Category Archives: Meat

How to make the perfect pork (or chicken, duck or tofu) larb – recipe | Felicity Cloake’s How to make the perfect…

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Larb, larp, laap, lap … however you spell it, this salty-sour staple of south-east Asia has myriad versions, which won’t stop our resident perfectionist from seeking out the best

Larb, also transcribed as larp, lap, laap, laarp and laab, is a dish that doesn’t fit easily into western boxes. A highly seasoned mixture of chopped meat, fish, tofu or mushrooms – Thai food writer Leela Punyaratabandhu clarifies that laab “is a verb denoting the mincing of meat” – that, as fellow Thai food writer Kay Plunkett-Hogge observes, can “also be referred to as a salad by virtue of its being served frequently in lettuce leaves”.

It’s not even strictly Thai, though the travel hub of south-east Asia is where most Brits are likely to have come across it; a speciality of the north, it’s said to have originated with the Tai people, and variations on the dish are also found in Laos, Myanmar and south-western China. The one you’re most likely to be familiar with, though, is laarp isaan, from the north-eastern Thai region of the same name: as Punyaratabandhu explains, “the way lap is made varies from province to province, and it is hard to nail down a normative version – if there is one. But this version is the most common in Bangkok and at Thai restaurants outside Thailand. It also happens to be one of the simplest.”

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3D-printed steak, anyone? I taste test this ‘gamechanging’ meat mimic | Zoe Williams

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Marco Pierre White is championing Redefine Meat’s products, but do they live up to the hype?

Across four capitals – London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Tel Aviv – a new meat was born, containing precisely no animal. The London champion of the company, Redefine Meat, is the celebrity chef Marco Pierre White. At Mr White’s in Leicester Square, chefs, investors and barbecue and burger connoisseurs – as well as former winners of MasterChef – gathered to taste it.

The tone of the event was set by the offering of a pipette of “blood” – “Doesn’t it taste like blood, though?” asked an excited waiter. Well, yes. But memo from the world of carnivore: blood is more something we put up with than something we actively want to drink.

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EU ‘failing to stop meat industry exploiting agency workers’

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MEPs call for EU ban on all outsourced labour after Guardian investigation finds unequal pay and terms

The EU is facing calls to ban outsourcing in the meat industry, after a Guardian investigation revealed how agency workers were exploited by companies that took no responsibility for pay and conditions.

Katrin Langensiepen, vice-chair of the European parliament’s employment and social affairs committee, said the EU should ban subcontracting across all economic sectors to ensure workers receive the same pay and conditions for the same work.

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Will lab-grown meat ever rival the real thing? We ask the expert

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Chemical engineer turned alternative bacon producer Benjamina Bollag on the trouble with animal farming, and how lab rashers are made

There are many complicated words for my diet – flexitarian, reducetarian, carnesparsian (from carne meaning meat, and eating it sparsely, because there is nothing like using Latin to give heritage to something made up online). I’m not alone: a third of Britons have reduced eating meat because of concerns about industrial farming. Soon to launch into this space is “lab-grown meat”, promising to take the slaughter and environmental exploitation out of your steak. But how does it work? And can it deliver? I spoke to Benjamina Bollag, founder of lab-grown bacon producer Higher Steaks.

Hi Benjamina! So you’re bringing home the bacon …
And pork belly! As far as I know, we’re the only cultivated pork belly producer.

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Revealed: exploitation of meat plant workers rife across UK and Europe

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Thousands of outsourced workers on inferior pay and conditions to fulfil demand for cheap meat, Guardian investigation shows

Read more: ‘The whole system is rotten’: life inside Europe’s meat industry

Meat companies across Europe have been hiring thousands of workers through subcontractors, agencies and bogus co-operatives on inferior pay and conditions, a Guardian investigation has found.

Workers, officials and labour experts have described how Europe’s £190bn meat industry has become a global hotspot for outsourced labour, with a floating cohort of workers, many of whom are migrants, with some earning 40% to 50% less than directly employed staff in the same factories.

