#TYPES OF CUT OF MEAT

[cristinabcn]

GASTRONOMIA: LAS CARNES

GASTRONOMY: MEATS Las carnes en la cocina han sido y seguirán siendo fundamentales, e independientemente de sus tipos. Son protagonistas de grandes propuestas culinarias al más alto nivel por tanto una condición indispensable de la cocina es conocerla, respetarla y ensalzarla. Es decir, saber elaborarla sin desvirtuar su exquisitez, y sus propiedades saludables. De hecho hoy por hoy grandes…

[icewindandboringhorror]

More misc. daily life pictures and such

[adwox]

attack for @musimoni

[n1et]

I'm sharing a traditional soup recipe with a friend so i figured I might as well make it into a post. Polish mutuals and non mutuals alike please weigh in.

I'll be describing how to make Rosół sometimes localized as golden soup. It holds for about 3 days without freezing. As a little bonus I'll also add in some dishes that use rosół as a base; mostly mentions tho as to not balloon the post. Rosół is a savory meat based broth like soup usually eaten with noodles, it is similar in composition to ramen but places less stress on additions and plating.

Prep time: 10-20 minutes (with great room to spare)

Cooking time: >4h (generally the longer the better)

You'll need: A rather large pot, a strainer (any size, optional), a source of continuous flame (either a gas stove or a candle tea heater both work well, a blowtorch or kitchen torch works in a pinch but I don't recommend it, don't bother with a lighter; it's not worth it, also optional but VERY strongly encouraged)

[recipe under the read more]

Rosół is cooked differently in each household; sometimes according to tradition but usually to taste so the ingredients I'm about to give are tentative and should be adjusted

Ingredients:

about 3lbs Meat

1 Onion (charred)

1 or 2 Parsley roots

1 Carrot

1 Celeriac / Celery Root (large)

1/2 a Leek or as much as will fit in the pot

1 bundle of Fresh Parsley

2-4 Celeriac Stems (optional)

12 whole grains of Peppercorn

1 whole grain of Allspice

1/2 a Bay Leaf

A lot of how the end result will taste depends on the meat used in cooking, that includes both animal and cuts. Traditionally rosół is made with beef cuts such as the shank (or flank) and brisket (you're looking for chewy cuts and ones with some fat on them, tho usually the cheaper the meat is, the better it will do) (as an aside, traditionally when an old dairy cow would die it's meat would be used for rosół among other things, so don't be concerned about the general quality and age of the meat you're using) and poultry wings (including wing tips) and necks such as chicken, duck, or goose. Something more controversial nowadays but still very traditional would be horse tail and horse meat, both it and oxtail is a really good choice if you can get them cheaply.

Beef adds a little bit of sourness to the broth so it should be balanced by either adding in a little bit more carrot or about 1/3 of it's weight in turkey. I'd advise against using only turkey as it makes the broth too sweet in my experience, but it remains a great addition for balancing. The gamyer the meat the more intense in flavor and light in feel the broth will be, so for special occasions getting a goose or duck can make for an amazing dish.

Preparation:

Peel and wash all the vegetables thoroughly, make sure to get the dirt from in between the leek leafs (I usually use a high pressure shower head but I'm sure a sink is sufficient), and to get all the nooks and crevices of the celeriac (tho don't cut off the knotted part it's not imperative you keep it but it is a bit wasteful to do so)

chop the root vegetables into thumb sized dice, this includes; the parsley roots, the celeriac, and the carrot. Do Not chop the onion.

Char the peeled onion! Set it onto a source of open flame so that it is touching the onion directly but is not engulfing the onion and wait about a minute or 5, then turn the onion over and repeat the process. Do not try to scrape off the char, it's supposed to stay. (skip this step if you don't have an open flame handy)

Tie the parsley into a knot so it will stay together while cooking.

