Monday, July 02, 2007

WTF, Buffalo Roast?

SAN FRANCISCO, Ca - I was in Monatana, spending cash like a hooker after Halloween, and I impulsively bought an ambiguous buffalo roast (unmarked, but looked like a top round or some shit like that), as buffalo meat is a wickedly jammy jam. Following the classic jamming beef roasting technique of slowly decreasing the temp. as the meat approaches 135 (MR), things were looking great. We pulled the old girl out of the oven when she hit 135, let 'er sit for a minute, then dug in. Unfortunately, it was like trying to eat a fucking dish towel. That shit was hella tough and bad. So, as any jammer would do in this situation, I closed myself in a dark room and did some serious thinking (and jammed about 40 bags of cheetos and 70 vernor's ginger ales).

Having struggled to return from that desperate and dark hour of no jam, I have now come up with a solution. What we need to consider is that buffalo meat is very lean, so it does not have the fat that a beef roast has which incorporates into the meat during roasting resulting in a tender finish. Thus, we need to influence tenderization ourselves. And the answer?! Brine the bitch! Brining, or soaking the meat in salt water prior to cooking results in dominatingly moist roasted jams. The reason? Well, it's science, fools. The saltwater enters the cells of the meat during the soak, and denatures some proteins, creating higher solvent quantities inside the cells than outside. This imbalance entices juices to enter the cells (via osmosis) during cooking, and keeps your meat wet and soft during the roasting process. Meat soft = Jam hard.

This process is great for most roasts, not solely Buffalo - Chicky, Turkey, Beef, etc. and the salt:water ratio and brine time are dependent on the size of your jam, and on how salty you want that shit.

So before you cook your next buffalo roast, soak it for a couple of days in something like this:

1.5 quarts water
1/4 cup kosher salt
one head of garlic, cut in half
a bit of sugar if desired (unnecessary, but nice for a bit of sweetness
infused into the meat)

Bam!! Now that's a Jam. Comment with any personal touches you have added to a brine.

2 Comments:

At 6:11 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yo, you jam Vernors like a Michigander. Be any of you one as I am?

 
At 3:19 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

i heard you're supposed to drop some native american arrowheads you found in the woods into the buffalo brine

 

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