I have been away for some time now.  Events at work have created the need for increased attention.  But now with Christmas 2011 looming large, I thought I would revisit the preparation of a great holiday bird.  Your family and friends crowd for this feast may be large enough to need a 20 pound Tom turkey or small enough for a fryer chicken; either way, you can hit a home run with this great recipe.

It is so simple, you may be tempted to pass on it for something more complicated that promises to keep moisture in the breast, like injecting the bird breast with a spiced butters or the like.  Believe me, the breast meat has plenty of moisture in it naturally, if you can prepare it in a way that won’t dry it out.  That statement coincidentally is in part responsible for the fried-turkey craze we have seen in the last 20 years or so.  Just like fried chicken, hot grease sears the outer skin locking in the moisture.  This recipe does the same thing.

To begin with, use a baking pan with a grill insert that will keep the turkey from sitting in it’s own juices.  You will need nothing more for preparation than oil (vegetable, canola, olive etc.) and salt. 

Make certain the bird is completely thawed.  One week in the fridge should be sufficient for most birds.  I would bring the thawed bird into room temperature for an hour prior to the oven.  Your oven will need to be set at 550 degrees.

Cover the bird with oil and then salt it heavily (almost like snow).  You don’t want the salt to have a measurable depth, but it does need to be well covered.  Place the bird in the oven uncovered and watch it until it turns golden brown.  At that point, back the temperature down to 325 degrees and place an aluminum sheet lightly formed around the bird. 

Use the formula on the packaging label, bake the bird for a length of time relative to it’s weight (or typically 15 minutes per pound).

When the baking time is within 30 minutes of completion, take the internal temperature by placing the thermometer into the inside of either thigh (the Part of the thigh nearest the breast.  If the thermometer reads 155 degrees, remove the foil and continue baking until the thermometer reads 170 degrees at which time the bird is done and should be removed from the oven.  If the temperature reads less than 155, leave the foil on until it does.   The last 10 degrees will be use to crisp any rubbery skin by removing the foil and giving the heat direct access to the skin.

After the bird cools for 20-30 minutes (during which time the internal temperature will rise another 10 degrees to 180) you may want to begin the carving.  Unless you prefer to place the baked bird on the table un-carved for a nice presentation, I recommend carving in the kitchen so that everyone at the table has easy access to the white or dark meat without waiting for one person to slice each piece (and normally making a mess in the process or worse, cutting himself/herself and bleeding all over the meat).

Carving the bird in the kitchen can yield a very nice presentation as well.  Use a serving dish sized such that it will look full for the size bird you baked.  Then begin by removing the hind quarters, the legs and thighs.  Pull the hindquarter away from the back and breast by placing your thumb at the leg/thigh joint and your index and middle finger at the base of the thigh.  As you pull the hindquarter away from the body with your thumb, press upward with your fingers at the base of the thigh and the thigh knuckle should pop out of its socket.  Use a knife to separate the thigh from the body where the knuckle popped out.  Separate the leg from the thigh with a knife at the joint where they join.

On a cutting board, use tongs and a fork to pull the meat off the legs.  The legs have more cartilage in them than any other part. Take care to remove the cartilage from the serving dish.  Set that meat to one side and do the same with the thighs.  If the meat has cooled enough, you may be able to pull the meat apart with your fingers if not, use tongs or slice with a knife.  Place the thigh meat with the leg meat in the middle of the serving dish. 

Next use a knife to remove the wings at the joint where they attach to the breast and place them to the side.  Stand the bird upright on the top of the breast where the neck would be and remove the meat from the back (by some opinions, the meat from the

Last weekend my wife and I hosted good friends from Louisville, Kentucky, Ted and Cheri.  We like to get together two or three times each year to renew friendship, play golf (the girls shop) and of course I grill some steaks.  This visit I changed the menu somewhat and grilled some pork.  At the table, Ted and Cheri both said “This is the best tasting meat I have ever had!”  These words are what every grill master lives to hear.  Ted and Cheri always say nice things about my grilled meats, but this time they convinced me that this meat really was great.  Curious?  Okay, I’ll tell you what it was and how to prepare it. 

