Category Archives: Meat

17 ways with leftover turkey, from warming ramen to rich risotto

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With Christmas gatherings reduced in size this year, you may have more poultry than usual to eat up. But there are myriad ways to make that more interesting that in sounds

On top of all the problems we have faced in 2020, we could be experiencing a larger-than-ever glut of turkey this season: restrictions on large gatherings, combined with high demand for – and a corresponding shortage of – smaller birds, may have left a lot of us with more meat than we can eat in one, two or even three sittings.

Fortunately, help is at hand: here are 17 easy, delicious and slightly different ways to use up your Christmas turkey.

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Chicken pulao and an orange and piquillo pepper salad: Nik Sharma’s Christmas recipes

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The perfect combination: spicy chicken jewelled with cranberries and cashews, and a sharp fruity side

The simplicity and elegance of pulaos combined with their ability to moonlight as a one-pot meal stole my heart long ago. Pulaos saved my mother and grandmother hours in the kitchen; they’d make a large pot and all that was needed was a salad or pickle on the side. I’m keeping that principle in mind with this winter-themed chicken pulao, jewelled with cranberries and cashews, alongside an orange and piquillo pepper salad. You can serve the meal with a bowl of salted plain yoghurt.

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Lab-grown chicken tastes like chicken – but the feeling when eating it is more complicated

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Naima Brown’s encounter with a lab-grown chicken nugget reminded her of a Happy Meal – but she’s less certain about what it means for the future of food

“Clean”, “cultured”, “no-kill” – these are just a few of the monikers that have been applied to San Francisco-based food start up Just Inc’s lab-grown chicken nuggets.

The product has just been approved for sale to consumers in Singapore – a world first. But the company’s CEO Josh Tetrick would prefer it if everyone dropped the additional descriptors and just called his company’s product “meat”.

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I tried the world’s first no-kill, lab-grown chicken burger

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Exclusive: At a ‘test restaurant’ in Israel, the meat is grown in vats behind a glass screen. Could it be a taste of the future?

A PhD in genetics might seem like an unusual requirement for the role of head chef. It makes more sense when the man running the kitchen is not just in charge of frying your chicken burger – he created the meat himself.

“This burger takes something between two to three days to grow,” says Tomer Halevy as he chops red onions, iceberg lettuce and avocado. He proceeds to batter what appears to be a strip of raw chicken before dipping it in breadcrumbs.

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No-kill, lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time

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Singapore’s approval of chicken cells grown in bioreactors is seen as landmark moment across industry

Cultured meat, produced in bioreactors without the slaughter of an animal, has been approved for sale by a regulatory authority for the first time. The development has been hailed as a landmark moment across the meat industry.

The “chicken bites”, produced by the US company Eat Just, have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency and the approval could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock, the company said.

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The wurst is over: why Germany now loves to go vegetarian

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More than 40% of Germans are cutting down on meat, and vegan burgers are a shopping mall staple

Inside a shopping mall in south Berlin, two colleagues are chomping on hamburgers and fries, cheese sauce running down their fingers as they try to beat the lunchtime clock.

Feelings of guilt are in short supply this Friday afternoon: the burger joint where the two women have grabbed a bite is called Vincent Vegan, and the patty inside the brioche bun is made of wheat, barley and soya.

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China’s billion dollar pig plan met with loathing by Argentinians

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Chinese investment in Argentina’s hog industry would boost exports, but environmentalists fear risk of pandemic

A government-sponsored plan to turbocharge Argentina’s hog industry with Chinese capital is generating unprecedented resistance among its supposed beneficiaries – the Argentinian general public.

Nearly 400,000 people have signed petitions opposing the move. “We never had such a huge response before,” said environmental lawyer Enrique Viale, one of the group who banded together last month to challenge the government’s initiative. His petition currently has 200,000 signatures; another on change.org has almost 120,000 additional signatures, and three separate petitions on the same platform have clocked up another 55,000 between them.

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Investors drop Brazil meat giant JBS

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Top investment house delists world biggest meat producer over lack of commitment to sustainability issues

The investment arm of northern Europe’s largest financial services group has dropped JBS, the world’s biggest meat processer, from its portfolio. The Brazilian company is now excluded from assets sold by Nordea Asset Management, which controls a €230bn (£210bn) fund, according to Eric Pedersen, its head of responsible investments.

The decision was taken about a month ago, over the meat giant’s links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation, its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, past corruption scandals, and frustrations over engagement with the company on such issues. “The exclusion of JBS is quite dramatic for us because it is from all of our funds, not just the ones labelled ESG,” Pedersen said.

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‘We did it to ourselves’: scientist says intrusion into nature led to pandemic

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Leading US biologist Thomas Lovejoy says to stop future outbreaks we need more respect for natural world

The vast illegal wildlife trade and humanity’s excessive intrusion into nature is to blame for the coronavirus pandemic, according to a leading US scientist who says “this is not nature’s revenge, we did it to ourselves”.

Scientists are discovering two to four new viruses are created every year as a result of human infringement on the natural world, and any one of those could turn into a pandemic, according to Thomas Lovejoy, who coined the term “biological diversity” in 1980 and is often referred to as the godfather of biodiversity.