Cooking:

Put all the meat into the largest pot you can muster, anything you could fit your head in (or maybe even a bit smaller) will work, and pour water into it so that it covers the raw meat completely. Add the peppercorns, allspice, bay, and the onion. Put the pot on high heat and bring it up to almost a gentle boil before cutting the heat completely. If you want to, you can strain the broth to get rid of the meat fuss, keeping all the spices and the onion, or just let the fuss settle to the bottom of the pot. I've also seen people use a smaller strainer to skim the fuss off the top. Put the pot on low heat and watch if it tries to boil, if it does, add a table spoon of cold water to quiet it down and lower the temperature, ideally your soup should be moving but not quite boiling, do not stir as it'll only damage the onion and redisperse the fuss. If at any point the onion begins to disintegrate simply pull it out so it doesn't make the soup cloudy, you can eat it as is or add it back later and have it with the soup. After at least an hour, or after the meat can be pierced with a meat fork, start putting in other ingredients in order of cook time: first the Parsley root, then the carrot, then the celeriac, the leek should get added at the very end with all the herbs (parsley and celeriac stems). I like to wait an hour between each ingredient but not everyone has 6 hours to make soup, even if you don't have to watch it, so ration your time accordingly. The soup is ready when the leak is cooked through or about half an hour to an hour after putting it in.

Plating and further processing:

Rosół is generally eaten with noodles, any size and shape will do but short thin strands are the most common. You can eat it as a 2 course meal with the broth and noodles as soup and the less chewy meat from it as the second course, my favorite way to eat it is with horseradish sauce made with the broth for which I will provide a recipe later!

Rosół is also a base for many different dishes. You can use the broth as a base for other soups like żurek, and the tougher, stringyer peaces of meat can be ground into pierogi filling, but one of the simplest ways to enhance another dish with it is using it in a horseradish sauce recipe:

ingredients: a table spoon of unsalted butter, a teaspoon of flour, 2 table spoons of rosół (substitutable with any kind of broth), horseradish paste (I use jarred, if you plan on grinding the horseradish yourself add a little bit of cream)

Into a very small pot on low to medium heat add the butter and melt it. Before it burns add the teaspoon of flour and wait for it to brown slightly, stir constantly to make sure it doesn't burn. Quench the rue with the broth, it should foam slightly so try not to spill any, and after it deflates a bit add the horseradish paste to taste. I tend to go for 2 table spoons (quite spicy) but make sure to make the sauce as spicy as you want it to be, the more horseradish the spicier it'll be.

Pour your sauce onto one of the tender peaces of meat extracted from your rosól and enjoy. This seemingly simple dish always fills me with great glee and a sense of accomplishment. There's nothing quite like a peace of meat with horseradish sauce, both a result of delicious soup.

[sluckythewizard]

FUCKED UPPPP that we havnt heard Shit nor Fuck about the convergence reboot. WHERE IS FERGUS!!!!! I WANT FERGUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[dq1]

thinking again

[gloryundimmed]

@unladielike from here

Hearing that he gave Vivian dog person vibes made sense, but was a bit of a shock. How could she tell he was canine-inclined? Was it something he said or did? Even after living in the human world for a while, it was still difficult to mask the fact that he wasn't human. Had she picked up on it? Maybe he had forgotten to remove the wolf fur that shed on his uniform one morning.

"Oh...? That's funny. Well, you're not wrong," he shrugged, trying to keep himself from seeming too suspicious. More than anything, he was glad to have a change of subject when he went to grab the book. He wasn't exactly the best liar.

Whatever worries he had were quickly erased by Vivian's genuine happiness when he handed her the book. Someone like her couldn't possibly be a threat to him or his pack, right? Hiro was easily caught up in the joyous moment and smiled along with her. "No problem! I'm glad it didn't take too long to come in. Sometimes those manga venders take a while."

But what really excited him about their interaction was the offer to join her for dorayaki. As always, anything food related piqued his interest. "Of course, I'd love to!" He beamed back at her, scrambling to pull up the employee hours on his phone. "Hmm, looks like I'm off in about an hour an a half. I know that's a long time, but you're welcome to browse or read whatever you'd like while you wait! Is that okay?"

[madegeeky]

Me: You don't need to do this much stuff for the party. It's just you and a couple friends.

Also me: GO BIG OR FUCK OFF, SELF.

[tea-of-destiny]

i think the ideal food is something i can make a big pot of and then eat out of whatever size bowl i want

[breakerofcurses]

i hate that 8 frogs in total have been killed just bc my class could get the difference between central and peripheral nervous system. my friends say we're doing this in the name of science or whatever but girl... we know the results already, do we have to torture a poor animal to prove the basics again and again

[headspace-hotel]

I will write this thought about Veganism and Classism in the USA in another post so as to not derail the other thread:

There are comments in the notes that say meat is only cheaper than plant based foods because of subsidies artificially lowering the price of meat in the United States. This is...part of the story but not all of it.

