Wizard Recipes

Veal production spurred the original charge against inhumanely raised meat-many calves were (and still are) tightly confined. And “milk-raised” veal (raised on formula, not mother’s milk) is still objectionable. But the good news is that it’s easier than ever to find what the USDA calls “calf,” which is also sold as “humanely raised” or “natural” veal.

There is organic and free-range veal out there also, though mostly what you see in conventional supermarkets remains so-called milk-fed. With veal as with other meat, the closer you get to traditional farming practices the better.

As for cooking: Regardless of the kind of veal you buy, it will be quite lean. And even though veal is a young cow, its cuts are more similar to lamb than beef. Properly cooked, it will also be quite tender. Those cuts that are tender enough to be cooked with dry heat, primarily the chop and the rear leg, should not be overcooked.

Medium-that is, with some pinkness but no redness in the interior-is how I prefer this veal, about 140°F on an instant-read thermometer. Stop cooking when the meat measures about 135°F or a little more and you’ll hit it right. Braised veal, including osso buco, veal breast, and the cut-up shoulder, neck, and pieces from the leg that are sold as stew, must be cooked until well done and tender.

However, this often takes considerably less time than corresponding cuts of beef.

Shoulder: Best for stew and roasts (blade roast, arm roast) cooked with liquid. Do not buy steaks (or chops) from this section (labeled arm or shoulder steaks, blade steak); they will be tough.

Rib: Rib chops are superb. Veal rib roasts, which are manageable in size and quite nice (and are also called rack of veal ), may be sold bone in or out; unfortunately, they are not seen very often.

Loin: Also wonderful for chops, the loin provides good roasts, especially the boneless (and expensive) saddle roast.

Sirloin: Not that desirable in veal. Neither chops nor roasts are as good as those from the rib or loin.

Leg: Thin slices are cut for veal scallops or cutlets (or scaloppine). Rump or round roasts are neither tender nor flavorful, but roast veal leg-bone in-is a treat.

Flank: Almost always ground.

Breast: Usually sold whole (breast of veal) and can be cooked bone in or boned, in which case it is usually stuffed (you can make Matambre with it, if you like ).

Shank: Great for Osso Buco or roasted whole.

Veal has always been regarded as one of the finest meats, and it is associated with some very elegant dishes. This lean, delicate meat resembles poultry more than beef, and it has a versatility that lends itself to a variety of seasonings and cooking techniques. But remember, veal requires a bit of extra attention to keep it from becoming overcooked and dried out.

Buying Veal

Veal calves are raised for eight to sixteen weeks. In order to maintain the meat’s delicate texture, the calves are never subjected to excessive movement. The finest and most expensive veal is milk-fed, either their mother’s milk or a special milk formula. Milk-fed veal is rarely labeled as such but can be recognized by its pale pink, almost white color.

Grain-fed veal comes from older calves that were raised on grain or grass. It has a deep rosy pink color and a slightly stronger flavor than milk-fed veal. This veal is sometimes labeled “calf ” but more often it is just labeled “veal.”

When buying veal at the supermarket, let your eye be your guide. Look for meat that is fine-textured and pale. While marbling in beef is desirable, veal should have very little marbling, and what fat there is should be firm and very white. The bones of milk-fed veal have reddish marrow.

Prime veal is usually milk-fed, whereas grain-fed veal is usually graded choice. Veal marketed under brand names is rarely graded. Veal cutlets are readily available but vary in quality.

The cutlets are ideally cut from a single muscle, usually the top or bottom round. If they are cut from two or three muscles, they will curl when cooked.

Storing Veal

Because veal is a moist meat, it is fairly perishable. Large cuts and stew meat will only keep for two days, tightly wrapped, in the refrigerator. Be sure to cook veal cutlets the day of purchase.

Cooking Veal

Broiling, Grilling and Panfrying For broiling or grilling, choose thick chops and steaks so they won’t dry out. Veal cutlets, which are thin, are usually panfried.

ROASTING TIMES  FOR VEAL

(OV E N T E M P E R AT U R E O F 325°F )

Start with meat at refrigerator temperature. Remove roast from oven when it reaches 5°F below desired doneness; temperature will continue to rise as roast stands.

Best Bets: Shoulder or blade steaks, loin or rib chops, ground veal, and cutlets.

Braising and Stewing Bone-in pieces are especially suited to braising and stewing. Veal stew meat, cut from the neck or shoulder, is readily available and delicious.

