Britain's Really Disgusting Food...

geordie_joe

phizzimum wrote: »

I was amazed and a little horrified when I first read about the breakfast cereal/magnet experiment. It made me think about how many foods are marketed as healthy and natural - when in fact any health benefits are added. you'd be better off eating a slice of buttery toast and taking a vitamin tablet.

I think you are over reacting. You are using the phrase "when in fact any health benefits are added" which sounds like all health benefits, when in fact the programme simply said part of the corn could not be use to make corn flakes, and this part contained all of a vitamin, so the vitamin was added later.

Yet you say you'd be better off eating toast. Well, unless you are eating wholemeal toast, exactly the same thing has happened with the flour that was used to make the bread. They chucked out the bit containing the vitamin and artificially added it later, and then they added vitamins that were never there in the first place.

Good old healthy flour, with most of the health benefits artificially added!

Whitewillow_2

misskool wrote: »

People are scared of things they don't know and there's an overwhelming trend for faddy foods (superfoods and detox diets anyone?) when you just need to be sensible.

I can see why people have issue with mechanically recovered meat but in reality, if you look at it from a detached, non emotional point of view you are essentially using up every bit of the animal that was bred for eating. Animals cost a lot of money to breed and the wastage of animals bred for eating must be phenomenal if the dietary habits of those I know are taken into account.

Lots of people will just eat chicken breast (because the rest of the chicken is too ickky), so what happens to the rest of the chicken they've decided isn't good enough for them? The time/money and food has been spent on rearing the animal, best for it to be put to use into making food than just chucking it.

It's most annoying when people develop a holier-than-thou attitude about food and the associated wastes that go with it (and I'm guilty of that sometimes and have to slap myself into submission)

I completly agree! I think its having far more respect for the animal if we use ALL of it! We cant just pick the nice bits to eat then throw away the rest, foods that people think are disgusting now people were eating a long time ago on a regular basis (ie tripe braun etc)
If it tastes good and its not harmful to us, i dont see what the issue is?

Pink.

Hi tinkerbellsmum,

There is an existing thread discussing the issues brought up in this programme so I've added your thread to it to keep the replies together.

Pink

geordie_joe

Whitewillow wrote: »

I completly agree! I think its having far more respect for the animal if we use ALL of it! We cant just pick the nice bits to eat then throw away the rest, foods that people think are disgusting now people were eating a long time ago on a regular basis (ie tripe braun etc)
If it tastes good and its not harmful to us, i dont see what the issue is?

I completely agree too. Years ago people used to go to the butchers and buy pigs trotters and happily eat them. Then they "fell out of fashion" so they got put into sausages instead. Now people have found out they are in the sauages and think that is somehow bad.

The simple fact is, years ago we used to eat all of the animals. Then we got "rich" and could afford to eat only the best bits. And we brought up a generation, or two, or three, that had never eaten pigs trotters of ox tongues, and so they see them as being bad.

They don't realise that they have been eating these things all their lives, they have just been hidden in pies, sausages, meat balls etc.

Bronnie

geordie_joe wrote: »

I completely agree too. Years ago people used to go to the butchers and buy pigs trotters and happily eat them. Then they "fell out of fashion" so they got put into sausages instead. Now people have found out they are in the sauages and think that is somehow bad.

The simple fact is, years ago we used to eat all of the animals. Then we got "rich" and could afford to eat only the best bits. And we brought up a generation, or two, or three, that had never eaten pigs trotters of ox tongues, and so they see them as being bad.

They don't realise that they have been eating these things all their lives, they have just been hidden in pies, sausages, meat balls etc.

Actually, that's really quite funny!!

ChapelGirl

When I was a student (back in the stone age) I once made an ox heart casserole for my boyfriend's brother and his family when I was staying with them, but I would not tell them what it was.

I sliced the meat and trimmed it of any tubes etc., which is a bit easer to do with ox than with smaller ones like lamb's hearts.

Eveyone tucked in with great relish until my boyfriend blurted out what it was. His brother promptly put down his knife and fork, pushed his plate away and refused to eat another mouthful. How silly is that?

Heart needs to be slow cooked because it is a muscle which gets quite a lot of exercise (think about it!) so it can be a bit tough. But if it is stewed for a long time it is delicious, and very lean.

In France you can also get ox cheek, which also requires long slow cooking but tastes lovely. I don't know what the butchers do with them in the UK. They probably go into the mince.

Cheek benefits from being marinaded overnight before you cook it. The same would probably go for the heart too, come to think of it.