The cut is called Pork Country Backbone also sometimes labeled Pork Country Style Ribs.  I can illustrate this cut by taking us back to my last post where I discussed all the steaks that lay along the backbone of a steer.  I said the first Ribeye begins where the last New York Strip ends.   Beef loins and pork loins are similar.  The last center cut pork chop ends where the first rib-end pork chop begins.  At the opposite end of the pork loin, you will find sirloin chops just as you would find sirloin steaks on the rump end of a beef loin.

If we were to look at the first rib-end pork chop, it would look almost exactly like the last center cut pork chop.  As we move on toward the neck, the appearance of the chops begin to change much like beef rib steaks change moving the same direction.  More fat appears; the more dominate eye of the center cut chop begins to diminish and an eye brow becomes more dominate. 

Country Backbone and ribs are merchandised from the last nine inches of the rib-end of the pork loin.  The only difference between a rib-end pork chop and a piece of country backbone or country style rid is that the chop is cut in half.  One half has the meat attached to the backbone and the other has meat on the rib.  All the meat is tender and tasty.  You might ask your meat cutter to explain how Country Backbone and Country Style Ribs are processed. 

To prepare the meat for grilling, I use both wet marinade and dry rub.  The marinade is sprinkled on the meat, not pooled so that the meat sits in a marinade bath.  The taste that has won so many compliments comes from a Worcestershire marinade.  Sprinkle Worcestershire sauce on each piece of backbone (I’ll use this term to designate both backbone and ribs).  Then season to taste with salt and pepper and garlic salt.  Let the meat sit for an hour or so and then repeat the application of the Worcestershire sauce and move to the grill.  I like to keep the bottle of Worcestershire sauce available to repeat the application while the meat is grilling.

I recommend charcoal and wood for grilling, but realize many don’t have the time and/or desire to mess with that level of commitment.  Country Backbone prepared with these seasonings and marinade and grilled on a gas grill, should still bring you many compliments.  Grill on a hot grill, turning with tongs (never a fork) and remove as soon as meat moves beyond a pink appearance in the center.  You don’t want to serve dry, over-cooked meat to anyone accept those who hold the misconception that meat must be cooked so long it ceases to resemble food.  All you can do for them is smile and comply (start their meat ten minutes earlier than the rest and pray for God to enlighten them).  

One word of caution.  Some retailers (maybe most) also merchandise a “country backbone” that comes from the blade of the shoulder and is more a part of the Boston Butt (like a chuck roast on beef).  This meat is fine, but will not be as tender as rib meat from the loin.  Look carefully at the label.  If you see the word “blade” or “shoulder” on the label, I recommend you leave it alone.  If you want to be certain, just ask the market manager a question like, “Is this meat from the shoulder blade or the rib-end of the pork loin?” If you have trustworthy retailers they will tell you the truth.

I hope you enjoy this dish.  It goes great with a salad and baked potato.  Let me hear how it goes for you.

Among the choices one may consider for great tasting meat are fish and seafood, beef, chicken and pork.  Lamb and goat are favorite choices for many.  Some enjoy the less domestic meats like deer, elk, rabbit, rattle snake, ostrich, alligator and the like.  Buffalo is becoming a bit more common, but still has a way to go before we could call it a common choice in our culture.

 My favorites include chicken, beef and pork (not necessarily in that order).  Nothing “rings my bell” more passionately and more frequently than a grilled ribeye steak.  For all you filet Mignon or New York Strip lovers (or lovers of the Porter House steak, which has both the Filet Mignon and New York Strip steaks attached to the T-Bone) and Sirloin lovers too, permit me to explain my favoritism for the ribeye.

The ribeye has two sections of meat in each steak, the eye and the eye brow.  The eye is the center portion of the steak and compares to the New York Strip in texture, but is slightly more flavorful due to the extra marbling in rib meat.  The eye brow compares to the Filet Mignon in tenderness, though very different in texture.  Plus the eye brow is much more flavorful, again due to the extra marbling of rib meat.  In fact, did you ever stop to consider why Filets are so often served with a piece of smoked bacon wrapped around them?  You guessed it, the Filet simply needs a little help in the fat and flavor department.

