Nichola Fletcher - The Meat Cookbook: Know the Cuts, Master the Skills, over 250 Recipes

Meat is a truly fascinating subject. I have been privileged to have worked with it for over 40 years. My interest in the subject has given me a multifaceted career that combines food writer, teacher, food historian, farmer, and meat processor. On top of that, living in the country has taught me much about wild creatures. This book will, I hope, allow me to share some of these insights. This new edition has a greater focus on wild game meats, and we also encourage you to enlarge the scope of the recipes by using different meats in different recipes. We have made some suggestions throughout.

As a food historian, farmer, and meat processor, I have learnt that eating meat can produce powerful emotions more complicated than the simple pleasure of sharing and eating it. I have never shied away from the reality that if you eat meat, an animal has died to produce it. In todays ever more virtual and urban world it is hard for people to understand the interaction we had with animals in our historic roles as hunters, nomads, herders, and small farmers. If you work closely with animals, whether it is studying what distresses or calms them, or marvelling at a carcass being skilfully prepared, you can, and do, truly respect them. As a society we have lost that intimacy, and this loss can produce mystery, confusion, and even fear.

But there is nothing to fear when we prepare animals in a respectful way. It is possible to farm and despatch animals in such a way that they dont suffer, and wild animals now need management in a world whose balance of nature can be so easily tilted the wrong way. Shortage of land means we must make best use of our environment: with a world population as large as ours to feed, there is no utopian food production method; even vegan food production harms insects, wild creatures, and the environment. So if we choose to eat meat, it is up to us to find out how it is produced, to waste none of it, and to use it respectfully. discusses these areas.

As a food writer and teacher I have explored just how meat works when it is prepared and then cooked. What is it that makes one piece of meat better than another? And what does better mean anyway? One persons impeccable may be anothers over- or undercooked. But once you understand the basic structure of meat what makes it and what changes it the mysteries that perplex so many people become simple background knowledge that can be used to buy, prepare, and cook any meat. So before rushing straight to our sumptuous collection of recipes, do read these important parts; they are as essential as any of the ingredients. Even if you dont feel up to having a go at home butchery, do study these pages and you will gain a deeper understanding.

Meat has formed an integral part of the culture of nearly every country. Signifying luxury and sometimes power, regarded as a gift from God, and appreciated as a joyous privilege, meat is an important food that should be celebrated. I hope you will feast on these pages.

Meat such a mouth-watering word. For many people, a meal is not a proper meal if there is no meat. Most emerging countries want to eat more of it and consumption has never been so high. It is a good source of protein, iron, and other nutrients and vitamins. But it can also be emotive there are many reasons why some people choose not to eat meat. So should we eat it or not? We can eat meat and enjoy it when we feel comfortable about the way it is produced, but should perhaps avoid it where it raises environmental or welfare concerns.

Critics often say that feeding grain and oil seeds to animals is not a sustainable way to produce food. People should eat the grain themselves. There is some truth in that argument, but it applies mainly to intensively farmed meat such as feedlot cattle (see ) and intensive pig and poultry production. These systems rely on crops to produce meat quickly and at a price to satisfy the worlds demand for cheap meat. Hens are the most efficient converters of grain into food, followed by pigs, cattle, and sheep.

There is also the issue of methane to consider. Methane is a harmful greenhouse gas that traps many times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Although it has a far shorter dispersion rate than carbon dioxide, it is produced by all ruminants (grazing animals such as cows, sheep, deer, and goats), wild or farmed.

Crops such as wheat, barley, soya, oil seeds, beans, and peas are crops that humans can eat, and they are all grown using artificial fertilizers that can damage the environment. But these same crops are used to make animal feed (known as concentrates). Our planet needs its forests desperately, so to cut them down to grow crops creates ecological problems, no matter who eats the crop. To cut them down to feed livestock is certainly questionable and should be discouraged. So what an animal or bird has been fed on is ethically important, too.

Many areas of the world cannot grow crops sustainably. Think of arid scrub or cold countries; mountains or forest regions. Shrubs and grasses grow most efficiently in these places. Humans cannot digest grass, so the most sensible thing to do is to allow animals and birds to turn it into nutritious meat, which they do admirably. Also, grassland is very useful for carbon capture.

Given the environmental problems of feeding animals on grain, it is interesting, but perhaps not surprising, to discover that ruminants which munch their way slowly through a natural diet of grasses and vegetation instead of being fed with concentrates are nutritionally far better for us. It is concentrated, high-energy diets that change meat from having good fat to having bad fat.