What Your Meat and Potatoes are Telling You

OPENING SCENE

You have stopped at the grocery store. You are just going to run in and pick up a couple of things. The produce section is right in front of you so you briskly head for the bin of red onions. You spot someone standing there pawing through the onion bin. You don’t want to waste time waiting so you dash over to the next isle thinking you will loop back on your way out.

When you round the corner on the rebound to produce, you see the same person, still there, apparently assessing something about the onions?? There is only one thing between where you stand now, and the other side of the check-out isle, and that’s the person who has still not chosen an onion.

You politely apologize as you carefully reach into the bin to grab a red onion. And as you walk away, you think to yourself “good grief, how much thought does it take to buy an onion!”.

Have you already guessed that the shopper at the onion bin is me?

Read the story

When you are buying something from the meat or produce department, if you take the time to look at what you are buying you will see that each item can tell you a story. It can tell you how old it is or if it has been knocked around. It will tell you if it is fresh or not.

When I am buying an item in the produce or meat department, I take the time to read their story before I put it in my carriage.

Why?

INGREDIENTS MAKE THE MEAL

In other words, your meal is only as good as the ingredients you make it with. Meals take time and money, but you can waste both if your ingredients fail you because you weren’t paying attention when you bought them.

My sister stopped shopping with me because she couldn’t stand waiting around while I, (and this is what she called it) “fondled” the food. She enjoyed making fun of me when telling others about the ordeal I go through to buy something. I have to say, her reenactment was hysterical and accurate. 😂

This gives me a great venue to vindicate myself. There actually ARE things to consider about buying an onion, and any other fresh ingredient. THERE ARE ONIONS IN THAT BIN THAT HAVE TAKEN A DIVE OUT OF THE BIN AND BOUNCED ON THE FLOOR! Someone saw it on the floor and put it back in the bin. I know that is what I would do if I saw it. But I’ll tell you this, I wouldn’t pick it up and put it in my carriage.

So why would anyone care? Because, where the onion met the floor there is a mushy mess underneath the skin. How would anyone know that the bruise is on that onion? The bruise can’t be readily see it through the skin? You fondle it! That’s how! Pick it up, put it in your hand and let it tell it’s story. You will be able to feel where it is bruised. Heck you might find the whole darned onion is squishy and dried out because it has sat around too long.

There is nothing funny about rotten food

Or wasting your money

All kidding aside, you pay the same price for the onion with the mushy mess, as you do the nice firm red onion that is just the right size.

You pay the same price for a steak that was cut 2 days ago, as you pay for the one that was just cut and is being wheeled out on the cart.

And while I would never advocate that you become as OCD as I am about this, there is a practical middle ground. Just give something a good looking over before you put it in your cart. That’s a simple thing to do but I don’t see lot of people are doing it. As I am poking around the vegetable bins examining today’s offerings, I notice that most people from all walks of life are just grabbing a fresh food item from the heap, and putting it in the carriage.

Freshness counts. You probably accept that as a general overall statement, but do you make sure your item is fresh before you put it in your carriage? Make the most of your money by buying the freshest you can get. It last longer and tastes better. Why be the chump who buys the oldest produce in the heap?

What to look for

So, if you are willing to take a few extra seconds, what should you be looking for? How do you know when a vegetable is fresh?

It looks healthy. It is firm. Look for bright color. Picture in your mind the difference between a fresh, crisp, neon green stalk of celery, and a limp, rubbery, whitish-green one with leaves that are turning brown. Do you think they taste the same? They don’t.

Sweet peppers, whether green, red, orange or yellow should have firm shiny skin. The pepper that is heaviest in even proportion to another, is the freshest.

As fruits and vegetables get older the moisture inside starts drying up. And with the moisture, goes the water weight. That’s why the heaviest (in equal proportion) is the freshest. When you cut into a fresh pepper you will find a thick layer of meat and you will see the moisture as soon as you cut into it. If the skin of a pepper has patches of wrinkled skin, don’t buy it. The wrinkles are telling you that the meat of the pepper has dried out so much that it no longer fits in its skin.

Look .. no wrinkles or bruises

Don’t buy vegetables with wrinkled skin. Don’t buy stuff that looks old and limp. Have you seen a potato when it has started sprouting roots? When you squeeze it, it feels rubbery. The skin is all wrinkled up. It is not a rotten potato, just an old one. You shouldn’t buy it. You may have one that has had better days in your own kitchen that may be usable, but you shouldn’t buy it if it’s already on it’s way out.

Look to see if the fruit or vegetable has bruises. You will see a bruise as a flat spot and the flesh is mushy underneath the skin. It is decaying in that area.

If the skin has been broken don’t buy it. Not only has it been exposed to air to dry it out, but whatever was on the outside is also now inhabiting the inside too.

Bright colors mean fresh

That is true for meats, vegetables and fruits. But let’s stick to produce for now.

Bright color tells you it is fresh. No matter what the fruit or vegetable. And fresh fruits and vegetables are also crisp. A green bean should snap when you bend it. If you can bend a bean in half without it snapping, it is old. And yes, it will be dull in color too, not a bright green or yellow or purple.

