The Sad Condition of Pastrami These Days

Remember back a few years ago, when you'd get pastrami at the deli and it would look like this? Nicely marbled, some strips of fat along the sides, and every thin slice edged with a wonderful crust of cracked black pepper and coriander seed.

And then sometime between then and now, "fat" became a dirty word because lots of people who were unable or unwilling to exert any self-control at the dinner table looked at the large-enough-to-feed-three-people sandwich they were holding and said, "OMG THIS MEAT IS FATTY AND THAT IS WHY I, TOO, AM FATTY," and demanded "leaner" pastrami.

Processing companies began making more pastrami from much leaner cuts of beef, like the round, instead of from the fattier underbelly cuts like the plate or flank. They kept the cure and spice blend the same, so it still tasted like pastrami, but the fat was gone and not only was the finished product dryer, it always tasted like something was missing. Real pastrami was still available, though, but over time it started to get harder to find. Within a few years, I found that if I simply asked the deli for "pastrami" I would be handed a package of that crappy "pastrami round." I had to specifically ask for "plate pastrami," or in some places with less-experienced staff, "the flat kind."

Apparently, though, having lean pastrami round isn't enough. It looks like the fat has been removed from flat pastrami. That stuff to the right is the pastrami I picked up the other day. I don't know what part of the cow it came from, but it sure wasn't the plate or the flank.Maybe they're using a brisket with most (ha, ALL) of the fat trimmed off. And of course such a lean piece of meat isn't going to have a lot of juiciness, so it's injected with a load of saltwater to add moisture. (It adds weight, and therefore cost to you, also - it means you're paying meat prices for water.)

I can't believe I actually paid $10.99 a pound for this stuff. Next time I'm going back to making my own.

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Review: Columbus Salame Secchi

If there's one thing I find hard to resist, it's a good salami. (Stop snickering, I didn't mean it that way.) And when I'm browsing along the deli counter at a supermarket and find one I haven't tried before, it's fairly certain that cured meat stick is coming home with me.

And that's how I met this Columbus Salame Secchi, made by San Francisco's Columbus Salame (aka Columbus Manufacturing, Inc.) they've been making cured Italian meats on the west coast since 1917, and Secchi was one of their first products.

It's truly an awesome dry-cured salame, mellow and meaty. It's a great addition to an Italian sandwich, and it's perfect alongside some sharp table cheese, olives, and giardiniera for a snack platter.

Links:

Columbus Salame website
Columbus Salame on Facebook

Review: Farmer's Pride Pickled Bologna

Late last week, I got a heads-up from Steve Wood, who writes Connecticut Museum Quest, a top-notch Connecticut blog that is about so much more than just museums. He alerted me to a new product at Ocean State Job Lot: Farmer's Pride Snack Bologna (which just so happened to be featured in OSJL's "internet coupon" selection.)

Holy shit, pickled bologna! How could I resist?

Lynnafred found the jars at our local Ocean State. She picked one up - it was the size of a largish peanut butter jar - and peered at the "bologna" within: they were in the form of huge, fat Vienna sausages (and according to the ingredient panel, they're composed of pretty much the same stuff.) The jars were plastic and sealed with soft plastic lids, and as Lynnafred looked through the brine at the bologna she said, "Eww. These are grey. Are they supposed to look like that?" After looking at a dozen other jars, and finding all of them containing somewhat greyish weiners sealed within, we concluded that the answer was probably Yes, they are supposed to look like that. The coupon said that there was a limit of 12 jars per family, but we curbed our enthusiasm and held ourselves to the purchase of a single jar which, at $1.20, seemed to be a fair price.

