Ben Starr

The Ultimate Food Geek

Tag: meat

  • How to Convert a Refrigerator for Curing Meat or Aging Cheese

    WARNING: Working with electricity is dangerous. This article will teach you several ways to convert a refrigerator into a chamber for curing meat or for aging cheese.  (The same principles can be used to convert a refrigerator into a lagering chamber for making homebrew lager beer, or converting a chest freezer into a kegerator.)  If…

  • Curing Wild Boar

    My wonderful neighbor Ron surprised me a few days ago with some cuts from a few wild boar he shot on a recent hunting trip.  I took that as my excuse to get set up for home-curing…something I’ve been researching for a VERY long time. Curing meat through the application of salt, occasionally smoke, and…

  • On Brining…

    It’s turkey season, and that means all the TV shows are full of tips and tricks for the perfect Thanksgiving turkey.  Baste it every 10 minutes.  Bake it in a bag.  Deep fry it.  Rub butter under the skin. The turkey, like all meats that have both light and dark on the same carcass, presents…

  • The Ethics of Eating Meat

    This great debate about meat just keeps on coming, and I couldn’t be more pleased.  I received a remarkable email from a fan who has been vegetarian since age 10, and I’d like to share a portion of it: “The ethics of meat eating have been on my mind since I spent five weeks in…

  • Animals are Meat: A Follow Up

    It’s now been about 24 hours since I posted the photo on Facebook of a free-ranging rooster from a chicken farm near Dallas that I was about to dispatch to become part of the menu at FRANK this weekend.  Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined what a magical 24 hours it would…

  • NEWS FLASH: Once upon a time…meat was ALIVE!!!

    As you all know, I run an underground restaurant here in Dallas with the stunning Jennie Kelley.  We met on the set of MasterChef and have become incredibly close friends.  FRANK is a celebration of fresh, local, sustainable food.  And for our upcoming French-themed Bastille day dinners, our main course is coq au vin, a…