The Old Stew Meat Just Ain't What It Used to Be

I am the family chef, and have been cooking since I was a teenager.  This is not unusual given my background, as my mother is Cajun and I grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  Many, if not most, Cajun men cook.  In fact, it is a widely-held belief in South Louisiana that you aren't a "real man" unless you can produce a reasonable variety of delicious meals out of a big black cast iron pot.

Some things about cooking are eternal--like how a big black cast iron pot does something magical to stews and gumbos and other meat dishes.  Other things are not, like the meat you get from the grocery store.  The meat you buy now is just different from the meat I learned to cook with.  Take, for example, beef.  When I make stew, I usually don't buy "stew meat" as it is overpriced.  I shop for sirloin or round steak on sale, and then cut it into one inch cubes, just like my mother did (and probably still does--she is in her early 70's and still cooks).  Back in days of yore, I would throw that meat in a hot cast iron pot with a few tablespoons of oil, quickly brown the meat, then brown the onions with the browned meat, then add water, potatoes, carrots, garlic, and seasonings, then simmer, and it would be stew in about an hour and twenty minutes.

NOW, I buy the same cuts of meat, cut them the same way, throw them in the same kind of pot with the same amount of oil, and the meat generates about a cup and a half of brownish liquid that I have to boil away before the meat will really brown (instead of just turning a sickly gray).  I really don't want to know what this stuff is or where it comes from.  I just know that I wish it weren't there so I could get about my business and brown my beef.  It adds about fifteen minutes to the process of cooking stew.  If there were a farmer's market or small butcher shop nearby, I would try buying my meat there, but that is just not an option in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

Chickens are different, too.  When I make chicken and sausage gumbo, the chicken tends to fall apart sooner into lots of mushy, stringy bits instead of cohering as recognizable pieces.  When I can find them, I try to make my gumbo with stewing hens, which have more flavorful meat and pieces that hold together longer, but I have a hard time finding these where I live, as well.  Either the chickens are being bred to be tenderer, or they are being shot full of stuff that has changed the way the meat cooks.

On the other hand, there are lots of good things about the modern food world:  the higher quality, variety, and flavorfulness of frozen foods, the wider variety of produce, the larger and better organized stores . . . change and progress are not all bad.  I just hate that murky brown water at the bottom of my pot when I am browning my stew meat.

Waaaah, waaaaaah.  Life is still good, but I wish that, like when I was a kid, I had relatives in the cattle business from whom I could buy beef I knew didn't have funny stuff done to it.