As the title says, post here about your interests that you don't want to bother other people with. It can be as long as you want (you don't need to write an entire essay like I have, it can just be a paragraph or whatever lol) and it can be about whatever you want
Got some interesting lore on the history of piano manufacturing? Found an interesting titbit on sewing? Just want to go fucking ham and rant about some philosophy bullshit a crusty old guy said 200 years ago? Hell, you wanna talk about competitive Yu-Gi-Oh? Well go right ahead, be as casual or serious as you want about it, it's all good
Please keep it PG family friendly clean though, nobody here wants to listen to you talk about your obsession with pornography or your scientific interest in condoms. Also please don't talk about stuff that'll cause arguments like politics or whatever, there's already a thread for that. If you want to talk about political theory or something similar then go ahead, but don't go making a post specifically to cause trouble. Thanks fellas xoxoxox
Even if nobody touches this thread I'm still gonna update it every now and then with my new meat findings, maybe post a little about art theory stuff, idk I do what I want and nobody can stop me so go nuts guys, this thread is a canvas on which you may smear either paint or shit so I hope you've got your paintbrushes ready
God that was so fucking smart I'm a goddamn genius lol
Got some interesting lore on the history of piano manufacturing? Found an interesting titbit on sewing? Just want to go fucking ham and rant about some philosophy bullshit a crusty old guy said 200 years ago? Hell, you wanna talk about competitive Yu-Gi-Oh? Well go right ahead, be as casual or serious as you want about it, it's all good
Please keep it PG family friendly clean though, nobody here wants to listen to you talk about your obsession with pornography or your scientific interest in condoms. Also please don't talk about stuff that'll cause arguments like politics or whatever, there's already a thread for that. If you want to talk about political theory or something similar then go ahead, but don't go making a post specifically to cause trouble. Thanks fellas xoxoxox
Maybe??? I don't really use Cong a lot and tbh it scares me a little so I'm putting this in Smoge off instead
I'm putting this under a spoiler because its really fucking long lol
So I've been thinking about meat recently. Specifically raw meat. Big fucking chunks of uncooked flesh. That's the good shit. Been thinking about massive hunks of muscle, delectable pieces of offal, juicy slabs of steak. It started when I was going through art block a week or so ago and was going through old art for inspiration. I found a drawing of some meat (won't be sharing it bc there's also body horror stuff in it), and I've been thinking about it ever since
Honestly I've been interested in butchery and the meat industry for a while now, but I've never really done much research into it until now. But since I have nothing better to do, I thought I'd take the time to actually do some reading into meat
I'll start us off with a general overview on the difference between red and white meat, and the different cuts of meat you can have on the common meats, as a beginners course for those not fully immersed in the meat lore as I
There are two different types of meat: red meat and white meat. To put it simply, red meat refers to meat that is red before being cooked and turns dark during cooking - think beef and lamb. Alternatively, white meat is pale before and after being cooked - most poultry meats are white. Makes sense, right?