Picture, if you can, the backbone of a steer.  Move from the rump of the steer to the neck.  Progressing in that direction, you will first move past the Sirloin steak section (10-12 inches in length) then (as you continue moving toward the neck) you will come to the Porter House section (4-6 inches), next the T-Bone section (2 feet long) and finally the New York Strip section (10 inches in length approximately).  All Sirloin, Porter House and T-Bone steaks have a strip steak on one side of the bone and a Filet on the other side.  The Filet can be removed in one whole piece leaving an entire length of the loin of New York and Sirloin strip steaks filet-less.

If we were to continue to move up the back bone of the steer toward the neck, the next steak we come to after leaving the last New York Strip is the first ribeye.  Obviously the first ribeye looks (and tastes) just like the last New York Strip, they are the same piece of meat, an oval piece of lean and tender meat.  Old butchers (meat cutters or meat merchandisers) used to call the first 4 inches of rib meat the Kansas City Strip, because it looked so much like a New York Strip. 

As we continue to move on toward the neck, the oval strip (the eye) begins to diminish and the eye brow begins appear and grow progressively more pronounced.  More fat begins to appear also until we end at the first chuck roast.  That’s right, the last ribeye is hard fast against the first chuck roast.  What that means is the first chuck roast is nice and tender.  Most retailers will cut 4-6 inches off the front of the chuck.  From that piece, they will remove the small portion that came from the ribeye and cut that piece into steaks called “chuck tender” or “chuck eye” steaks.

I hope this journey up the backbone of the steer was helpful in your understanding of how steaks lie along that part of the animal.  I should probably also say that each backbone has all these steaks on each side of it.  Each cleaned carcass is sawed in half down the length of the backbone.  That process yields two sides of beef.  Each side has  the exact meat formations as the other.  Then the sides are cut across yielding a front quarter and a hind quarter.  Then hind quarter has the rump and loin and the front quarter has the chuck with the shoulder and the rib.  Each side of beef is quartered at the point where the last New York Strip meets the first ribeye.   

I hope these explanations help to provide a picture of how meat cutters merchandise beef.  Let me know if questions have been raised and I will do my best to address them.  

I began by saying I wanted to explain why I preferred the Ribeye over the other loin steaks.  The answer is simple, the Ribeye is as tender as any loin steak other than the Filet Mignon and it is more flavorful than that steak.  The combination of tenderness and flavor go to the Ribeye.

Last week while sitting in the cafeteria at work, one of my friends asked me where a ribeye steak comes from on a steer’s carcass. I think many, maybe most consumers could ask the same question. Te answer is simple, though explaining it might be a challenge.

Picture a steer from a side-view. The left side of the beef is exactly like the right side. Every cut of beef from one side is perfectly mirrored on the other side. So to answer the question of where a ribeye steak comes from, we’ll think of looking at the left side ofmthe steer, head to the left and tail to the right.

Notice I am using the term “steer” and “beef” interchangeably. Cattle meat used in retail stores for sale as USDA inspected and USDA graded meat should always come from steers, castrated male cattle, not cows or bulls.

From our view of the steer, beginning on the left side and moving to the right we see the head, then the neck, then the chuck. The chuck is a short primal cut running from the neck to the last rib steak. So the first chuck roast is against the last ribeye. This roast can be a little fatty, but otherwise very tender.

The last ribeye will also have more fat than other ribeyes as we move further toward the hindquarter. The first ribeye lies against the last T-bone, which is normally merchandised as a NY Strip steak. The NY Strip marks the first steak off the hind quarter and morphs into True T- Bones as we continue our movement toward the tail. T-bones have varying degrees of filet (just a note here, a beef loin is normally merchandised with NY Strips, T-Bones, Porterhouse and finally Sirloin steaks, in that order.

At times the whole filet will be removed and sold for filet mignons. That process leaves the loin with no other steaks but NY Strips and top sirloins. The lesson here is this: When you want a filet for the wife and a NY Strip for the husband, but if you don’t want to pay $13.00 per pound for a filet and $11.00 per pound for a NY Strip, you can buy a nice Porterhouse for $9.00 per pound
and cut the filet off one side of the bone and the NY Strip off the other side. The trick is to buy a Porterhouse with a small bone, because you will pay $9.00 per pound for that too.