Let me start the actual review by saying that I can not believe that Farmer's Pride pickled bologna is a regularly-produced consumer good. Every single component of this product screams "DISPOSE OF CHEAP SHIT!!"  The jars are flimsy plastic, the lids seem to be made of the same quality plastic as imported dollar-store toys from China, the labels look like they were run off on a laser printer. Most of the jars at the store had sticky label residue clinging to the non-labeled areas, telling me that these snacks were probably rejected by the company which originally contracted them, leading the manufacturer to hastily peel the original label and rebrand them for the "remainder market" (i.e. dollar stores and job lot joints like OSJL.) And then, of course, there is the actual bologna itself:

That is one nasty-ass piece of tubesteak right there. Check out the gradations of coloring, from a kind of brownish-grey at the ends to rather pinkish in the middle. I swear I used no filtering or image manipulation to change those colors - that is exactly how they come out of the jar. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture the true beauty of the grey lines that run from tip to tip on the wieners, especially where the meat was in contact with the sides of the jar. These things are truly ghastly to look at.

At least when we cut into the wiener we found that the grey color doesn't go all the way through - once you get a little way into the surface, everything kind of turns pink again. I guess that means that they're okay to eat. Honestly, eyeballs are all we have to go by for safety, because there are absolutely no olfactory cues here. No scent of spices, no aroma of meat - nothing at all except the pungency of strong vinegar stabbing at our nostrils like fleets of aromatic daggers. The manufacturer (Monogram Meat Snacks LLC, USDA EST 795) could not possibly have made the brine any more unpleasantly sharp.

And the wieners are just as unpleasant to eat as they are to look at. The texture is firm and smooth, but there is little flavor beyond the powerful vinegar brine, which is so acidic that it actually produces a burning sensation in the mouth and throat. And - worst of all to me - the meat leaves a disgusting tallowy film coating the mouth and tongue. These things are grossly misnamed - they should be called "Farmer's Shame."

As with so many other oddball snacks we've tried over the years, Farmer's Pride Snack Bologna proved to be pretty popular with the dogs, though I didn't dare give them all they wanted due to the acidity of the pickle (the last thing I want to do is spend an afternoon scrubbing dog puke out of the dining room rug.)

So there you have it. Cheap, shitty, only marginally edible, and obviously close to the end of its shelf life - Look for 'em at a dollar store near you - and pass them up in favor of almost anything else you find.




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Review: Jack Link Teriyaki Beef Steak

Up in Maine, there's a chain of job lot stores called Marden's. They are old-school job lotters, buying up stray pallets of merchandise, bankruptcies, close-outs, salvage lots, and so on. That's what makes them so awesome - they approach the odd lot market the way these kinds of stores did fifty years ago, so they manage not to have the same old manufactured-for-the-dollar-market stuff that everyone else has. No, Marden's carries the true odd lot stuff that only comes from purchasing a boxcar full of merchandise originally destined for a bankrupt department store. I love the place, and I never go to Maine without making it a point to spend some time rummaging through the shelves at whatever Marden's is closest to my destination.

By now, you're wondering what any of this has to do with a blog post that is supposed to be a review of Jack Link Teriyaki Beef Steak. Well, I was up on the south coast of Maine last Friday, and the Marden's in Biddeford had these Jack Link Teriyaki Beef Steaks on sale, two for a dollar.  

So I sprung for a couple of Beef Steaks. As much as I love beef jerky, these "steak" things are never as good as jerky, and I knew this experiment was not going to end well.

I knew I was in trouble as soon as I unwrapped it and found that the only way to really tell where the plastic coating ended and the Beef Steak began was by the lurid red color of the...um, what should I call this stuff? Meat?

Got to admit, it wasn't a nasty tube of grease the way some cheap meat meat snacks are. It smelled like pretty authentic teriyaki beef. It even kind of tasted like authentic teriyaki beef. But the texture totally lost me. It was amazingly like a Twizzler, except salty and loaded with uneven lumps of what Jack Link assures me  originated somewhere on the body of a cow.

It was a cheap snack and luckily we were on our way to Portland when we stopped, so I was able to wash the cheap teriyaki flavor out of my mouth with a dozen oysters and an IPA at J's.

Vintage Corned Beef Experiment, Part 2

Quick recap: I cooked a commercial corned beef which had hidden in my refrigerator for a month past its "sell by" date.

It was delicious. I'd do it again. (Not on purpose.)