Anyways let me introduce you to pork. Pork is scientifically classified as a red meat despite being visually a white meat. Strange, right? Or at least, this would seem strange, if not for pork's high amount of myoglobin. You see, meats get their red colour from myoglobin: a oxygen-binding protein found in heart and skeletal muscle tissue. Scientifically speaking, this is what sets red and white meats apart; most mammals have red meat due to their higher myoglobin concentration, so despite having a lower myoglobin count than other mammal meats, pork is still a red meat
To understand why pork has been unjustly given the label of white meat, we must travel back to the 1980's. Pork used to be an incredibly popular meat in America. However, during a health craze in the 70's and 80's, people started to move towards white meats like chicken as a low fat alternative to beef. Pork manufacturers were obviously not that thrilled by this. They rolled out some swanky new television advertisements with the slogan "Pork. The Other White Meat" in an attempt to win back Americans. And it worked. Pork consumption rose by 20% and, although it never took over chicken and beef's meatolpoly, it was definitely a huge success. In present day pork is considered a white meat in a culinary sense, but in more scientific terms it is classified as a red meat
Anyways, enough about pork, lets dive into chicken
Chicken is, as previously stated, a white meat. It's considered cooked when the internal temperature is at 75ºC (or 165ºF for the Americans reading). Chickens can be eaten whole or separated into different cut, the most common being the breasts, legs/drumsticks, wings, and thighs. A special shoutout goes to the tenders, which tastes fucking great. A diagram showing the different cuts can be found in the below spoiler. You can also save the bones and boil them to make chicken stock, if you want
The breast has the lowest fat content of the cuts, though it is a little plain. Typically served boneless, I've personally found that its best to eat with a sauce, preferably cut into small pieces, since I'm admittedly not a fan of chewy meats. It's remarkably versatile though, and cooks fast, so it's still pretty good. Chicken wings are also incredibly popular, as are the thighs, but the real big shot hot cock of the chicken cut world is, in my humble opinion, the legs. Goddamn, they're good
Next up is big man beef. There are a lot - and I mean a lot - of beef cuts. Cows are big, chunky boys, after all. As such, I'll only provide a brief overview on beef
Beef cutting begins by dividing it into "primals", which are shown in the spoiler'd diagram, and then divided again into sub-primal cuts. Using the American system, there are 8 primal cuts; the chunk, the ribs, the lions, the round, the flank, the short plate, the shank, and the brisket. However, there are many different ways to make primal cuts; Europeans make 6 cuts, but some regions can make up to 20
Meat grading exists within all types of meat, but beef grading is pretty nifty. There are 8 different grades of beef, all of which are listed below:
Finally, we're gonna talk about lamb
What, you thought I was gonna round it off with pork? This, my friends, is called a twist ending. I've already talked a lot about pork, so I wanted to switch things up and talk about my personal favourite red meat
Lamb, hogget, and mutton are essentially the same, the only difference being that lamb is less than a year old, hogget is 1-2 years old, and mutton is 2+ years old. Generally, the darker the meat, the older the sheep. For consistency's sake I'll be referring to sheep's meat as lamb. Lamb has little to no fat marbling, with most of the fat typically being trimmed off. Lamb becomes more flavoursome as it gets older, but it also becomes tougher, so mutton and hogget is normally served stewed
Lamb, like beef, has primal cuts which can be seen in the diagram below. Beef is normally divided into sides, which are then cut into the primals, but lamb is divided into the foresaddle and hindsaddle - the front and back of the sheep - and then the primal cuts are made. Cuts in areas that are exercised frequently, such as the lamb's breast and shanks. Typically the best cuts of lamb are found in the hindsaddle
If you're familiar with sheep rearing, you may be familiar with the practice of tail docking. This, for those unaware, is the practice of shortening a sheep's tail. Tail docking is normally done using a rubber ring around the tail at a young age, and is done for primarily hygiene reasons, the most notable being to prevent fly strike
I'm not here to discuss the ethics of tail docking though. I bring this up because certain breeds of sheep have developed fat tails through selective breeding, which are not docked at all. The fat is stored in deposits in the sides and vertebrae of the tail, and then get lopped off or whatever. This practice is done for ease in harvesting the fat for cooking. A lot of fat in thin-tailed sheep is deposited under the skin, making it harder to harvest