Some years ago (Let’s say in 2002), I joined with Chef Pam at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky to teach a food preparation class to the spouses of seminary students. Chef Pam (the only name by which I knew her) was a highly accomplished chef in the Louisville area especially in regard to fish.  Rumor had it that Chef Pam even appeared as a guest on the Julia Childs show to demonstrate the preparation of some fish dish.

Though I was serving at the seminary as an associate professor in the area of practical ministries, I had become good friends with Chef Pam.  Not only was I known to frequent the seminary cafeteria on a regular basis, but also each year during the holiday season, I would make an appointment to use the seminary’s state-of-the-art kitchen to prepare two or three of the hams I wrote about in the previous blog post.  Chef Pam (and all the others who worked in the food services) would hover around the table as I carved the ham to scavenger all the trimmings I could spare. 

One year she suggested that we team up and teach a food preparation class for student spouses.  She wanted to teach the wives (and a couple husbands) how to bake a turkey and make some decorative garnishments for the holidays.  I was assigned the task of teaching the art of knife sharpening and how to cut a whole chicken fryer into parts. 

Chef Pam demonstrated how to take carrots and radishes and make birds and bunnies from them.  I followed by  teaching knife sharpening and chicken cutting.  Then Chef Pam began to teach all of us how to bake a turkey so that it would be juicy and delicious. I use this method to bake turkeys to this day.  It works every time.

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 550 degrees.

Cover the bird (I say “bird” because this baking method will work on chicken hens, Capons, ducks, Cornish Game Hens, or turkeys) with vegetable oil.

Salt the bird heavily (watch for cuts in the skin.  You don’t want the salt to have direct contact with the meat).

Place the birding the hot oven and monitor until the skin turns golden brown.  At that point, cover the bird with aluminum foil and back the temperature down to 325 degrees.

No further basting is necessary the juices will be held inky the crust created by. The sale, oil and high heat in the first few minutes of baking.

COOKING

For a rough idea on how long to bake a turkey, refer to the instructions on the wrapping (it will likely tell you so many minutes per pound). Use this formula only for determining when you should begin taking internal temperatures.  You want to leave the bird in the oven until the bird reaches 185 degrees.  Be sure to take the internal temperature by inserting the meat thermometer into the thigh on the side closest to the breast.  You will want the tip of the thermometer to rest near the knuckle where the thigh bone is connected to the back bone. 

When Chef Pam finished showing us how to prepare the turkey to place it in the oven, she also had another turkey ready to be removed from the oven.  She then said, “Dr. drake, would you take one of your knives and poke this turkey in the breast?  The moment the point of the knife punctured the skin of that turkey breast, juice spurted out.      She then had me slice enough breast meat for all of us to have a sample.  It was the tastiest and juiciest turkey I had ever eaten.

Now back to the coking instructions.  Estimate when to remove the foil by reaching 175 degrees internal temperature or when you think you are 15 to 20 minutes before removing the bird.  Removing the foil for 15 or 20 minutes before removing the bird from the oven will allow the skin to get crispy.  If you prefer not to have crispy skin, simply leave the foil on the bird until you are ready to remove it.  After the bird is removed let cool until you can handle the meat with out being burned. 

PRESENTATION

Carve either by removing wings, legs and thighs (bone-in) and removing breast meat (boneless) or pull meat off all the bones. 

To present the dish in the first scenario, place wings at opposite sides at the top of an oval platter.  Behind each wing on each side of the platter, first lay the thighs and behind each thigh place the legs.  Be sure to lay the large part of the leg is laid next to the thigh. Then place the sliced boneless breast in the middle of the platter dividing a wing- thigh-leg on each side.

To present the dish in the second scenario, lay all the pulled dark meat on one side of the platter and all the sliced white meat on the other side. 

In either presentation the sooner the meat is served after it leaves the oven, the more compliments you’ll receive.   

 In our day, it seems the highest virtue regarding food preparation is: “Give me whatever will take less time and cost me less effort and still taste okay.”  People will pay higher prices and get less taste to keep from having to spend time on crafting a beautiful and delicious meal.