ChapelGirl

On the subject of not wasting anything, when we buy a whole duck we always joint it, as we have never yet found a way to keep the breasts succulent whilst the rest of the bird is cooking through.

Take off the breast meat, carefully cutting it away from the breastbone and ribcage using the point of the knife, and keeping on the skin. You can trim off the thick flap of skin at the end, but don't throw it away.

Remove the legs as you would for a chicken, i.e. bend the joint out where the top of the leg meets the rest of the carcasse, and cut free with a sharp knife, keeping as much "body" meat with the leg as you can.

There is usually not much meat on the wings, so the rest of the carcasse and any trimmings of skin go in a roasting tin in the oven to melt the fat and brown the bones a bit.

Then once it has cooled (but not set) you have to strain the liquid fat from the roasting pan through a fine sieve into a container. A wide-necked glass preserving jar is the best.

As long as there are no bits in it the grease will keep for ages in the fridge. One trick I have heard is to pour the grease into a container with some water in the bottom so the bits separate out more easily and sink before you transfer the fat into your storage container, but for goodness sake make sure the fat is cool first.

The carcasse and any stray bits from the pan then go into the stock pot. Don't forget to de-glaze the roasting tin with boiling water so as not to waste any lovely stuck-on bits!

If you are lucky enough to get the bird's offal as well it can all go in the stock except for the liver. That is very tasty if gently fried, but will make your stock taste bitter.

(If you have enough of them, the gizards can be slow-cooked in a pan of deep fat to make confit, but you are unlikely to get more than one!)

Once the stock has cooked and cooled a bit you might be able to salvage a few bits of meat from the wings etc. before the bones go in the bin. Unfortunately you cannot recycle the bones through the dog, as they are too sharp and might harm him.
You might need to separate off some more fat from the stock before you box it up for the fridge or freezer.

So from one duck you will get a de-luxe "magret de canard" meal from the breasts, plus 2 legs for slow pan-frying or casseroling, plus a pan of stock, plus a jar of duck grease, which is (so they say) as healthy as olive oil to cook with and makes your roasties or sauteed spuds taste divine.

The best way to cook the breasts is to place them skin-side down in a heavy-bottomed frying pan and cook on the lowest heat you can manage until the fat has rendered from the skin and the meat is just cooked. They should be turned over for a few minutes just before serving to seal the other side.
If all goes to plan, the skin will go brown and crispy and will be delicious to eat, but the meat will not have dried out and will be cooked through, but slightly pink in the centre.
Don't forget to keep the fat from the pan!

In the south-west of France where they raise a lot of ducks they use every scrap from the bird. You can buy jars of cooked gizards to eat with salads or on toast, and they make a kind of pork scratching from the skin. The scraps of meat from the wings etc. either go into meat pastes and pates or are fried and served as "fritons".

Mander

All those things sound delicious to me, ChapelGirl!

I didn't see the program, but in general, I don't object to eating all those "wierd" bits. Some things I don't like the taste of very much (ex. liver or tripe) but I wouldn't be afraid or too disgusted to eat them.

The real problem with economy sausage, ready made lasagna, etc. for me is that they all taste disgusting. When I was having a financial crisis I bought a bag of frozen sausages to try, and it was all I could do to finish them. They were just so awful I tried everything I could to disguise the taste, and generally just swallowed them in chunks without chewing. I think the nasty taste was a result of the fillers and flavorings they added, rather than the meat itself.

Give me a slice of liver or some traditional haggis any day! I don't even like them, but I'll eat that over cheap sausage.

foxgloves

I enjoyed watching the programmes. I thought both these and the Jimmy ones, also on recently really showed how in modern times food has become 'industry'. It was all factory processes. I've almost always cooked from scratch so buy little of this stuff, but it's the way manufacturers can get their products to be so cheap. If people are buying packs of bargain burgers that cost very little, the quality is going to be poorer and chances are that the people who have produced them have also been paid beans. I don't know if anyone remembers those old Christmas adverts for Iceland that Kerry Katona did? Someone I know came into the room when that was on (the bit without KK where they were panning over a huge table laden with Iceland party food) and thought it was actually Gillian McKeith 'You are what you eat' showing the 'before' table. Not a fruit or vegetable in sight and everything 'beige'. Not all that many decades ago, people would have bought local food and I should think the food industry would have been more about preserving.....i.e canning, rather than making low-grade products from the cheapest ingredients they can source.