Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

The Loeffel Meat Laboratory at the University of Nebraska conducts teaching and research in meat production. What happens to the results, you ask? Some of them are sold by the Loeffel Meat Shoppe, typically once per week. I stopped by to pick up a few things: porterhouse steaks (on special, no less) and a roast. They also make fancier items such as sausage. I left very happy.

I picked up a couple of bottles of sauce on my recent visit to Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City. A sale on pork roasts allowed me to take a bottle out for a spin. I braised the roast in chicken stock plus a little cumin and clove. I couldn't pull this roast apart very well but I at least sliced it into thin strips. The sauce married perfectly with the pork, a match made in heaven.

I have been thinking about beef brisket for several weeks now. I picked up a whole brisket from the nice folks at Tucker Meat Market. Before cooking came butchering. A full brisket has two main pieces: the point and the flat. The point is juicier. In many cases, the meat labeled as brisket is only the flat. I was lucky to get one with both pieces. I wanted to try to butcher the meat; I could save the point for another dish. The flat was probably six or seven pounds, so I wasn’t likely to starve. I was guided in my efforts to separate the point and flat were guided by this video. I don’t think that I fully succeeded. The seam between the point and flat wasn’t as clear to me in the flesh as it seemed in the video. But I did manage to get something off which I vacuum packed and put in the freezer. Once I finish off this meat, which will take awhile, perhaps I can try another brisket. Here is an interesting blog post that I found after the fact.