Vintage Corned Beef Experiment Part 1

This afternoon I remembered that I had a corned beef in the meat drawer of the fridge. I bought it before St. Patrick's Day, because the prices on corned beef right around that time of year are pretty unbeatable, and the "use or freeze by" date was seemingly far off in the future.

So far off, in fact, that I kind of forgot all about having it sitting in there, waiting for me.

Tonight I got home and thought about corned beef for some reason. I remembered that chunk in the fridge and wondered if it was too late to cook.  The date on the package said "FREEZE / USE BY MAY 17 2012:"

I opened up the package and took a sniff. Smelled like corned beef; no off odors. The brine wasn't thick or sticky the way it gets when meat spoils in it.  So I put in a pot with some water, celery, chopped shallots, and pickling spice and put it on to simmer.

The kitchen smells pretty good right now.  I'll give it a few hours on a simmer, then cool it, wrap it tightly in foil, and refrigerate it overnight. Tomorrow I'll let you know how it turned out.

Potted Meat Is Nastier Than You Can Imagine

Of all the cheap canned pseudo-foods out there, the one that undoubtably resides on the very lowest rung of the ladder is Potted Meat (which was once upon a time called "Potted Meat Food Product.") I remember having bought it once long ago and being severely underwhelmed. 

Most of the time when I find Potted Meat, it's either Libby or Armour brand, and stocked on the shelves next to the Vienna Sausage. But at Dollar Tree, the Potted Meat has it's very own shelf, and different brands are sold side by side.

And that's how I found Brunswick Potted Meat With Crackers. How cool! It's just like having an entire lunch in one convenient package! Because the Brunswick kit came with Bryan Potted Meat, a brand I had never tried before, I also picked up a can of Armour Potted Meat so i could do a side by side comparison.

After I got the stuff home, though, I discovered that I really didn't need to compare these side by side. I noticed the USDA inspection seals - Both of them were made at Establishment P-4247. That's Pinnacle Foods, owner of the Armour brand as well as others like Hartford House and Hungry Man. Apparently, their plant is also making Potted Meat for sale under other labels...such as Bryan.  

The primary ingredients of Potted Meat these days are mechanically separated chicken, beef tripe, and salt. There are traces of seasonings and spices as well. "Mechanically separated chicken" is a meat product which celebrates the triumph of technology over nature. Chicken carcasses and bones which are left over from normal processing are forced through a sieve under high pressure, removing every last bit of meat from them. This makes the final product very finely ground and paste-like. 

The Brunswick lunch pack comes with a small Mylar packet containing five nondescript round crackers, a tiny plastic spoon/spreader for the Potted Meat, and the can of Bryan Potted Meat. There are a couple problems with this setup. First, five crackers are a totally stingy portion. Even with the Potted Meat heaped generously upon them, I still ran out of crackers long before running out of Potted Meat. And trust me, having enough crackers is critical to the enjoyment of this product. The texture of the Potted Meat is pretty horrendous. It's a slippery paste with a slightly granular feel (thanks to the tripe) with nothing to sink your teeth into. Putting it on a crispy cracker gives it a more pleasing texture along with a satisfying crunch. And when the crackers run out, it's a lot harder to be enthusiastic about eating a can of salty meat paste.

As for the flavor - well, if you've ever eaten a Vienna Sausage or some cheap bologna, you kind of know what Potted Meat tastes like. But not really because the flavor of the beef tripe really does stand out against the bland "white slime" chicken. And above all else, there's the salt: the choking, throat-parching salt - enough, it seems, to cause cardiac arrest.

Clearly, Potted Meat is virtually inedible on its own. And yet, there has to be a market for it - Armour wouldn't be producing so many cans of it if no one were buying the stuff.  Perhaps people are creating some of the various snackular dishes that Armour suggests on their website. Things like:

Tangy Spread  

2 3-oz cans ARMOUR® STAR POTTED MEAT
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1 8-oz pkg cream cheese, softened
Bread or assorted crackers 

Combine all ingredients, except bread or crackers; chill thoroughly. Serve on bread or crackers.