The Guardian has uncovered evidence of a two-tier employment system with workers subjected to sub-standard pay and conditions to fulfil the meat industry’s need for a replenishable source of low-paid, hyper-flexible workers.

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Muscles and methane: how protein became the food industry’s biggest craze

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Protein has gone from a niche bodybuilding supplement to a mainstream obsession – and is now added to a huge range of food and drink products. What led to the sudden growth of this multimillion-dollar industry?

At the Protein Pick and Mix store in Tunbridge Wells, you can have any snack you like, as long as it comes with extra protein. Protein pancakes, protein burger buns, protein muffins, protein nachos, protein croissants. Protein bars, of course, in every conceivable flavour: caramel millionaire’s shortbread, New York cheesecake, mint chocolate chip, double chocolate fudge, lemon drizzle, cinnamon swirl. White chocolate chip cookies that incorporate something called a “high protein lean matrix”.

I am being shown around the store and warehouse by the founder, Anthony Rodgers, 36, who has the well-defined musculature of a man who regularly eats three protein bars a day. He started the business, originally as an online shop, in 2013, after observing the trend for exotically flavoured protein bars in the US. “At the time I was an avid gym-goer,” he says, “and protein bars were just starting to be a little more creative, a little more exciting. People were putting actual effort into the flavours, and it started to transcend the boring, functional: ‘we’re just going to ram some protein in you.’”

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Criticism of animal farming in the west risks health of world’s poorest | Emma Naluyima Mugerwa and Lora Iannotti

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In the developing world most people are not factory farming and livestock is essential to preventing poverty and malnutrition

The pandemic has pushed poverty and malnutrition to rates not seen in more than a decade, wiping out years of progress. In 2020, the number of people in extreme poverty rose by 97 million and the number of malnourished people by between 118 million and 161 million.

Recent data from the World Bank and the UN shows how poverty is heavily concentrated in rural communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America where people are surviving by smallholder farming. This autumn there will be two key events that could rally support for them.

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Man v food: is lab-grown meat really going to solve our nasty agriculture problem?

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If cellular agriculture is going to improve on the industrial system it is displacing, it needs to grow without passing the cost on to workers, consumers and the environment

Americans will eat about 2bn chicken nuggets this year, give or take a few hundred million. This deep-fried staple is a way of profiting off the bits that are left after the breast, legs and wings are lopped off the 9 billion or so factory-farmed chickens slaughtered in the US every year. Like much else that is ubiquitous in contemporary life, the production of nuggets is controlled by a small group of massive companies that are responsible for a litany of social and ecological harms. And, like many of the commodities produced by this system, they are of dubious quality, cheap, appealing and easy to consume. Nuggets are not even primarily meat, but mostly fat and assorted viscera – including epithelium, bone, nerve and connective tissue – made palatable through ultra-processing. As the political economists Raj Patel and Jason Moore have argued, they are a homogenised, bite-size avatar of how capitalism extracts as much value as possible from human and nonhuman life and labour.

But if chicken nuggets are emblematic of modern capitalism, then they are ripe for disruption. Perhaps their most promising challenger is a radically different sort of meat: edible tissue grown in vitro from animal stem cells, a process called cellular agriculture. The sales pitch for the technology is classic Silicon Valley: unseat an obsolete technology – in this case, animals – and do well by doing good.

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Absolute bangers! 10 brilliant sausage recipes – from risotto to perfect pizza

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Sausages are a fabulous ingredient in their own right, and should never just be served up with a pile of veg. Here’s how to use them with panache

It is easy to be lazy with a sausage. They are already seasoned, so all you have to do is cook them, put them on a plate next to some other stuff and eat them. But to simply plonk a banger next to a pile of veg is to do it a grave disservice – far better to use the sausage as an ingredient in its own right. Here are 10 recipes that do exactly that.