 A case in point is the ham dinner.  Especially at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, hams are on the menus. The fact that consumers don’t want to mess with baking a ham is seen in the volumes of fully-cooked hams sold during these seasons. All that is left for the cook to do is warm the meat and serve it. You can’t bake a fully cooked ham or it will crumble when you serve it. A ham needs moisture in it for proper baking.  This fact is why I recommend baking a whole smoked bone-in water-added ham.  I have been doing this for 30 years.  My choice for the best tasting ham on the market, the most consistently perfect cure and quality of meat is the Elm Hill bone-in, smoked, water added ham.  I’ve used them for 20 of the last 30 years.

The “water-added” aspect sometimes causes consumers to question why they should pay extra for the weight of the “added water.” Here’s why:  when a fresh ham is smoked, it looses a percentage of it’s weight in moisture, or “shrinkage.” Rather than pass that cost to the consumer and to insure the ham retains enough moisture to be baked, the processors inject a curing brine into the vascular system of the ham.  Enough brine is injected to insure the ham will come out of the smoker at the same weight it was when it came off the hog. This weight is called “the green weight.”

Let me describe how to prepare a winning dish.  Most consumers will need to request the assistance of their meat cutter for this recipe and he could add a small charge.  If no charge is added, the offer of a tip might be appropriate. 

Here is the request:  “Sir, I need this ham boned out.  I need the hock cut off with a knife rather than with a saw.  I need the H-bone (the pelvic bone) cut out, and I need the round bone (the femur) cut out and then placed back into the ham.  Also please tie the ham back together with a couple of strings to keep it in shape until I get home.”

When you get home, cut the strings and remove the round bone.  Notice the shape of the bone.  You will want to replace the bone so that it will lie the same way it lay when the meat cutter removed it.  Doing this will insure the ham will close properly when you tie it after finishing the seasoning process.  In order to tie the ham, you will want to ask you meat cutter for six to eight feet of butcher cord.

Take one and one half cup of brown sugar (I like dark brown sugar) and rub it into the inside of the ham.  Next, take three tbl. Spoons of ground cloves (more if you like a stronger cloved taste) and spread over the inside of the ham with the sugar.  Replace the bone and tie the ham back together.  Try to close the primary incision which the meat cutter should have made along the top of the ham (not the fat side). 

Store the ham in a cool place with the incision up and the fat-side down.  Keep for two or three days prior to the day you will bake it.  Prior to baking, turn the ham fat-side up and score the fat placing a whole clove in the scores. While cross-scoring will be impossible due to the butcher cord, still place the cloves in the fat about 1 - 1 1/2 inches apart. 

Now the ham is fully prepared and ready for baking.  Place the ham in a baking pan large enough to have a little space on each side of the ham. Cover the ham with foil and place in a pre-heated oven at 325 degrees.  Leave the ham for two hours before removing the foil to baste the ham.  You can melt a cup of brown sugar and two cups of dark Karyo syrup and use that as a baste or you could simply use the ham drippings if some have collected by this time.   I begin basting after two hours and baste each hour after that until the ham reaches an internal temperature of 140 degrees.

Remove the ham when it reaches 140 degrees and let it cool for 30 minutes to an hour.  Place pineapple slices into the baking pan with ham dripping still in the pan and return the pan to the oven.  Let the pineapple slices bake until they begin to brown and have had time to absorb some of the ham drippings.

To carve the ham, simply cut the strings, remove the femur bone, slice the ham the rest of they through, lay the cut surfaces down and slice at desired thickness.  Shingle slices onto a serving dish and garnish with pineapple slices and maraschino cherries for a beautiful presentation.  Pour ham drippings into a bowl and dip the grease from the surface.  Then ladle drippings over the shingled slices.  The best of the flavor is in the drippings.  Your family and friends will talk about the look and taste of this ham all year long.  Only one down side, they’ll all be back next year for you to do it again.  

PS.  If there is any interest out there, I am happy to make a video of the preparation of this ham.

