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Thursday, January 08, 2009

Hormel "Always Tender" products...just what is it they do to the meat to "enhance tenderness"?

That's what I want to know.

Between Butterball turkeys, also enhanced, and now my recent introduction to cooking a Hormel pork roast that was altered in some nebulous fashion, I wonder why companies decide to muck around with food in such a way, and if they are so damn proud of their enhancements ( hmmm I really want to know the ingredients in the enhancement and don't care if it's a patented enhancement) why is it that I didn't even KNOW the pork had been previously attended to by enhancement experts. Answer: the type is so tiny in the Big Y ad, that you need a magnifying glass to go through the weekly circular to locate these special enhanced products.

Me? I like my pork and my turkeys to be unenhanced. I'll do all the enhancing thank you very much. One good thing about me doing the enhancing...I know what I'm putting on my turkey or pork -- with the Hormel line of Always Tender products, I have NO idea what they've done.

My mind reels with possibilities...hydrochloric acid maybe? formaldehyde? rubbed with hyena lungs?, soaked in fabric softener? egret urine? See why I don't want a secret enhancement to my meat???

Hormel should know that I don't want to eat anything that is touted as Always Tender...there's something other worldish about such a claim; reminds me of nuclear waste and half lives and stuff that shouldn't come into my mind when I'm prepraring a center cut pork roast someone else has also prepared making my herbs and spices and rubs and brines "pre"preparing which is too too much attention for one little -- but expensive -- piece of meat.

What happened to the Whole foods people, the greenies, the folks who demand natural products - is Hormel and Butterball giving them the bird?

I've never had a tough pork roast that I've made because I know how to cook them...covered in foil, long and slow, basted with wine, cooked with halves of big yellow onions, then uncovered to crisp the fat that once graced the top of the roasts of yore. Delicious I tell you.

I'd have to pour off a cup of fat before I could add in a roux and some nice starchy potato water to create a cordovan colored gravy to dribble over the beautiful, tender but TASTY white meat of a slow roasted yummy pork loin.

My Always Tender pork roast was soft but so is wallpaper paste. Taste apparently has been removed in favor of creating a quick cook cut of meat that doesn't even tickle the palate with flavor. A flop, in my estimation.

I guess I will avoid Hormel products in the future when once I thought of Hormel as a top name brand.

The only thing that should be always tender is our hearts.

4 Comments:

Blogger Ilanna said...

I"ve been SOOO bad about reading blogs lately.(Spend more time on facebook - it's a little easier and less time consuming in some ways. :) depending on how you look at it.)
More pics are at httP://photobucket.com/mjmgoodale

meanwhile _ i agree entirely about the meat. i get my turkeys fresh killed from a local butcher - best in the world man... :) much better to do it yourself. :)

10:50 AM  
Blogger mary bishop said...

Ilanna, the family portrait is just wonderful...all the photos are great actually...thanks for sharing the link and little Mikki is a girl born to wear hats that's for sure!!!

11:13 AM  
Blogger The Egel Nest said...

I am gonna go with egret urine...when in doubt...it must be egret urine...lol

Bradley
The Egel Nest

10:53 AM  
Blogger mary bishop said...

Naturally the host of the Egel Nest would pick up on "egret urine" -- hrmmph I am not surprised at all

;-)

4:32 PM  

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