Remarkable achievement for a cow, to posthumously put on over two years of age, in five days ... there must be something in the air down there south of the forty-ninth .... perhaps as the ancient legends say, something bovine related
'Advanced Meat Recovery', check that out .... seems to be a process of beating, blasting, and squeezing out softer material from bone crevices, they pump this into a tank along with what gets scraped off the slaughterhouse floor, and they are legally permitted to label the resulting product 'meat' ... no shit ... [meaning 'no kidding', not a guaranteed absence of excrement in 'meat']
In Chiapas the cows we butcher are almost always young heifers, surplus to the herd plan [not steers as they go eventually to feed lots for better money] .... they rarely dress out above 200 kilos, and they've never eaten anything but grass, and a little cull maize if there is any, but mostly there isn't .... they never get grain, which is far too expensive, much less any 'prepared feed' which would be a ridiculous price i'm sure [although i have seen this stuff for sale in ag places, just never knew anyone who would use it] ..... we butcher to 40 kilo chunks or so right in the field, very professionally and cleanly, there's a lot of tradition regarding this, respect for the carnicero and his knives, any one of which you could shave with in its dullest moment ...... there is nothing better than thinly sliced haunch of young heifer, marinated in juice of naranja agria [this is 'seville' orange in english i think, the one used for marmelada] for a day or two, then grilled over coals of tinto wood, a nice salsa mexicana on the side, with lots of onion in it .... and it's safe as in church, you can look out and see what the thing's been eating all its life [given a little rain, which you don't always get at this time of year, over-grazed pasture will rebound to ankle height inside a week - with irrigation to get you through the dry season, one hectarea [2.5 acres] will support three to five head, non-stop, twelve months a year] .... nothing goes bad either, all preservation of meat is on the hoof, when you kill a cow everybody you know eats meat for a couple of days, then a few days later some other family will kill one and return the favour .... if company arrives without notice when you have no meat, you just send a kid to ask around, they're back in twenty minutes with dinner, no problem |