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Party Pleasers 

1 3-oz. can ARMOUR® STAR POTTED MEAT
1 cup Cheddar cheese, shredded
1/2 cup margarine, softened
1/4 cup onion, diced
12 slices French Bread 

Combine first 4 ingredients, mix well. Spread mixture on bread slices. Broil 5-10 minutes, or until brown.

For more recipes, you can click here to go to Armour's website and follow their links to the recipes if you dare.

Oscar Mayer Liver Cheese (Grail List)

My "Grail List" is a list of foods and/or culinary experiences which I'm endeavoring to try. For some time now, I've had Oscar Mayer Liver Cheese at the top of the list. Although this product may be very familiar to some of you, it is apparently unavailable in my part of the country. Whenever I've traveled, I've kept an eye open for it.

But now the wait is over, thanks to an anonymous reader who was kind enough to send a package of it to me.

Oscar Mayer Liver Cheese is for the most part a square liver loaf, made with pork livers, pork, and dehydrated onions. It's surrounded by a thin layer of lard, and there are bits of livery aspic clinging to it here and there.

I'm sure that more than a few of you have already started to shudder, if not at the mention of liver, at the layer of lard and the prospect of finding bits of liver jelly around the edges. But I must say that the most extraordinary thing about this lunchmeat is how ordinary it is.

I like liver of all kinds, and I like liverwurst. And that's basically what Oscar Mayer Liver Cheese is -  a special variety of liverwurst. It's a bit stronger-tasting than some, with just a hint of that peculiar bitterness inherent in liver, but the bitterness is smoothed out by a slight and vague sweetness (perhaps provided by the onion.) 

The lard border is absolutely bland by comparison, though it does have this gentle resistance to the teeth which was quite interesting, as it doesn't smear around or coat the mouth as might be expected. Some people peel it off before eating the liver cheese, either to eat separately or, more commonly, to throw away. Personally, I leave it be and eat it along with the rest (and please save it if you're planning a lecture about how bad lard is for my health. Tiny amounts eaten occasionally are not going to kill me or anyone else.)

So: overall a pleasant and tasty experience, though one I can recommend only to readers who already enjoy liverwurst. Oscar Mayer Liver Cheese isn't going to change the minds of the haters.

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Special note: The same anonymous donor also sent along a Sweet Sue whole canned chicken which I plan to open and enjoy with the family later this week. Label instructions say to chill it before opening, so at the moment it's in the fridge. I promise to reveal it in all its glory a little later.

Grote & Weigel Rides Again

The first Grote & Weigel products since the company was saved from the brink of bankruptcy are hitting the shelves. I was out shopping this morning when I noticed that Grote & Weigel Easter Kielbasa is back on shelves just in time for the holiday.

Here's hoping that natural casing franks are next!

Out Of The Can: Bacon Grill Luncheon Loaf

Bacon Grill Luncheon Loaf is a dollar-store SPAM knockoff that is perhaps the worst-tasting homogeneous tinned meat product that I have ever tasted. The photo doesn't really do it justice, because it fails to show its true, vividly pink color/ Popped out of the can as shown, it looks very much like it was made of melted pink crayon topped with transparent Jell-O.

Sliced and fried, it developed a nicely browned crust which is probably the best thing I'm going to say about it. The texture was spongy and unpleasant, and it tasted like the cheapest, most filler-laden bologna you can imagine.

Really horrible. I might eat it again if I were starving. No, literally starving, not just "wicked hungry" starving.

Out Of The Can: Brookdale Corned Beef Hash (ALDI)

Today's Out of the Can feature is Brookdale Corned Beef Hash, sold by ALDI. Bearing in mind that ALDI is a no-frills, low-price sort of supermarket, I was expecting this hash to be a hilarious cylinder of fat and lurid pink mystery meat, much like the cheap house brand hash that provided me with so many lulz in April 2010.

But no - Like so many other ALDI branded products, Brookdale Corned Beef Hash is pretty awesome. Very little fat cooks out of it in the skillet. The meat and potatoes are both decent quality, and the flavor is good without being overly salty.