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Eat this to save the world! The most sustainable foods – from seaweed to venison

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What should we be scoffing if we want to help fight the climate crisis from our kitchens? The question has never been more important or confusing – here is a guide to help you get started

Was ever a word so misused as “sustainable”? “Healthy” comes close, and indeed the two are often bandied around together, in trite “good for you, good for the planet” taglines that often appear on foods which are anything but. The question of what we should eat to help combat climate change and environmental degradation has never been more important – nor so confusing. In July, the government will publish its National Food Strategy, based on a year-long independent review, which should shed some light on the matter. In the meantime, there are some foods which, with caveats, you can scoff with a clear conscience.

“Good eating starts at home, and one of the most important things we can do for the future of the planet is to minimise food miles – so our staples should be foods that can grow perfectly well in this country,” advises Patrick Holden, chief executive of the Sustainable Food Trust. Another basic principle is to do your best to understand the story behind what you’re eating – be it plant or animal: “If you know who produced your food, they are accountable to you, and more likely to care.”

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Cyber-attack targets world’s largest meat-processing company

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Ransomware attack halts production at JBS, which supplies more than fifth of all beef in US

A cyber-attack on the world’s largest meat-processing company has forced it to halt all US operations while it scrambles to restore functionality.

JBS, which supplies more than a fifth of all beef in America, said all of its US beef plants were pushed offline on Sunday. The ransomware attack on the Brazilian-headquartered company’s networks also disrupted other operations across the US, as well as the company’s businesses in other countries, including Australia, but less severely.

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‘Accidental meat’: should carnivores embrace eating roadkill?

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My parents have been eating pheasants killed on the roads for years and encouraging me to try them. Is this the most ethical approach to meat-eating?

Motorists shoot me funny looks as I sheepishly cross a scrubby verge, trying my best to conceal the dead pheasant under my arm. I am in a part of Saddleworth Moor called the Isle of Skye by locals, and have just collected a free meal from the middle of the road.

Nobody can agree on how this area of moorland, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, earned its nickname. Some think it comes from a Victorian navvy, who exclaimed in a broad Irish brogue: “Look, there’s an ’ole in the sky,” as he considered a parting in the thick mist above him. Others think it was named after an inn of the same name. But either way, the area should be immediately renamed Pheasant Cemetery. Because, before I picked up my own bird, I counted 46 pheasant carcasses in various stages of decomposition, scattered and splattered on the road over several miles as I drove to Holmfirth for a day out.

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‘Crumpets have been my saviour!’: readers on their 14 best comfort meals of lockdown

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Food has felt more important than ever this past year – particularly meals that offer solace. From rösti to Coco Pops, here are the dishes that got us through

For me, lockdown has meant an absolutely manic schedule, working from home with back-to-back Zoom calls and long hours. Crumpets have been my saviour. Yes, factory made, perfectly consistent and versatile: top with yoghurt and frozen berries at 8am, blue cheese and leeks at 1pm, followed by eggs and spinach at 7pm, and you have a full day’s menu. For a bit more lockdown spirit, I tried the sourdough version (delicious if squishy) and making my own (I promise you, it’s not worth it). Sophie, data analyst, St Albans

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Eating meat ‘raises risk of heart disease, diabetes and pneumonia’

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UK researchers find link between regular meat intake and nine non-cancerous illnesses

Eating meat regularly increases someone’s risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, pneumonia and other serious illnesses, research has found.

It is already known that intake of red and processed meat heightens the risk of being diagnosed with bowel cancer. But these findings are the first to assess whether meat consumption is linked to any of the 25 non-cancerous illnesses that most commonly lead to people being admitted to hospital in the UK.

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Melting pot: 17 delicious, warming stews – from a Moroccan fish dish to Persian lamb

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Popular all over the world, stew is always a comfort, whether it comes as a Lancashire hotpot, French daube or a summery mix of courgette, mint and butter beans

Stew doesn’t have a poor reputation so much as bad branding. The name itself has an aura of disappointment about it, especially the way my children repeated it back to me, after they asked what we were having and I told them. “Stew!” they would say, with heavy emphasis on the “Ew!” It probably doesn’t help that “stew” shares an etymological source with the word typhus.