Pappadeaux’s, A Real Treat in the Heat of Atlanta

One of my food passions is seafood.  While I make no claim to know much about preparing seafood, I do claim to love it; I mean, I really love it.  My idea of a perfect seafood platter (my choice for the best way to eat seafood) would contain shrimp, large shrimp, maybe even prawns, and fresh oysters fried with a light batter, stuffed crab, one piece of mild white fish and maybe some large sea scallops.  Add a really nice hush puppy and a big soft baked-potato and bingo, you have a winner!

Last night Sherrie and I were dining at Pappadeaux’s Seafood Kitchen in Dallas, Texas.  I had never heard of this restaurant before, but was struck by the esthetic quality of the exterior and that was enough to cause me to stop and check it out.

The inside was as impressive as the outside, with its New Orleans feel and look.  The servers were friendly and prompt.  Hot French bread with real butter was brought to the table.  The bread had a nice crunch to it.  I dropped crumbs everywhere, but didn’t mind the mess because the flavor was great.

Sherrie ordered a shrimp platter of ten mid-size shrimp. I ordered a seafood platter which featured four shrimp, one stuffed shrimp, one Blue Crab cake, one stuffed crab and a piece of fried Tilapia.  The Tilapia and shrimp were very good, about what one would expect at a nice seafood restaurant.  The Blue Crab Cake, Stuffed Shrimp and Stuffed Crab were simply fabulous!  Only God knows how many stuffed crabs I have eaten in sixty-one years and I can say without equivocation, this was the best.  I’m not only referencing the stuffed crab either, I’m talking about all three dressing pieces, the stuffed crab, the stuffed shrimp, and the Blue Crab Cake, all of them, perfect.  The stuffed shrimp looked like a battered Kiwi with a shrimp tail sticking out of it; it really was that size and shape.

Our server, Michael, and the manager, Chris, were attentive and informative.  They obviously took much pride in the company and its product.  I was impressed and will definitely return to this restaurant or other of its stores wherever I find them.  Pappadeaux’s Seafood Kitchen has made it to the top of my seafood restaurants list.  I understand that they do steaks too.  In fact Chris told me that two separate news papers or media outlets of some description in the Atlanta area have rated Pappadeaux’s steaks the best in the entire state.  I’ll check it out and report.

Years ago pork purveyors began to merchandise a sausage product that they and the consuming public considered far superior to what had been offered to that point.  Whole Hog Sausage stood in contrast to Pork Sausage or Pure Pork Sausage.  Originally, Whole Hog Sausage indicated a product in which hams, loins, shoulders as well as other pork trimmings were included in the product.  Pure Pork Sausage included pure pork (pork meat and fat) but not hams, loins and shoulders.  Here are a couple of sausage definitions from the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service:

Content of Fresh Sausages

• “Fresh Pork Sausages” may not contain pork byproducts and may contain no more than 50% fat by weight..
• “Breakfast Sausages” may contain meat and meat byproducts and no more than 50% fat by weight.
• “Whole Hog Sausage” contains meat from swine in such proportions as are normal to a single animal and no more than 50% fat by weight.

There were many many sausage-making pork plants scattered around the nation; some of them were under USDA inspection, many of them were under their particular state’s Department of Agriculture inspection and still others were under the classification Talmage/Akin Act inspection. These plants were inspected by the state inspectors but had to meet USDA inspection guidelines.

Even though both whole hog sausage and pure pork sausage were allowed the same 50% maximum fat content, just knowing that hams, loins and shoulders were a part of the ingredients in whole hog sausage made that product superior as far as I was concerned.

There are many very fine brands of sausage, but my preference is Rudy’s Whole Hog Sausage.  As a meat market manager for Winn-Dixie, Rudy’s was one of, if not the first companies I learned to be a purveyor of this product.  There are times when I would really like their classic taste and excellent quality, but have not been able to find it on the shelves of my grocery store.  In fact, in Nashville, Tennessee, it is virtually impossible to find a pound of Rudy’s Whole Hog Sausage.  Maybe Rudy’s can’t compete with cheaper brands of sausage, I don’t really know, but I do know that the next best thing I can do is to buy a store brand which is processed by Rudy’s.  Publix has such a brand.

