My Main Man Maillard, and Poor People Food

We owe so much to Louis-Camille Maillard. He's the guy who explained why, as so many have said, "Brown food tastes good." Nathan Myhrvold is a good explainer, so I'll let him handle the science of how the Maillard reaction works.

If you look at the cumulative posts here, you might notice a pattern.  There's bread and bacon, so far, and today, beef. All browned, ideally. 

With that in mind, let us consider the shoulder. In pork the cut is called a Boston butt (apparently because the barrels into which they were packed for shipment were called butts, and the meat was particularly popular in Boston, of all places), and in beef it is chuck. In quadrupeds these muscles are quite active, as the pigs and cows in question make their way from place to place. Like brown food, hard-working muscles taste good. Their flavor has something to do with intramuscular collagen, which is to say, connective tissue. We've used the word "unctuous" before, and there's nothing quite so unctuous as melted collagen. It is what makes classic Jell-O jiggle, and gravy coat the soon and palate. 

3.5# chuck roast

One very good reason to eat shoulder meat is economy. Once again, it's poor people food that wins the flavor derby. The phrase "high on the hog" came from the fact that the wealthier folks preferred meat from the parts of the animals that is furthest from where the work gets done (from trotters/hoofs to shoulders, tails, and hips). Most of the time, anyway. As the culinary world has revealed that there is flavor in the off-cuts, things like short ribs and oxtails have become significantly more expensive. Even bones are priced differently than even a few years ago.

Here we have a piece of chuck roast that cost about US$8.00 (US$2.49 per pound) last week. It has been salted and peppered and is being browned on all sides (this is important) in a cast-iron skillet.
As M. Maillard noted, getting all those proteins cooked makes such a difference in flavor. 



One important thing to note, however, is that we are only interested in surface cooking. It's important not to heat the college to hot to fast, or it will become rubbery. (This is more of a risk when smoking meat, since maintaining an even temperature is more of a challenge with live fire than an indoor oven.)

A balancing act

Taking the time to brown all sides is worth the effort. Since we won't be serving this meal on the day we begin cooking, the extra five or ten minutes that this step takes is time well spent.

While the meat is browning, prepare the mirepoix. This classical mix of carrots, celery, and onions adds depth of flavor to the meat and comes in handy later. (My mirepoix tends not to be quite so orthodox, having never taken the time to ensure the proper ratio. Oh well.)  After the meat has been thoroughly and beautifully browned on all sides, place it on its beautiful bed of mirepoix.

Deglaze for fond

As it rests, add a couple of ounces of liquid (I used water) to the pan and deglaze it, using the solvent powers of liquid to release the fond. Pour the results over the meat. (In other contexts, the deglazing is part of making a pan sauce. We're going to make gravy, later, so this step is only part of that.)

After the pan juice, add liquid enough to cover the mirepoix and about half of the meat, then cover with foil and put into an oven at 225°F for the rest of the day. Really, the time is immaterial. All that is important is that the internal temperature exceeds 180°F for a few hours. This is low enough that the collagen will melt and not become rubbery.

A while before bedtime I turned off the heat and let everything cool down, then I took the whole thing to a shelf in the garage (it being winter, and all) overnight.  The next day I peeled off the cooled fat and then put the pan back in the oven at 225° all day.

Before dinner, I put on a pot of water for egg noodles and set up the steamer for asparagus, then took the pan out of the oven and set the meat on a plate to rest. 

The final product looked like this:

(I'm sorry, I don't know what happened to the rest...)