A quick check of the USDA Establishment Number printed on the can reveals that the hash is actually made by Hormel, then labeled for distribution and sale by ALDI (regardless of how secretive ALDI is about the source of their private brand stuff, this is something they cannot hide on anything containing any kind of meat - federal regulations require that the processors of meat products be revealed on the package.)

I like canned corned beef hash - 'ash an' heggs is a favorite Sunday morning breakfast for us, especially as the weather gets colder. I've gotten used to tipping the pan and spooning out a quarter of a cup of fat as the hash cooked, so it was a mighty pleasant surprise to find that Brookdale hash doesn't pour off a load of grease as it heats up.  And what makes it even better is the price (I'm pretty sure I paid less than $1.50 a can for it.)

Recommended with no qualms.

Kielbasa from Strum's Deli & Meats, Holyoke

Strum's Deli and Meats is a little hole-in-the-wall butcher shop on Westfield Road in Holyoke.  Lynnafred and I visited it last week when, after months of having driven by the place and saying "Hey we oughta stop in there sometime," sometime finally arrived.

It's a decent store, much bigger on the inside than it looks from the small storefront. They've got quite a variety of cuts available, and they do some sausage making as well.  I'll write more about the store in coming weeks - I want to go there again and sample some of the other stuff they offer - but today I'm going to tell you about their kielbasa.

Strum's kielbasa is very good. The spice blend is traditional and not too salty, and the smoke is well-balanced and not overpowering. The pork they use is high-quality without gristly bits being evident. It's a bit less fatty than I'm used to, which makes for a dryer sausage, but being a little leaner didn't detract from the flavor or enjoyability of the kielbasa - and it made it somewhat easier to grill without huge uncontrollable flareups.

Seriously, if the only kielbasa you've ever had is the crap packaged by Hillshire Farm, you owe it to yourself to find a good, small-label kielbasa, and preferably one that's made practically in your backyard (like Strum's if you live in Holyoke, or Janik if you live a little south of there in Enfield.) You'll be blown away by how awesome the local stuff is, and you'll wonder why you put up with that mass-marketed garbage for so long.

Strum's Deli & Meats

502 Westfield Road

Holyoke, MA 01040-1633
(413) 532-8020

Out of the Can: Henaff Pork Pate

Henaff Pork Pate,  a kind of French version of SPAM.

Snacky Bones

One of the reasons Stop & Shop is one of my favorite stores here in Enfield is because of their awesome Pork Policy. There are a lot of folks in town who make their own sausage, and Stop & Shop caters to them, selling hog casings, and pork fat, liver, and skin.  And along with this offal, they also sell random pork bone trimmings.  Sometimes they're neck and back bones (great for making stock) but sometimes, they're rib trimmings.  This might not sound like a big difference, but rib trimmings are excellent for making little pork snackers - and Stop & Shop sells them pretty cheap.

What follows is a basic recipe for Snacky Bones, but it's more of a method and guideline than it is a true recipe.  The instructions section will include suggestions and options.

Snacky Bones

Makes 1 batch

Meaty pork bones, rib trimmings suggested, any quantity

Salt, pepper, other seasonings

Put the bones in a shallow roasting pan and season with salt, pepper, and a flavorful seasoning blend of your choice.  Bell's makes an excellent Onion & Herb seasoning ostensibly for chicken, but it's awesome on pork as well.

Roast the bones in the oven for about 50 minutes at 350 F.

Remove the roasted bones to a dry skillet on the stovetop. Without adding any oil or fat - there will be enough on the bones to do the job - pan fry them over medium heat to crisp them up.

Just before they're done, I like to splash the ribs with some brandy, bring the brandy to a sizzle, then tip the pan to flame off the alcohol.  The brandy gives an extra dimension of flavor to the pork, and the blue-and-yellow fireball is frigging awesome and impresses the hell out of visitors who might be hanging around the kitchen getting underfoot while I'm trying to cook.