For my animal agriculture lab we went to a butcher shop and watched the butcher cut up a pig into various cuts of meat. I have had to study quite a bit about the meat industry in that class. This has been the first time I fully realized how strongly the meat on a single animal is divided up by socioeconomic class.

Like yes, meat cumulatively takes more natural resources to create and thus should be more expensive, but once that animal is cut apart, it is divided up between rich and poor based on how good to eat the parts are. I was really shocked at watching this process and seeing just how clean and crisp an indicator of class this is.

Specifically, the types of meat I'm most familiar with are traditionally "waste" parts left over once the desirable parts are gone. For example, beef brisket is the dangly, floppy bit on the front of a cow's neck. Pork spareribs are the part of the ribcage that's barely got anything on it.

And that stuff is a tier above the "meat" that is most of what poor people eat: sausage, hot dogs, bologna, other heavily processed meat products that are essentially made up of all the scraps from the carcass that can't go into the "cuts" of meat. Where my mom comes from in North Carolina, you can buy "livermush" which is a processed meat product made up of a mixture of liver and a bunch of random body parts ground up and congealed together. There's also "head cheese" (made of parts of the pig's head) and pickled pigs' feet and chitlin's (that's made of intestines iirc) and cracklin's (basically crispy fried pig skin) and probably a bunch of stuff i'm forgetting. A lot of traditional Southern cooking uses basically scraps of animal ingredients to stretch across multiple meals, like putting pork fat in beans or saving bacon grease for gravy or the like.

So another dysfunctional thing about our food system, is that instead of people of each socioeconomic class eating a certain number of animals, every individual animal is basically divided up along class lines, with the poorest people eating the scraps no one else will eat (oftentimes heavily processed in a way that makes it incredibly unhealthy).

Even the 70% lean ground beef is made by injecting extra leftover fat back into the ground-up meat because the extra fat is undesirable on the "better" cuts. (Gross!)

I've made, or eaten, many a recipe where the only thing that makes it non-vegan is the chicken broth. Chicken broth, just leftover chicken bones and cartilage rendered and boiled down in water? How much is that "driving demand" for meat, when it's basically a byproduct?

That class really made me twist my brain around about the idea of abstaining from animal products as a way to deprive the industry of profits. Nobody eats "X number of cows, pigs, chickens in a lifetime" because depending on the socioeconomic class, they're eating different parts of the animal, splitting it with someone richer or poorer than they are. If a bunch of people who only ate processed meats anyway abstained, that wouldn't equal "saving" X number of animals, it would just mean the scraps and byproducts from a bunch of people's steaks or pork chops would have something different happen to them.

The other major relevant conclusion I got from that class, was that animal agriculture is so dominant because of monoculture. People think it's animal agriculture vs. plant agriculture (or plants used for human consumption vs. using them to feed livestock), but from capitalism's point of view, feeding animals corn is just another way to use corn to generate profits.

People think we could feed the world by using the grain fed to animals to feed humans, but...the grain fed to animals, is not actually a viable diet for the human population, because it's literally just corn and soybean. Like animal agriculture is used to give some semblance of variety to the consumer's diet in a system that is almost totally dominated by like 3 monocrops.

Do y'all have any idea how much of the American diet is just corn?!?! Corn starch, corn syrup, corn this, corn that, processed into the appearance of variety. And chickens and pigs are just another way to process corn. That's basically why we have them, because they can eat our corn. It's a total disaster.

And it's even worse because almost all the USA's plant foods that aren't the giant industrial monocrops maintained by pesticides and machines, are harvested and cared for by undocumented migrant workers that get abused and mistreated and can't say anything because their boss will tattle on them to ICE.

[medicinemane]

You know, at this point I'm highly skeptical of things where people have a single simple solution to large scale problems that just calls for doing exactly what they think needs to be done and then everything is fixed

[fucktoyfelix]

Choking Safety

I've been seeing some kind of scare-mongering type posts going around about choking during sex, so I wanted to address how to approach choking in a safe way. Choking is not a 0 risk activity, but it is also not so dangerous that you will just randomly die either. Anyone who does martial arts will confirm that thousands of teenagers are being successfully trained to choke each other safely (for self defense) every day! There's no reason you can't learn to do it too.