Best Bets: Shanks, shank cross cuts (osso buco), arm (shoulder) or blade steak, breast, and shoulder.

Roasting Veal roasts are generally very lean, so you’ll get juicier results by cooking them to only 155°F, since the temperature will rise as it stands. Veal breast and shoulder roasts should be cooked until well done and tender.

Best Bets: Rib roast, loin roast, round, shoulder roast, and breast.

Credit the American love of Italian and French food to the increase in veal appreciation. Dishes such as veal scallopini and grilled veal chops introduced the meat to palates that were much more aware of the heavier, heartier taste of beef.

The name veal is derived from the Latin vitellus, which means calf. The meat is garnered from a young calf, usually 1 to 3 months old, that has been fed only milk.

Milk-fed veal comes from calves up to 12 weeks old that have not been weaned from their mother’s milk, but veal of this quality is rare in today’s supermarket. Shoppers are more likely to find veal fed a nutritionally balanced milk or soy-based diet that is fortified with essential nutrients.

Color is the most important criterion when choosing a good cut of veal. The flesh should be a creamy white to ivory tone - barely tinged with grayish pink - and the fat should be white and creamy.

The pinker the meat, the older the animal was at slaughter, and the meat is tougher and stronger-flavored. If the meat is a reddish tone but still marked as veal, it may be a calf between 6 and 12 months and should more appropriately be called baby beef. Or, the calf may have been allowed to eat grains or grasses, which also darken the meat.

Animals were once confined to limit their movement; hence, the meat would be more tender and pale. For that reason, the consumption of veal was a source of controversy. In recent years, veal producers have attempted to make their modes of production more humane.

The USDA can grade veal in five different categories, but it usually does not. If the veal has been categorized, it will carry marks of (from highest quality to lowest) prime, choice, good, standard, and utility. The last three grades are rarely sold in retail outlets.

Preparation Tips

Although veal is supposed to be leaner and more tender than beef, not all veal is made equally, and not all cuts carry the same level of quality.

If you are interested in preparing veal, your first step should be to locate a supermarket or butcher who carries veal on a regular basis. Because Americans tend to eat veal in restaurants, the retail market is much smaller than beef ’s beefy share. You may need to order the cut of veal you want and the amount you need in advance.

The best cuts are from the rib and the loin of the calf. They are the most tender and the most expensive and can be bought as ribs, chops, or scallops.

Veal scallops have many names - scallopini, cutlets, schnitzel. However, all these words describe thinly cut veal slices.The best scallops come from the top round, cut against the muscle fibers. Cutting against the grain ensures the thin scallops will not buckle when they hit the heated pan.

If you are buying scallops, look for a smooth surface, which indicates they have been cut properly. Storage of veal is similar to that of beef.

Serving Suggestions

Veal scallops can be used to make veal scallopini. Scallops are dredged in flour and lightly cooked in oil or butter for 1 to 2 minutes. Veal roast can be cooked with either low or high heat, but high heat works better with more expensive cuts of meat.

For cuts from the shoulder, breast, or leg, roasting at a lower heat with rubbing of added fat creates a more tender entrée. Tougher cuts of veal from the lower leg and shoulder can be braised for the Italian dish osso buco.

The name means “bone with a hole.” The bone is a marrow-filled round in the center of the cut that adds flavor and is considered a velvety treat. Veal chops and medallions are best prepared by pan frying or grilling. Chops should be at least an inch thick, and medallions should be about 3/4-inch thick. Otherwise, the veal will dry out.

Because veal is such a lean meat, many recipes may call for adding fat of some sort: from a health standpoint, a small amount of olive oil is best. Watch closely, because veal cooks quickly and it is very easy to overcook it.

Here are some assorted hints to help you with your meat cooking.

Beef. This list from the National Cattlemen’s Association gives you beef steaks with decreasing degree of tenderness.

¨ Tenderloin

¨ Chuck top blade

¨ Top loin

¨ Porterhouse/T-bone

¨ Rib

¨ Rib-eye

¨ Chuck-eye

¨ Round tip

¨ Top sirloin

¨ Chopped steak

Veal. Veal comes from young cattle. It is a very tender, light-colored meat with little or no fat and connective tissue. They market virtually all veal and calf fresh (not frozen). The meat has a high moisture content and doesn’t improve with aging as beef does, so you want to use it soon after purchase.