To serve:  Pile the bones on a plate and put them in the middle of the table. Make sure everyone has plenty of napkins or access to a roll of paper towels (we don't stand on ceremony at my place.)  You can serve them straight up, crusty with the herb seasonings you added, or you can dress them with a sauce (your favorite barbecue sauce if you like - or try some Japanese tonkatsu sauce, it's great) or just set out little bowls of sauce for dipping.

No, really, it's just pork.

I got this really "uncomfortable" feeling walking by the meat case at Stop & Shop today after work...

Prairie Belt Vienna Sausages

I found these at Big Lots and immediately purchased them because of the very cool retro label.

Later on, I found that they're made by Armour and that they're as good as the regular Armour-labeled viennas.

I wonder if the kid on the label has a name.  I think we should name him "Scooter."  He looks remarkably Scooterish to me.

Corned Beef Fail

Local readers get three guesses at which Longmeadow MA supermarket sold me this inedibly-fatty USDA Grade Shit corned beef.

Please don't tell me that corned beef is supposed to be fatty.  I took these slices from the leanest part of the cut, and this is the fat left after braising it in the oven all damn day.

Armour Vienna Sausage

Oh, Big Lots, you magnificent bastard!  I never fail to find something interesting, intriguing, or unsettling when I walk through your doors!  Like Vienna Sausage...in flavors!  How could I resist?

Before I start, I should mention that I actually like Vienna sausages and have since I was a kid.  If anything, I might even like them better nowadays since I'm watching my carb intake and a can of these little meatsticks only has about 7g of carbohydrates.  Now on with the tasting:

Original -  I guess I could call this the control sample.  Plain and unadorned, they're made of chicken, beef and pork and canned in chicken broth (this is a slight change from a few years ago, when they were canned in beef broth.)  The label reads "America's Favorite" and I kind of believe it because I've tried other Vienna sausage (hello, Libby's - hi there, Goya!) and Armour really are the best; they taste like mild hot dogs, only "squishier."  The other three flavors are more or less just dressed-up versions of Original.

Barbecue Flavored - Instead of being packed in broth, these are packed in a tomato-based barbecue sauce.  I wasn't sure what to expect from them since cheap barbecue sauce is generally pretty heinous, but amazingly, they're fairly good.  In fact, with a little more spice the barbecue sauce could even attain something close to excellence, since - unlike many bottled BBQ sauces available at the supermarket - there isn't a drop of high-fructose corn syrup in them.  So here's to you, Pinnacle Foods, you're OK in my book.  I would definitely buy these again.

Smoked - In a word:  Awesome.  Seriously.  And that really shouldn't be a surprise, since most meats are better for a bit of time in a smokehouse.  The label says "Hickory Smoke Flavor Added" so I thought that they probably just put a little bit of "liquid smoke" in the can before processing.  No.  They are really smoked - when you pull apart the bundle of sausages, you can see that there's no smoke marks where the wieners were pressed together.  I was impressed.

Jalapeno - Although they were my least favorite of the four, they were still pretty good.  The weenies are made with jalapeno powder, so don't go looking for little slices of pepper in the bottom of the can.  But you can really taste the full-bodied pepper flavor when you chomp into the sausages.  There's enough spicy heat in them to satisfy a mild craving for fire (enough for me at lunchtime, thanks) but I'm betting they'd be considered on the mild side by a die-hard chilihead.

So.  Four cans of Vienna sausage, four decent lunches.  I think I did pretty well.

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Out of the Can: Barbecue Vienna Sausage

Check out that helical twist.  It would be awesome to see some Vienna sausage that are like three feet long, just to check out the spiral.
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Banquet's Cheesy Smothered Charbroiled Patty Revisited

Almost exactly a year ago, I reviewed Banquet's Cheesy Smothered Meat Patty Meal.  It was, and remains, one of the worst things I have ever eaten.  Whenever I see them in the supermarket, I still can't believe that there is such a demand for them that they're still produced.

But they are.  And apparently, they are so popular that Banquet also packages them in a "Family Size" - six patties smothered in "cheesy" sauce.  Damn.  Six of those would be like six lifetime supplies of them for me.

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