A bunch of carrots should be bright orange. It shouldn’t have any stringy hairs starting to stick out of it.

Well, you get the picture. Look for bright shiny colors.

Stems tell a story

Look at the stem of a fruit or vegetable if there is one. Does it look fresh? The fresher the stem, the fresher the produce. The stem is going to tell you how long it has been off the plant. If it has been sitting around for a while the stem will not be a bright color any more. It is going to be a muddled color, dried out and stiff.

Greens and leafy vegetables

If you are buying lettuce or other leafy greens, look for bright colors and crisp leaves.

When buying greens in a clear plastic container, turn the package over and see what the leaves look like on the bottom. If the leaves are fresh, they will hold their shape even though they are on the bottom. If the leaves on the bottom are limp and mushy, don’t buy it.

And here’s another tip about buying greens in packaged containers or bags; the older packages are put right up front. The fresher ones are further back. Look at the expiration date and buy the one that has the later expiration date. There can be many days between the freshest and the oldest. Check it out for yourself.

The meat counter

So let’s push our cart around the corner to the meat department.

Buy fresh.

How do you know it is fresh?

Read the label..it tells a story

The store is required to tell you when the meat was cut. And meat has a window of time it can be sold. A grocer can only to sell meat for specific number of days after it is cut. And they are required to tell you on the label what the expiration date is. Don’t buy meat that is just about to expire. Even if you are going to cook with it today. it’s already been sitting around a few days. If there are no fresher packs of what you want in the case, ask someone in the meat department if they have a fresher pack of that meat out back.

Remember, waste is the enemy of profit for a grocery store. Weather it is meat or produce they need to get the older stuff out. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a fresher item in the store. In the meat department, ask them to check in the butcher’s room for something fresher.

Buy meat on sale

If the meat you are buying is on sale and it is flying out of the meat case most likely the meat has been cut on the day you are buying it. Buying meat on sale is a win, win. You can save money and get a fresher product. Sales are based on availability. That is true for both produce and meat. When a perishable commodity is most abundant stores will reduce the price so they can sell more of it. A sale indicates it’s the best time to buy something because it is at it’s peak quality.

I know you are probably on the run, and quite possibly hate grocery shopping, but you don’t have to slow down too much to check the label on the meat you are buying. Look for a current cut date. The fresher it is, the better it is going to taste and the longer it is going to last when you get it home.

But that is not all

The label doesn’t tell you everything. The meat you buy should look fresh. A piece of meat cut today might have been left in an abandoned carriage unrefrigerated for hours. It’s not fresh any more even though the date would make you think otherwise.

So, how does fresh meat look? Like fruits and vegetables, bright colors indicate freshness. Beef should be red with a layer of bright white fat, pork should be pinkish/white, and chicken should have bright yellow fat and colorful pinkish/yellowish meat.

How to learn what fresh meat should look like

Have you noticed that your grocery store has a meat section with an cold enclosed glass case that only can be reached from the side the employee is on? It’s like the case in the deli department. The meat in there is pretty expensive. I know it all is expensive but the meat in that case is always a lot more. If you don’t know what fresh beef, pork, lamb, chicken look like when they are fresh, look at the meat in that expensive section. That meat will be fresh.

Of course if you can afford the meat in that case, go for it. You probably don’t need to know how to read the color of meat for freshness. But if you are like me and you are buying from the regular meat case in the meat department, you should know that beef should not have a patch of brown on it and the fat shouldn’t have a yellowish tinge.

The bottom of the tray the meat is sitting in should not be covered in liquid that has leached out of the meat. If it is, the meat won’t look fresh it will look old and pale. With the moisture in the meat on the bottom of the tray, the natural moisture in the meat, the flavor and the freshness is gone already.

Your freezer can be your best friend

Now that you have the meat home in your refrigerator, don’t plan on leaving it there for long. If you are not going to use it in the next couple of days, freeze it while it is still fresh. Your dinner will taste much better when you use defrosted fresh meat, than it will with meat that has been sitting around for a few days. Fresh is always best, but meat frozen correctly while fresh, is a close second.

Do not freeze meat in the styrofoam or plastic tray wrapped in plastic. You might as well throw it in the trash, because that is where it is going to end up after you cook it.

Freeze with care

You can’t just pop meat in the freezer in any old wrap or container

Plastic wrap keeps all the moisture in. The moisture in the air around the meat is going to freeze, growing icicles on the meat. You probably have seen meat with a fuzzy white layer of ice on it. The meat is literally being burned with ice. That’s where the term freezer burn comes from. Under the layers of hairy ice, your freezer burned steak is brown. It tastes and chews like cardboard when it is cooked.

For successful freezing, use freezer designated wrap and get as much air as possible out. In other words, vacuum pack. I do not have one of the machines that vacuum pack. I use freezer bags. You can push the air around the meat, out of the bag, or use a straw to suck the air out. It works!

There is an interesting, maybe subliminal, mindset when you take the time to appreciate the food that you put in the cart. When I am making dinner with one of my well chosen food items, I find making dinner seems less of a chore. For me cooking for my family is a way to show how much I care about them.