I'll be honest I can't find a lot of info on the actual act of removing the tail, everything I search just brings up articles about tail docking. Which is pretty unfortunate, because I've seen an article that mentions that cutting the tails off causes the fat to be redistributed and therefore gives it a different flavour because of the extra fat, but I can't find any other articles backing this up, so if there's anyone reading this who knows more about sheep husbandry and can confirm this then please do so, if that's true then that would honestly be really cool
Anyways uh that's all I've got for now, I'll probably make another post at some point about marbling because I find that pretty interesting, or maybe the different breeds of meat cow you can get. If there's anyone reading this who is more in the know about meat production then feel free to chime in and add something or correct me or whatever lol. Also I didn't know how to fit this organically into the post but yesterday I went to the local shops and there was just deadass an entire corpse of an animal inside a meat freezer. I think it was a lamb, or maybe a calf? There were a few though, all wrapped up in see-through plastic and labelled and everything. Crazy stuff
Also originally I was just gonna make this a meat thread but I thought that would be boring so I decided to open it up to audience participation. Ok now I'm actually done with the meat talk, I'm just gonna go to sleep now lol
So I've been thinking about meat recently. Specifically raw meat. Big fucking chunks of uncooked flesh. That's the good shit. Been thinking about massive hunks of muscle, delectable pieces of offal, juicy slabs of steak. It started when I was going through art block a week or so ago and was going through old art for inspiration. I found a drawing of some meat (won't be sharing it bc there's also body horror stuff in it), and I've been thinking about it ever since
Honestly I've been interested in butchery and the meat industry for a while now, but I've never really done much research into it until now. But since I have nothing better to do, I thought I'd take the time to actually do some reading into meat
I'll start us off with a general overview on the difference between red and white meat, and the different cuts of meat you can have on the common meats, as a beginners course for those not fully immersed in the meat lore as I
There are two different types of meat: red meat and white meat. To put it simply, red meat refers to meat that is red before being cooked and turns dark during cooking - think beef and lamb. Alternatively, white meat is pale before and after being cooked - most poultry meats are white. Makes sense, right?
Anyways let me introduce you to pork. Pork is scientifically classified as a red meat despite being visually a white meat. Strange, right? Or at least, this would seem strange, if not for pork's high amount of myoglobin. You see, meats get their red colour from myoglobin: a oxygen-binding protein found in heart and skeletal muscle tissue. Scientifically speaking, this is what sets red and white meats apart; most mammals have red meat due to their higher myoglobin concentration, so despite having a lower myoglobin count than other mammal meats, pork is still a red meat
To understand why pork has been unjustly given the label of white meat, we must travel back to the 1980's. Pork used to be an incredibly popular meat in America. However, during a health craze in the 70's and 80's, people started to move towards white meats like chicken as a low fat alternative to beef. Pork manufacturers were obviously not that thrilled by this. They rolled out some swanky new television advertisements with the slogan "Pork. The Other White Meat" in an attempt to win back Americans. And it worked. Pork consumption rose by 20% and, although it never took over chicken and beef's meatolpoly, it was definitely a huge success. In present day pork is considered a white meat in a culinary sense, but in more scientific terms it is classified as a red meat
Anyways, enough about pork, lets dive into chicken
Chicken is, as previously stated, a white meat. It's considered cooked when the internal temperature is at 75ºC (or 165ºF for the Americans reading). Chickens can be eaten whole or separated into different cut, the most common being the breasts, legs/drumsticks, wings, and thighs. A special shoutout goes to the tenders, which tastes fucking great. A diagram showing the different cuts can be found in the below spoiler. You can also save the bones and boil them to make chicken stock, if you want
The breast has the lowest fat content of the cuts, though it is a little plain. Typically served boneless, I've personally found that its best to eat with a sauce, preferably cut into small pieces, since I'm admittedly not a fan of chewy meats. It's remarkably versatile though, and cooks fast, so it's still pretty good. Chicken wings are also incredibly popular, as are the thighs, but the real big shot hot cock of the chicken cut world is, in my humble opinion, the legs. Goddamn, they're good
Next up is big man beef. There are a lot - and I mean a lot - of beef cuts. Cows are big, chunky boys, after all. As such, I'll only provide a brief overview on beef
Beef cutting begins by dividing it into "primals", which are shown in the spoiler'd diagram, and then divided again into sub-primal cuts. Using the American system, there are 8 primal cuts; the chunk, the ribs, the lions, the round, the flank, the short plate, the shank, and the brisket. However, there are many different ways to make primal cuts; Europeans make 6 cuts, but some regions can make up to 20