If you were to take a look at a pound roll of Rudy’s Whole Hog Sausage, you will find a small circle that carries the USDA Establishment number for that brand.  Rudy’s brand number is 8080.  When you find that same number on a package of Publix brand sausage, you know that Rudy’s is the company that is processing it.  It very well may be the case that some differences exist in the spice recipe, but you can be assured that the quality of the meat remains constant.  In my own freezer, you will find Publix sausage, simply because it is processed by Rudy’s.  

Incidentally, I have also asked to see the inspection numbers on the boxes of sausage at Waffle House and Krystal, both carry (or at least used to carry) the number 8080 and both are among my favorite breakfast restaurants.  Whatever else you might think about those restaurants, their sausage is great.

Only one other sausage product deserves some air-time on the Musings of a Carnivore, that is the sausage at Cracker Barrel Restaurant.  While I know little about the meat Cracker Barrel uses in their breakfast sausage, the genuine smoked flavor present in the sausage makes it a real winner for me.  I have asked for and purchased one or three pound rolls of Cracker Barrel sausage and was delighted to find it cased in cheese cloth used in genuinely smoked sausages.  Taking the time and money required to make this kind of product tells me much about the philosophy of this company.  Dad used to tell me, “A man’s work is a portrait of himself.”  If that statement is true, and if you knew my dad, you would agree it is true, then Rudy’s and Cracker Barrel have given us a beautiful portrait in a day when old time quality and pride is seen as passe.  I’m grateful to them and for them.

Here is a response from my sister and my response to her question about grilling a sirloin steak for six individuals:

Dear Steve,
I was thoroughly engaged reading that wonderful essay ( blog, in modern terms).  So enjoyable for me to hear again your early experiences in Fayetteville. In , how knowing a lot about the subject of meat, you have become a kind of expert. For you to be excited about a meal out…………a steak cooked to perfection, really means that is WAS cooked to perfection.  When I get back to Nashville, we’ll have to go to that  restaurant!
Tim and I are on a low-carb diet, eating lots of meat. So we could use some recommendations. I want to grill a marinated sirloin that would serve 6 people when I have a shop dinner soon. Any ideas?
Keep it up, Steve. You will have a following, no doubt.
Love you, Cynthia

 Cynthia, Thanks; I’m really glad you liked the blog.  I have wanted to do this for a long time and have lots of ideas for subjects.  As far as “loin”steaks go, you can gauge the tenderness of the various choices on this declining scale: filet mignon - rib-eye - New York strip - sirloin.  The sirloin is the least of the loin steaks, but still considerably more tender than round steaks or sirloin tip steaks (sometimes confused with sirloin steaks, but more like a round steak).

Having said that, a sirloin is still a good steak.  Thicker is better than wider.  Ask for a boneless top sirloin, but don’t accept anything less than USDA Choice.  Sometimes people will emphasize USDA Inspected beef without saying anything about the grade.  All beef must be USDA inspected to be sold commercially.  KROGERS has adopted a policy of selling USDA Select beef.  They also sell USDA Choice (their Angus line) but the price is often pretty high.  Since a sirloin is already a bit chewier than other loin steaks, you really will want to buy USDA Choice.  I paid $3.99 lb this week for Choice sirloin, but that was a sale price.  

 I have always been a dry rub griller rather than a marinator so I’m at a loss to recommend a marinade.  The rib eye at J Alexanders, was the first wet marinated steak I have had in years.  I do recommend that you let the steak sit out at room temperature for a couple hours after if is fully thawed; it will help the tenderness.  If you are going to salt the steak (I do), you should salt it before you let it sit at room temperature so that the salt can absorb meat juices and keep them inside the steak as it cooks.  

 Two schools for grilling:  Low and Slow or Hot and Sear.  I always go with the second method.  I want to do everything I can to keep the juices inside.  I won’t even use a fork to turn the steaks. That’s my method.  If you are feeding 6 adults, I would buy a 3 1/2 pound steak. That would give you 8 oz more than an 8 oz piece for each person and allow for some shrinkage on the grill. 

