intimidating meat
In 2022, I vow to stop being intimidated by interesting meat.
I am a carnivore, through and through. Over the first 18 years of my life, I didn’t eat a single dinner at the table in my parents’ kitchen that didn’t involve meat: in pasta sauce, as a main dish, in quesadillas, on sandwiches. A vegetarian dinner was unheard of in our house — I’m pretty sure my dad would’ve left and picked up Steak ‘n’ Shake if such a thing had ever been served — and as a kitchen-curious kid, I watched and learned from everything my mom made. By and large, she stuck to simple, lean cuts: tenderloins and filets and chicken breasts pounded thin for pan-frying.
I also took note as she lost her mind every Christmas over a massive beef tenderloin, worried she’d served it too rare after following instructions to a T. “Let me microwave that!” she’d tell us as we all clutched our plates defensively. The tenderloin was always perfect. The same thing happened anytime she made steak for dinner, whether it was in a pan or on the grill, but to this day, no one has ever been felled by a single piece of meat Anne Niesen has ever served.
From that, I think, I learned to trust recipes and the output on my little digital thermometer. I have yet to threaten anyone with a microwave — but lately, my trust has been tested by a whole bunch of intimidating meat.
By that I mean cuts other than tenderloin. Big, fatty, beautiful, bone-in hunks with complicated names from my neighborhood butcher. As I’ve grown as a cook, I’ve found myself drawn to recipes I’d have once thought too complicated, and over the past couple of years, I’ve bought my first pork shoulder, my first short ribs, my first beef shoulder and, just a few weeks ago, my first rib roast.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, I’ve become my mother. As soon as I pull the paper-wrapped meat out of the fridge to come to temperature, I’m paralyzed with self-doubt. Look at those bones! That fat! The sheer heft! I become certain I’m going to overcook and under-season and probably light the house on fire in the process. And then… everything turns out fine.
That, I suppose, is what I’ve really come here to tell you: Do not be intimidated by interesting meat; just pay it the attention it’s due. Be nice to it. It probably likes you more than you think it does. Study it. Watch it carefully. Respect it. Anybody can make a pretty damn good rib roast.
I did on New Year’s Eve, along with half the people I follow on Instagram. I’m not sure what kind of subliminal messaging we all had beamed into our brains, but I’m not upset about it, and I’ve never been prouder of my work in the kitchen.
I followed Alison Roman’s recipe (helloooo, anchovies; they’re worth it, I swear), but with a smaller roast. My guy weighed in at just under 3.5 pounds and was plopped on my doorstep by a Doordash courier in the middle of my COVID-exposure quarantine. I felt a little bit bad about not hand-picking this handsome fellow, but mostly I was just stunned at the ease of getting a rib roast delivered by bike to my doorstep during a global pandemic.
My only tweak to the recipe, besides halving it, was using thyme over rosemary — but only because I had a whole bunch of thyme in my fridge already. I also did the reverse sear at the end, which was worth the extra effort, and though I didn’t get a ton of juices for pan sauce, I added some olive oil, mixed in the parsley and was really happy with the final product.
In other intimidating-meat-related news, I made the New York Times recipe for birria de res earlier this week, and I settled for a boneless chuck roast instead of a beef shoulder, because my meat-acquisition-during-Omicron luck has apparently run out, and that’s all I could find.
The birria was still pretty great; because my roast was boneless, I used a 2.5-pounder, and instead of two poblano peppers, I used one poblano and one Anaheim. I also pickled some radishes to put on top and served it over rice because my boyfriend has an aversion to anything that even faintly resembles soup.
The next night, per the Times’ recommendation, I used the leftover meat to make quesabirria tacos. Because of the meat substitution, I didn’t have nearly enough birria fat to use for the frying, so I augmented with butter, and the tacos turned out so great, they were gone before I could take a photo.