Meat grading exists within all types of meat, but beef grading is pretty nifty. There are 8 different grades of beef, all of which are listed below:
- Prime is the good shit, its well marbled, tender, and full of flavour. It makes up around 2% of all beef and it generally sold to really high class restaurants
- Choice is also good, but not as good as prime. You have to actually cook it properly, unlike prime, which you could probably shit all over and still have it be the best thing you've ever eaten. You can get it at most stores but it'll probably be at the Meat Counter rather than the frozen food isle
- Select is the basic bitch meat option. She's not that classy like Prime and Choice, but she's not trashy like the nutjobs down below. She'll have a quickie behind a Maccies, but you gotta buy her a happy meal first. Make sure she gets the girls toy too, else she might get pissy. This is a commonly available cut, hence my basic bitch assessment of Select
- Standard and Commercial are both basic bitches too, but somehow worse than Select? They use TikTok unironically. These are some bad fucking cuts of meat, shame on you if you buy these on purpose
- Utility, Cutter, and Canner is just dog food. It's also used for ground beef and canned stuff, which is swell
Finally, we're gonna talk about lamb
What, you thought I was gonna round it off with pork? This, my friends, is called a twist ending. I've already talked a lot about pork, so I wanted to switch things up and talk about my personal favourite red meat
Lamb, hogget, and mutton are essentially the same, the only difference being that lamb is less than a year old, hogget is 1-2 years old, and mutton is 2+ years old. Generally, the darker the meat, the older the sheep. For consistency's sake I'll be referring to sheep's meat as lamb. Lamb has little to no fat marbling, with most of the fat typically being trimmed off. Lamb becomes more flavoursome as it gets older, but it also becomes tougher, so mutton and hogget is normally served stewed
Lamb, like beef, has primal cuts which can be seen in the diagram below. Beef is normally divided into sides, which are then cut into the primals, but lamb is divided into the foresaddle and hindsaddle - the front and back of the sheep - and then the primal cuts are made. Cuts in areas that are exercised frequently, such as the lamb's breast and shanks. Typically the best cuts of lamb are found in the hindsaddle
If you're familiar with sheep rearing, you may be familiar with the practice of tail docking. This, for those unaware, is the practice of shortening a sheep's tail. Tail docking is normally done using a rubber ring around the tail at a young age, and is done for primarily hygiene reasons, the most notable being to prevent fly strike
I'm not here to discuss the ethics of tail docking though. I bring this up because certain breeds of sheep have developed fat tails through selective breeding, which are not docked at all. The fat is stored in deposits in the sides and vertebrae of the tail, and then get lopped off or whatever. This practice is done for ease in harvesting the fat for cooking. A lot of fat in thin-tailed sheep is deposited under the skin, making it harder to harvest
I'll be honest I can't find a lot of info on the actual act of removing the tail, everything I search just brings up articles about tail docking. Which is pretty unfortunate, because I've seen an article that mentions that cutting the tails off causes the fat to be redistributed and therefore gives it a different flavour because of the extra fat, but I can't find any other articles backing this up, so if there's anyone reading this who knows more about sheep husbandry and can confirm this then please do so, if that's true then that would honestly be really cool
Anyways uh that's all I've got for now, I'll probably make another post at some point about marbling because I find that pretty interesting, or maybe the different breeds of meat cow you can get. If there's anyone reading this who is more in the know about meat production then feel free to chime in and add something or correct me or whatever lol. Also I didn't know how to fit this organically into the post but yesterday I went to the local shops and there was just deadass an entire corpse of an animal inside a meat freezer. I think it was a lamb, or maybe a calf? There were a few though, all wrapped up in see-through plastic and labelled and everything. Crazy stuff
Also originally I was just gonna make this a meat thread but I thought that would be boring so I decided to open it up to audience participation. Ok now I'm actually done with the meat talk, I'm just gonna go to sleep now lol
Even if nobody touches this thread I'm still gonna update it every now and then with my new meat findings, maybe post a little about art theory stuff, idk I do what I want and nobody can stop me so go nuts guys, this thread is a canvas on which you may smear either paint or shit so I hope you've got your paintbrushes ready
God that was so fucking smart I'm a goddamn genius lol