Baby veal is the most tender and lightest in color of all veal but with very little flavor. It comes from baby animals of mere 2 or 3 days old that weigh between 22 and 55 pounds (10 and 25 kg) (not much more than a large tom turkey).

Meat labeled veal comes from slightly older 1 to 3-month old animals that were entirely milk-fed. The meat is white (there is no iron in milk that would darken the color). If the veal is not white, the animal had supplemental feed, that turns the color pink. Meat labeled calf is still from a young animal in the 3 to 8-month range, just a little older than veal. Calf meat is tender but no longer a light pink color.

Baby beef is another category you occasionally see at the meat counter. This comes from immature, 7 to 10-month old cattle. Ranchers usually sell these when economic reasons or adverse weather conditions force them to reduce herd size. Although low-priced, this meat isn’t a good buy because these young animals have already lost the desirable characteristics of veal, but haven’t yet developed the true beef flavor and marbling.

By itself, veal is dry with little flavor. Its low fat and high moisture content does poorly in dry heat cooking. It is best if you sauté veal (because frying oil adds lubrication), or serve it in rich sauces or with high-fat fillings. Retail cuts of veal are similar to beef, but the size is smaller-veal round steak, for example, is smaller than a beef round steak.

Pork. Because pork used to be much fatter, you may have to alter recipes from older cookbooks. Add a little more liquid and baste more frequently to compensation for today’s leaner pork.

Like other red meats, pork is best when you roast it slowly at a low oven temperature. If you rush it, you’ll lose more liquid and a hard outside crust forms that heat cannot penetrate evenly. Part of the roast may be done while the rest is still pink. The hard crust also makes carving thin slices difficult.

Cured pork cuts. Salt pork and some brine-cured hams (Virginia and Smithfield, for example) are too salty for many people’s tastes. The answer is to soak some of the salt out. If it is a whole ham, soak it for 24 hours, changing the water many times. A small piece of salt pork takes much less time. Cover it with cold water, bring it to a boil, and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes.

Salt content, age of the meat and texture all make a difference. No exact timeline exists to guide you how long to soak a particular piece of salted meat. Let the piece of meat soak a while and then give it a lick test. Keep doing this until you are satisfied with the flavor.

Bacon. Have you ever wondered how much edible meat you actually get when you buy bacon? I selected three different brands: a high-quality bacon from a butcher shop, a better quality bacon from a supermarket deli counter and a standard lower-priced, but not bottom-of the-line brand, from the supermarket display case. I carefully weighed each batch on a laboratory scale and fried them to identical crispness, then weighed the final edible portions again.

The butcher shop bacon and the better-quality supermarket bacon yielded close to the same amount of meat-about 35 percent of the original weight. The standard brand only yielded 27.5 percent.What I lost, nearly three-quarters of the total, was fat and water. The higher-priced bacon had better flavor and the cost per pound (or per kilo) of the edible portion worked out about the same as of the lower-priced bacon.

When you buy bacon, it is more economical to buy a better-quality package and you get a better flavor. Considering such a high loss, bacon costs more than most of the highest-quality meats.

In fact, the price of the edible portion is only just below the price of the highest-priced item in the butcher’s display, fully trimmed beef tenderloin steak or filet mignon.

Lamb. Lamb has a delicate flavor, but to retain it without a gamy overtone, know how to cook it properly. Lamb fat is a hard fat with a lower smoking point than other animal fats, and it burns easily if the temperature is too high. Once it burns, it develops an unpleasant odor and flavor. Never roast lamb in an oven higher than 325°F (165°C).

Leg of lamb has a thin membrane completely surrounding the meat, separating it from the fat layer. This is called the fell. The butcher doesn’t remove it because it holds the bundle of muscle together and helps to retain moisture during cooking. It should be removed, however, in steaks and chops. If it is still there, simply pull it off with your fingers.

If you don’t do this before grilling or broiling, the heat shrinks the fell and makes the meat buckle-as a result it browns unevenly and looks unappealing. Scoring the fell in several places also helps to avoid curling. The term spring lamb refers to the very tender meat from lambs born in the spring, but in North America today it has no meaning because of improved shipping. Lamb ranchers and processors provide young, tender, spring-lamb quality meat year round.

In California, Arkansas and parts of the South, young lambs are born in the fall and flourish in the mild winter. They provide tender meat before the true spring lambs are born in cooler parts of the country.