Why aren’t beef products more common for breakfast?

Heavenly, yes. Breakfast, no! That sounds more like a wonderful early-afternoon brunch after getting up late, and accompanied by a glass of nice Chardonnay! :slight_smile:

However, absent the fish component, a toasted bagel with Boursin garlic & fine herbs cheese makes for a fine light breakfast!

Fish is much lighter and easier to digest than pork. But i rarely have pork for breakfast because i don’t like having so heavy a meal early in the morning.

I like eating smoked salmon for breakfast, though rarely indulge. I have rarely enjoyed smoked herring too. But when I went to Japan, fish was commonly served for breakfast, and it was amazingly good. Healthy too.

My comment about no-beef breakfasts …

You ever try to slaughter a cow first thing in the morning before you’ve eaten?

It’s a big job and they’re darn strong before they’re dead. Smarter to have something a little less … vigorous… for breakfast.

Once you’re suitably fortified there’ll be plenty of time to harvest a cow for dinner.

you’ve never had Salmon Croquettes? (it’s big in Midwest)

I always thought of Salmon Croquettes as Southern food. Certainly not very popular in my corner of the Midwest.

it is in ST Louis, but STL is really a “northern” Southerb city :grin:

actually, my favorite breakfast at the Hungry Bear Cafe was either BBQ pork or beef with coleslaw and a side of baked beans … or if I splurged both with coleslaw which horrified a lot of people … its one reason I like truck stops they rarely blink at the odd things I eat for breakfast

You don’t slaughter a cow for breakfast. Nor do you slaughter one for dinner.

Beef needs time to age before it is fit to eat. Generally about 28 days, give or take.

A friend is a cattle farmer. I’ve attended at cow kills on his farm. They are not pleasant. I do not like watching a healthy animal go down after a .22 short has been unloaded into the animal’s brain at point-blank range. If done properly, it’s painless and the animal drops immediately. Doesn’t feel a thing. Thankfully, at all the cow kills I’ve attended, it’s always been done properly.

Then the butcher moves in. Skins the animal, and removes the peritoneum, hopefully in one piece. Things get real messy if it isn’t in one piece. Assuming all works out well, the peritoneum is removed (usually by a Bobcat with a scoop), and the butcher cuts the sides. Once the sides have been prepared by the butcher (and they’re heavy; I’ve helped carry them), they go on ice in the back of a truck. Other salvageable parts are taken; the skin is salted and will be sold to a tannery. Then the sides are taken to the butcher’s, for aging.

Where they hang, for about 28 days, when they become ready to eat.

But given all that, there’s no way you can slaughter a cow this morning for breakfast or dinner today.

Thanks for the facts. My post was intended as a joke. Even if beef didn’t benefit from aging, there’s more than a day’s worth of food on one. Sorta …

I too have attended cow kills. I watched the “chef” of a Latin American infantry encampment do his thing to the scrawny hump-backed cows common there. Which they’d just bought for cash from a local ranchero. Tied the unsuspecting animal’s halter to a post next to an 8x8 concrete pad, and gave it some hay to munch. Then while it was occupied he quickly stepped in with a long chef’s knife and slit the animal’s throat from ear to ear. It dropped pretty quick in a vast pool of blood.

The subsequent disassembly went as you described, with multiple soldados with shovels substituting for the Bobcat. I’m pretty sure that animal was eaten that night, but maybe the harvest went in a cooler to age while the battalion ate the last of the previous kill.

They killed and ate one every couple of days for the weeks I was there. Lotta goats & pigs too. But the cows were definitely the stars of the slaughter show.

Bill Mauldin cartoon

Two GIs in a machine gun nest. The gun has just been fired. One GI turns to the other and says

I coulda sworn a couple of Krauts were using that cow for cover. Go wake up the cooks.

Found it:

Up front : Bill Mauldin : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Bill’s language differs somewhat from mine. (It’s been 60 years.)

I like his comment:

Anyone who objected to this sort of thing either didn’t like fresh meat or hadn’t been living on front-line rations.

He talks a lot about WWII army food in the surrounding pages if you scroll up and down.

Hunters have been eating fresh-killed meat for thousands of years. Letting it age helps with the strong-flavored “gamey” meats, but it is not necessary.

In my town, a couple of restaurants recently opened, ostentatiously advertising their aging rooms. I tried one of those fancy dry-aged steaks. My first thought was that Mom was cleaning out the fridge, and trying to get rid of stuff that was on the verge of spoiling. I much prefer the plebian un-aged beef.

I and my team personally ambushed a wild pig somewhere in the jungles of Latin America. Not the tastiest meal we’d ever eaten, but beat the hell out of MREs after a couple months. And it was fun.

If you’ve ever read When the Legends Die, you’ll remember the scene where Tom shoots a doe when she comes to drink at a spring and then butchers her on the spot, even though it’s about four in the morning.

He doesn’t waste any time with the meat. He cuts several slices off her thighs and fries them up for breakfast.

Later on, he feels regret for wasting so much meat by having to leave the rest of the carcass behind to rot.

I have a feeling that IRL some macro scavenger(s) would eat most of it before much “rot” sets in. Which “rot” of course is millions of micro scavengers dining heartily as they must to survive.

The bio side of Mother Nature wastes very little. To be sure, Tom gets no further benefit himself from the dead deer. And can rightfully regret that much at least. By lunchtime another slab of deer in his backpack would be mighty handy.

Yes, I’m sure the scavengers in the forest were happy to find a mostly intact deer at their water hole. :+1:

I also had it in Cleveland

Coriander and nutmeg (and cloves, pepper & allspice) are all very characteristic of South African boerewors. Which can be beef and is frequently used as a breakfast sausage.

Machacado con huevos (machaca & eggs) is a delicious Mexican breakfast dish made with shredded beef and eggs.

The best liver I ever cooked was venison liver, cooked the same day the deer was butchered. Very mild, not gamey at all.