As a teenager, I got a job at one of the three IGA grocery stores in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  I can’t remember with a great degree of certainty, but I think my girl friend asked her dad (who owned the stores) to give me the job so that I would have some money to take her on dates.  Though I was hired (at $1.40 per hour) as a clean up boy in the meat market, it wasn’t long before I was asked to learn how to grind hamburger.  Next came the chore of sharpening knives: boning knives, steak knives and even meat cleavers.  As time went on, I learned how to cut chicken fryers.  The goal was to be able to to cut a box of 20 iced-down chickens in eight minutes.  In the course of time, I learned the art of cutting meat.  I even learned how to take a quarter of a carcass of beef (hind quarter or front quarter) and merchandise the meat into nice-looking retail products; but at the end of the day, I still had to clean up the market.

Forty-five years have now passed since I took that job in 1966.  No, I didn’t go on to marry the high school girl friend, but I have thanked her many times for getting me that job.  I went on to become a market manager for Winn-Dixie “The Beef People,” and a meat inspector for the Georgia Department of Agriculture.  

Along the way, I came to a point where my life seemed totally unmanageable, I knew I needed something, but discovered I really needed someone, Jesus, in my life.  From that encounter I surrendered to God’s call upon my life to become a minister.  I went to school and worked as a meat cutter to pay my tuition.  I graduated from Bible College and took a small church.  Then I went on to seminary and worked as a meat cutter to pay my tuition.  After I graduated from seminary I took a church large enough to support me and my family, so meat-cutting was left behind.  When I decided to pursue a doctorate, I took a church that was smaller, but still able to support my family.  In this small Alabama church, I was able to cut and smoke whole pigs for church fellowships.  I was able to help the hunters skin the deer they harvested and cut them into steaks and roasts.  One Christmas, I had 20 ladies bring their whole, bone-in, water-added, smoked hams (about 16-18 lbs. each) to the fellowship hall where I cut out the pelvic bone, and the femur and cut off the hock of all 20 hams.  Then we stuffed the inside with powdered cloves and brown sugar, replaced the femur and tied the ham back together to sit for a few days and sweeten from the inside out.  It was a good Christmas dinner for those households.

Now as a sixty-one year old director of corporate relations for the largest Christian resource provider in America, I am still infatuated with meat, all sorts of meat.  When I go to a restaurant, those who are with me are prepared for me to ask questions that seem trivial to them, but to me are very important.  When I go to a grocery store, I always make a bee-line to the meat department.  I look at their sale items, the quality of the meat, the USDA grade of the meat (if it is beef), the weight of the chickens, the color of the pork, the price per pound of everything and sometimes I even help customers make decisions on purchases they need to make.

Crazy? Perhaps, however I thoroughly enjoy this hobby.  My wife and I eat out much of the time.  On better occasions we will go to restaurants where a nice steak is a possibility.  This week we went to J. Alexanders, one of our favorite restaurants.  I had in my pocket a $20.00 gift card which I won for hitting the longest drive in the 60 and above class, at a company golf tournament.  I planned to get my normal French Dip, which I consider to be the best French Dip I have ever had.  That night, however, Jordan, our server, described to me the marinade for the rib-eye.  I do not know all the elements in that marinade, but I can tell you it was among the top three steaks of my life.  The quality of the steak was great; the taste of the steak was unbelievable; temperature of the steak was perfect; it was an excellent presentation and an excellent product.  Kudos to J. Alexanders and kudos to Jordan for his explanation of that steak and marinade.

One last comment, this J. Alexanders restaurant in Cool Springs, Tennessee has a wonderful ambiance, and a staff of servers trained to say things like, “my pleasure” rather than “no problem.”  When Jordan asked me how I would like my steak cooked, I said “Pink throughout.”  I was expecting him to say to me (as every other server always says, “Medium?”  But Jordan said, “Very well, Sir” and left to turn in our order.  My point is this: no one knows what medium is, or medium rare or medium well.  The meaning of those out-dated terms depends on the culture of the restaurant you are dealing with.  But we all know what a color is.  If you like red, I can conceive of that.  Maybe you like pink like as I do, or a little pink or even no pink.  This method is the only way we will ever know that the cook, and the server and the customer all agree on what a piece of meat is supposed to look like when it is served.  No more having a server say, “Oh well, that is medium here at our restaurant.”  Kudos to J. Alexanders!