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Cattle gridlock: EU border delays add to coronavirus strain on meat trade

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Possible slaughterhouse shutdowns and staffing issues put pressure on ‘vulnerable’ supply chains, as campaigners call for restriction of live exports

Campaigners have called for the suspension of all live animal shipments out of Europe, and a restriction to the shortest possible journeys within Europe, over welfare and animal diseases concerns – as meat supply chains face potentially debilitating strain.

Last week queues of up to 60km (37 miles) formed at the Polish/German border on Wednesday after Poland announced that it was shutting to foreigners. Although the closure was supposed to apply solely to people, cargo experienced a knock-on effect, with some trucks reportedly taking as long as 18 hours to get through border controls. More queues formed at the Bulgarian/Turkish border.

Sabine Fisher of German animal welfare group Animal Angels said: “One driver told us that it had taken him three hours to travel 300 metres. There were trucks of sheep, bulls, cows. I’ve never seen a queue like it.”

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Twitter users mock ‘ladies fillet’ steak on Liverpool menu

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Smaller steak advertised as ‘one for the ladies!’ at Manhattan Bar and Grill

A restaurant in Liverpool has attracted online ridicule for selling an 8oz “ladies fillet” steak, which is smaller than the other cuts on its menu.

The entry for the £18.95 dish on the Manhattan Bar and Grill menu reads: “One for the ladies! A beautiful 8oz cut, because we can!”

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To eat or not to eat: 10 of the world’s most controversial foods

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From beef to cod to avocados to soya, many of our best-loved foods raise big ethical and environmental questions. What do the experts say?

Deforestation. Child labour. Pollution. Water shortages. The more we learn about the side-effects of food production, the more the act of feeding ourselves becomes fraught with anxiety. How can we be sure that certain foods are “good” or “bad” for society and the planet? As Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University of London and the co-author of Sustainable Diets, puts it: “When you come to ‘judge’ food, you end up with an enormous list of variables, from taste to health outcomes to biodiversity.” Here are some of today’s most controversial products – and some thoughts that may help you when shopping.

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Pig ignorant: Spanish PM ridiculed for mixing up his hams

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Pedro Sánchez confuses prized jamón ibérico for plain old jamón serrano in ‘serious error’

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has confused jamón ibérico, the prized Spanish ham, with run-of-the-mill jamón serrano in a gaffe on a par with a French politician referring to a fine burgundy as plonk.

Speaking at the centuries-old livestock fair in Zafra in Extremadura, western Spain, Sánchez left his audience open-mouthed when he told them “you can be sure that when the Chinese president visited Spain he would have been served a plate of jamón serrano from Extremadura”.

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Even moderate intake of red meat raises cancer risk, study finds

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People more or less keeping to NHS guidelines at higher risk than those who eat little

Eating even the moderate amounts of red and processed meat sanctioned by government guidelines increases the likelihood of developing bowel cancer, according to the largest UK study of the risks ever conducted.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) suggests anyone who eats more than 90g of red or processed meat per day should try to cut down to 70g or less, because of the known link with bowel cancer. The NHS describes 90g of red meat as “equivalent to around three thinly cut slices of beef, lamb or pork, where each slice is about the size of half a piece of sliced bread”.

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Revealed: no need to add cancer-risk nitrites to ham

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Confidential meat industry report shows additives do not prevent food poisoning

A bombshell internal report written for the British meat industry reveals nitrites do not protect against botulism – the chief reason ham and bacon manufacturers say they use the chemicals.

The study, conducted for the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) by the scientific consultancy Campden, and marked “confidential”, examines the growth of the toxin Clostridium botulinum in the processing of bacon and ham.

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Inside the impossible burger: is the meat-free mega trend as good as we think?

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Makers of animal-free products aim to revolutionise the very idea of meat – but is their hi-tech approach really the answer?

I bit into the Impossible Burger and was immediately filled with awe. I lifted my head to the bartender and, with my mouth full, croaked: “This is vegan?”

I was just coming off two long days of hearings at the US Department of Agriculture, where the future of food was discussed in great detail but taste was scarcely mentioned. Now, sitting at my favorite New Jersey bar, eating something satisfying that nothing died for, was a relief.

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Here’s what really scares soybean farmers about Trump’s trade battle with China

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Farmers don't seem to be brimming with relief over the Trump administration's plan to offset the impact of trade tensions with a $12 billion, stopgap trade package nor the European Union's apparent vow to begin snapping up more U.S. soybeans. It all comes down to market share and the fact that for commodity producers, it can be very hard to recover once lost.

Aaack! New Analysis Shows Superbugs Lurking on Three-Fourths of U.S. Supermarket Meat

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Nearly 80 percent of supermarket meat collected in 2015 was found to have antibiotic-resistant bacteria, also known as superbugs. A new analysis offers alarming findings as many Americans get ready to fire up their grills for the 4th of July-nearly 80 percent of supermarket meat was found to have antibiotic-resistant bacteria, also known as superbugs.