carnivore and co-founder of the Australasian Barbecue Alliance. Shes a cook, presenter and food personality, with a particular penchant for steak and bourbon.

Dedicated to my parents for their incomparable
support and encouragement.

CONTENTS

Meat science 101

To master the meat, you must first understand the meat. Learning and understanding these basics can improve your cooking skills long before the first coal is even lit.

RESTING MEAT

Nearly every whole muscle recipe in this book has an instruction to rest the meat after cooking. Have you ever cut into a steak right after cooking and watched those precious juices flood out onto your board? Well, that spillage is the exact reason you should always rest meat before cutting.

Muscles are made up of tightly bundled protein strands that wring even tighter together when heat is applied, pushing water to their edges during cooking. Resting allows these fibres to relax, and enables that moisture to return down the strands and redistribute evenly. The resting time is proportionate to the cooking time, so a quickly seared steak may only need a 10-minute rest, while a long, slow roast may need 30 minutes or more.

CUTTING AGAINST THE GRAIN

Youve heard the adage to always slice meat against the grain, but how do you find the grain and why do we do this? Each muscle has fibres that run alongside one another in a single direction, and this is the grain. The grain is more clearly visible on certain cuts like the flank, skirt and tri-tip. Confusingly, large cuts that are comprised of several muscles might have several directions of grain, like brisket, where the grain switches halfway through the cut.

Finding the grain and cutting against it means slicing perpendicular to the direction that the fibres are running. Doing this lessens the resistance of each bite, and makes a dramatic difference to the eating quality and tenderness of the cut.

AGEING BEEF

Ageing is the process of holding meat (primarily beef, which benefits most from the process) for an extended period from the slaughter date to the consumption date. As unpleasant as it sounds, the process of ageing meat is essentially carefully controlled decomposition, and is used to promote tenderness and, in some cases, improve taste. Ageing needs to occur for at least 1214 days to yield any discernible results.

Wet ageing simply refers to product that is vacuum-packed, and therefore wet from sitting in its own liquids. Its a faster and cheaper process than dry ageing, and more cost effective because there is no loss of mass due to shrinkage. The downside to wet ageing is the shorter window before the quality of the meat starts deteriorating, which is exacerbated by the constant opening and closing of domestic refrigerators. When wet aged for too long, the meat will start to take on an unpleasant taste that can be described as sour, minerally and serumy. Its also at the mercy of the supply chain, since exposure to unstable temperatures (such as moving from freezer to different fridges) creates more weep (liquid) in the bag, which can cause an unappealing spongy texture from unwanted microbial growth.

Dry ageing works by exposing large subprimal cuts (see Meat-speak, of bacteria, enzyme breakdown and oxidation. Its a far more expensive process thanks to the equipment required, plus the yield of the final saleable product is sacrificed to shrinkage and trimming. When dry ageing pushes beyond a 60-day mark or thereabouts, it starts morphing into a kind of delicacy, not unlike stinky cheese. The more it ages, the funkier it gets.