It is perhaps for that reason that we are often drawn to more exotic names for what is essentially the same idea: tagine, ragout, daube. But a basic, unfussy, slow-cooked stew can rival any of these, as Felicity Cloake’s perfect beef stew demonstrates. As with most beef stew recipes, this one begins with browning the meat on all sides, in batches, and then removing it before adding anything else.

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Red alert: 17 scorchingly good recipes with chillies – from tom yum soup to vodka

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Whether it’s squid salad, pork belly or a chocolate cake, almost anything can be jazzed up with some heat. Here are some fabulous recipes from top chefs

Chillies come in such a bewildering array of shapes and colours these days that it doesn’t pay to be too specific: if a recipe calls for a particular sort, you are bound to be unable to find it. In any case, the difference between any two chillies is largely a matter of heat, and heat is largely a matter of taste. So forget about size or colour (green ones are generally hotter than red, but then they turn red anyway if you leave them sitting about) or intimidating varietal names such as yellow death-inducing toxin. Just taste one. If it’s not hot enough, use two or three. If it’s too hot, scrape out the seeds and, specifically, the white membrane they’re attached to, which is the hottest bit.

The most obvious thing to make with chilli is probably chilli, and the least obvious person to rely on for a solid, no-nonsense chilli con carne recipe is probably Heston Blumenthal. Nevertheless, I make his version almost exclusively. While it’s about as fussy as you’d imagine, it’s also pretty forgiving. The fragata pimiento piquillo peppers he tells you to add at the end, for example: I never have any – I don’t even really know what they are – so I just skip that bit, and it’s fine. The spiced butter is the most labour-intensive aspect, and the most counterintuitive, containing as it does ketchup, marmite, Worcestershire sauce and, well, butter. But it makes all the difference.

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Yak politics: Tibetans’ vegetarian dilemma amid China meat boom

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While China pushes for more industrialised farms, Buddhist monks urge now-sedentary nomads to embrace vegetarianism

Former free-roaming nomads now mostly resettled in rows of sun-baked block houses in Tibet are facing a struggle for their identity, their spiritual and cultural practices – and even their stomachs.

These yak-tending herders have always eaten meat. In addition to the milk, butter and cheese they derived from yaks, meat was a necessity in their harsh lives.

But a movement spurred by Tibetan Buddhist monks in the region over the past two decades has increasingly urged now sedentary nomads to practise vegetarianism, to pay a “life ransom” for the release of animals destined for the slaughterhouse, and to abandon the slaughter of their own animals because they have settled down.

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Brazilian beef farms ‘used workers kept in conditions similar to slavery’

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Workers on farms supplying world’s biggest meat firms allegedly paid £8 a day and housed in shacks with no toilets or running water

Brazilian companies and slaughterhouses including the world’s largest meat producer, JBS, sourced cattle from supplier farms that made use of workers kept in slavery-like conditions, according to a new report.

Workers on cattle farms supplying slaughterhouses earned as little as £8 a day and lived in improvised shacks with no bathrooms, toilets, running water or kitchens, according to a report from Brazilian investigative agency Repórter Brasil.

Since 1995, the report said, 55,000 Brazilian workers have been rescued by government inspectors from “situations similar to slavery”. While the number of investigations has fallen in recent years – 118 workers were freed in 2018, compared with 1,045 a decade earlier – that does not mean the situation has improved, just that inspections have been reduced, it noted.

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Yotam Ottolenghi’s Boxing Day recipes for using up Christmas leftovers

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Boxing Day BLT, veg samosas with cranberry sauce, and Christmas pudding eccles cakes with marzipan – stylish ways to use up excess food

The thing about Christmas day, as no one’s stomach needs reminding, is that there is always so much food. It is, however, a truth universally acknowledged that the whole point of cooking a great big bird – not to mention enough vegetables to feed twice as many people as are actually eating them – is to be able to enjoy the leftovers the day after. For all the ceremony, and the focus on the food served at the right time in the right place at the right temperature on Christmas Day, does anything, truly, beat the likes of a soft-bun sandwich filled with all the good bits? Gravy sauce for dipping into (and a sofa for sinking into) optional.

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