Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Is There a Hidden Nutrient in Barbeque?
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
This magnificent prime rib, cooked in front of a hickory fire tasted even better than it looks.
We are now right in the middle of barbecue season, and I have cooked a lot of Que, and eaten a lot of Que.
And I must say, the more Que I have, the more I look forward to the next barbeque.
So far, I have enjoyed barbecued grassfed beef, including ribeyes, tri-tips, bone in strip loins, boneless strip loins, center cut shoulder roasts, beef back ribs, short ribs, flat iron steaks, sirloin tip roasts, sirloin steaks, the occasional porterhouse or prime rib or tenderloin, and more, and enjoyed them all.
I have also barbecued and enjoyed grassfed bone in lamb legs, boneless lamb legs, lamb shoulder, lamb shoulder chops, lamb ribs, rack of lamb, and some lamb loin chops, and enjoyed all of them as well.
And that does not even count the pork ribs, port roasts, pork chops, chicken in many forms and the rare but truly wonderful grassfed bison, which I have also cooked and enjoyed.
I never use gas, or factory charcoal briquets, or big flaming fires that char the meat. Like most of our ancestors, I use moderate to low fires of lump charcoal and wood, or just wood, and cook in front of the fire, not directly over it. The meat never chars or burns, but picks up the incredible flavor of oak, or hickory, or cherry, a deep smoky flavor that makes the tender meat taste so good that it is like nothing else. No other method of cooking excites me like this one. No other food aroma makes me so hungry just to smell it. And no other food makes me feel so good when I eat it
Does the wood have some kind of unknown nutrient that enters the food through the smoke? No scientific evidence I know of, but sometimes I think it must be true. Why else would it taste so good, be so satisfying, and leave me feeling content and wonderful?
Or maybe the smell and taste of meat cooked with wood smoke speaks to something very old and primordial, a vague yet powerful ancestral memory of countless meals cooked with fire and smoke, the oldest way of cooking. Something below the conscious mind, yet very real.
All I know for sure is that there is something about cooking barbeque that I truly love, including making and controlling the fire, the smell of the wood and roasting meat, even the sounds of the fire. And there is something about barbequed real meat that tastes better to me and satisfies me more than any other food.
Well, enough writing about it. Time to do it again, this time a big thick strip loin cooked in front of an oak fire. I am getting hungry just thinking about it.
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