First you should be familiar with some basic anatomy of the neck and throat:

The carotid veins on both sides of the neck and the trachea/windpipe in the center are the most important things to be aware of. If you want to enjoy the psychological element of having someone's hands around your neck with relatively little risk, you can do "choking" play that avoids putting any pressure on those arteries or the trachea. As with all choking play, safety is highest when both parties are fully sober. I'm not actually sure if there are people out there who are into having the windpipe or trachea blocked. This tends to hurt like fuck and cause an autonomic choking response. You'll know if you went too far center because generally the bottom will be like "WTH". I don't know if there is a way to do this play safely or not as I don't have experience with it. It probably carries some risk of the trachea collapsing which would be a hospital trip for sure. Most choking play is done with the intention of cutting off the blood supply to the brain by applying pressure to both the left and right carotid arteries. This type of choking is not really "breath play" because of the way it works (though many people refer to it that way.) This creates a pleasant light headed feeling, but is also where the higher risk comes in. It often doesn't take long for a person to lose consciousness once these arteries are blocked, often less than 10 seconds. Sometimes getting completely choked out is the goal, sometimes not. Either way, the top has to pay very very careful attention to every aspect of their bottom's body language. Once you realize that a person has lost consciousness, the choking must stop immediately. Because of this: the most dangerous way to do this kind of play is alone. (hence all the auto-erotic asphyxiation deaths you hear about) It goes without saying that intoxication also dramatically increases the risks. It's not recommended to lose consciousness this way on a regular basis. It's just not good for your brain to repeatedly go through, especially in rapid succession. Generally, the more time spaced out between this type of play: the better. Though some people may have medical conditions that make the risk higher, as long as you stop choking when you reach the desired headspace, this play is approachable. Anyone who's REALLY into the idea but feels unsure or scared, I highly recommend taking a few martial arts classes. MMA guys do this to each other all the time! For sports! The key is just stopping at the right time. There are two main ways to go about blocking the carotid arteries. The main one used in martial arts and self defense is the rear naked choke.

This type of choke is incredible effective at choking someone out quickly and easily. The forearm and the bicep are squeezing each artery until the desired effect is achieved. The risk here is how quickly it works in combination with not being able to have a visual on your bottom's facial response. When someone loses consciousness they will go limp and begin twitching somewhat. This is normal, and you should stop immediately if you notice those signs. The more common method of choking play during sex is what looks more like typical choking. Facing your partner, using both hands.

You want to find the arteries with both hands, and use the meat at the base of your thumbs to apply gradually increasing pressure upwards towards your partner's head. You can keep the thumbs tucked to avoid accidental pressure on the windpipe. (Though this is not required so long as you remember not to apply pressure to the windpipe.) This type of play has a few safety benefits. First, you can see your partner's face so it's more obvious when you can see they've hit a headspace that is desirable. Additionally, it's just a little more difficult to find the arteries and push up on them correctly. If your goal is to get a little light headed without losing consciousness, this is more easily accomplished with this type of choke. However, losing consciousness is still a risk and both partners being fully alert will ensure the lowest risk environment. I know choking play is incredibly popular, even 'vanilla' people participate in this type of play on a regular basis without really knowing the technical details. Most of them don't get seriously hurt...but knowing what you're actually doing with risky play is a base component of risk aware consensual kink. Anyway I hope people find this helpful! Happy choking!!

[theveryworstthing]

SpaceDancer's request for parasitic roses and Camille Alexander's request for unicorn fops created Angelique.

i now present my newest Charming Little Freak ✨

Angelique is one of those beings that isn't cleanly classified as a fae or a demon. he/it/whatever (roses are perfect plants and so it mostly goes by the pronouns common for the additional sex of his host body in human society because they couldn't care less) is a Rampant. a type of sapient parasitic rose that, over time, transforms the body of their host from a simple quadruped beast to bipedal humanoid (kinda) monster. every Rampant seems to mold themselves into unique forms, and designs often carry over if they somehow manage to get "uprooted" without dying and have to start over with a new flesh body. if Rampants stay rooted then they're borderline immortal even though their hosts are...dead? it's unclear. the Rampant certainly carries memories of what it was like being an animal and their flesh and blood is altered, but alive. the body keeps the score whether they like it or not. but the beast itself, its mind, dies quickly after a Rampant takes root. either from the trauma from becoming a Flowerbed or from the Rampant purposefully putting a thorn through its brain. whether fae or demon, Rampants take. they do not possess. they do not imprison.

Angelique currently lives in a small dying village, spending his time checking in on the aging population as a kind of town housemaid/caretaker and tending to his flower shop/apothecary. most people would say that having a creature like him around isn't a great idea, but this eldritch horror has basically been adopted by every lonely old person in town so good luck getting rid of him.

Fun Facts:

he loves nice soft clothes, meat (blood sausage is his favorite), and (in spite of his goth everything all the time) sunlight.

buzzing sounds make him flustered while prolonged exposure to cut grass smells and cold weather make him anxious.

he's an scary good climber and will forgo a door if he knows someone is on a higher floor of a building and he sees an open window.

always well hydrated. carries around a flask of water at all times and likes to sit outside naked when it rains.

he has many little leafy assistants which are also just him. he's like an octopus. the people in the community assign them all little names and give them unique decorations and he thinks it's really cute.

what is he getting out of staying in this village? none of your business.

he's currently in a weird situationship with 2 local gravekeepers from rival graveyards/religions and the recently widowed agnostic town doctor. everyone in this polycule hates everyone else but him. he's also friends with benefits with my character Brooke, who finds all of this hilarious and is eager to hear about the latest disaster every time he passes through town.

[curioscurio]

In the spirit of Dungeon Meshi I think that Muppets could be considered a type of monster in the dungeon and that Laios would absolutely try to eat felt stuffing and fabric. And it would taste horrible UNTIL they cut inside it deep enough past the felt to reach the puppeteer meat which I feel should look enough like a human hand to fuck with them but enough like a monster that they're like sure. why not.

[powdermelonkeg]

Slowpoke Tails - Shed vs Chopped

Okay, so there's something of a discrepancy between how Slowpoke tails are treated by the Pokémon franchise. Initially, it was understood that these are a tasty, unethical luxury item, starting in Gold/Silver/Crystal and mirrored in Heartgold/Soulsilver:

The whole plot here is that Team Rocket has taken the Slowpoke in the Azalea Slowpoke Well and chopped their tails off to sell on the black market. These run for a whopping 1,000,000 PD a pop ($10k in USD).

But then, in later generations, it's said that Slowpoke tails fall off naturally. In fact, they're a crucial part of both Alolan AND Galarian cuisine:

The curry ingredient even sells for a measly 2,200 PD ($22 USD).

So what gives? Why is it a Million-Poké black market item when you can get a package off your local hiker?

Easy. Sweetness.

Slowpoke use their tails to fish for food. Typically, they do this by dipping their tails into the water, then letting the current catch the sweet sap they give off and bring it to hungry Water-types.

When a Slowpoke sheds its tail, it's because the tail's ability to generate sap has dried up. It's no longer useful as fishing bait, so the Slowpoke has to either get rid of the tail, or starve.

Shed Slowpoke tails, the ones commonly available for cooking, aren't sweet in the slightest—they're more like heavily-marbled tuna steaks, somewhere between beef and fish with a lot of fat dripping from them, and a rich umami flavor.

Chopped Slowpoke tails, the kind you find on the black market, are a completely different experience. The meat is more tender, the flavor a lot more delicate, with a sweetness permeating it that's a lot like the honey glaze on a ham.

Naturally, chopped Slowpoke tail then becomes a novel experience. Because you have to take it from a Slowpoke, you can't just find it lying around.

So why, then, is it illegal enough for Rocket to move in on? Why is Slowpoke farming or hunting for those sweet tails not a thing? They still grow them back afterwards, so what's the deal?

The problem with chopping a Slowpoke's tail off is that, even though it regenerates, its body wasn't ready to do so. This can cause a whole lot of complications for the poor thing.

A tail doesn't regenerate from nothing, for starters: every time you cut a tail off unexpectedly, the Slowpoke's body rushes to make a replacement, using up its body's fat reserves. This causes VERY rapid and dangerous weight loss, and a frankly ridiculous amount of stress.

Incorrect cuts can cause deformities, like a tail growing back too short, not being able to make enough sweetness to bait fish Pokémon, or even Espeon-tail syndrome, where the tail splits into two at the end.

And, perhaps most egregiously of all, a cut too high might mean the Slowpoke never regrows its tail at all. If you cut into anything that's not specifically tail tissue, the body will begin the scarring process over the wound, removing the Pokémon's ability to fish and evolve. And while it can learn to survive by fishing manually, like its evolutionary counterpart is required to, oftentimes, Slowpoke will just sit by the water and starve, not realizing that they aren't getting a bite because there's just nothing to bite.

In short: Shed = ethical, chopped = unethical, possibly lethal.

Slowpoke responsibly, guys.