Tag: meat

Everything Can Be Meat

Recently, a photo of rice left me confused. The rice itself looked tasty enough—fluffy, well formed—but its oddly fleshy hue gave me the creeps. According to the scientists who’d developed it, each pink-tinged grain was seeded with muscle and fat cells from a cow, imparting a nutty, umami flavor.

In one sense, this “beef rice” was just another example of lab-grown meat, touted as a way to eat animals without the ethical and environmental impacts. Though not yet commercially available, the rice was developed by researchers in Korea as a nutrition-dense food that can be produced sustainably, at least more so than beef itself. Although it has a more brittle texture than normal rice, it can be cooked and served in the same way. Yet in another sense, this rice was entirely different. Lab-grown meat aims to replicate conventional meat in every dimension, including taste, nutrition, and appearance. Beef rice doesn’t even try.

Maybe that’s a good thing. Lab-grown meat, also widely known as cultivated meat, has long been heralded as the future of food. But so far, the goal of perfectly replicating meat as we know it—toothy, sinewy, and sometimes bloody—has proved impractical and expensive. Once-abundant funding has dried up, and this week, Florida moved toward becoming the first state to ban sales of cultivated meat. It seems unlikely that whole cuts of cultivated meat will be showing up on people’s plates anytime soon—but maybe something like beef rice could. The most promising future of lab-grown meat may not look like meat at all, at least as we’ve always known it.

The promise of cultivated meat is that you can have your steak and eat it too. Unlike the meatless offerings at your grocery store, cultivated meat is meat—just created without killing any animals. But the science just isn’t there yet. Companies have more or less figured out the first step, taking a sample of cells from a live animal or egg and propagating them in a tank filled with a nutrient-rich broth. Though not cheaply: By one estimate, creating a slurry of cultivated cells costs $17 a pound or more to produce.

The next step has proved prohibitively challenging: coaxing that sludge of cells to mature into different types—fat, muscle, connective tissue—and arranging them in a structure resembling a solid cut of meat. Usually, the cells need a three-dimensional platform to guide their growth, known as a scaffold. “It’s something that is very easy to get wrong and hard to get right,” Claire Bomkamp, a senior scientist at the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit supporting meat alternatives, told me. So far, a few companies have served up proofs of concept: In June, the United States approved the sale of cultivated chicken from Upside Foods and Good Meat. However it is virtually impossible to come by now.

The basic science of lab-grown meat can be used for more than just succulent chicken breasts and medium-rare steaks. Cells grown in a tank function essentially like ground meat, imparting a meaty flavor and mouthfeel to whatever they are added to, behaving more like an ingredient or a seasoning than a food product. Hybrid meat products, made by mixing a small amount of cultivated-meat cells with other ingredients, are promising because they would be more cost-effective than entire lab-grown steaks or chicken breasts but meatier than purely plant-based meat.

Already, the start-up SciFi Foods is producing what has been described as a “fatty meat paste” that is intended to be mixed with plant-based ingredients to make burgers. Only small amounts are needed to make the burgers beefy; each costs less than $10 to make, according to the company—still considerably more than a normal beef patty, but the prices should come down over time. Maybe it sounds weird, but that’s not so different from imitation crab—which doesn’t contain much or any crab at all. A similar premise underlies the plant-based bacon laced with cultivated pork fat that I tried last year. Was it meat? I’m not sure. Did it taste like it? Absolutely.

Meat can be so much more than what we’ve always known. “We don’t have to make meat the same way that it’s always come out of an animal,” Bomkamp said. “We can be a little bit more expansive in what our definition of meat is.” Beef rice, which essentially uses rice as a miniature scaffold to grow cow cells, falls into this category. It isn’t particularly meaty—only 0.5 percent of each grain is cow—but the scientists who developed it say the proportion could change in future iterations. It’s framed as a way to feed people in “underdeveloped countries, during war, and in space.”

Eventually, cultivated meat could impart a whiff of meatiness to blander foods, creating new, meat-ish products in the process that are more sustainable than regular meat and more nutritious than plants. Beef rice is one option; meat grown on mushroom roots is in development. Even stranger foods are possible. Bomkamp envisions using the technology to make thin sheets of seafood—combining elements of salmon, tuna, and shrimp—to wrap around a rainbow roll of sushi. In this scenario, cultivated meat probably won’t save the planet from climate change and animal suffering. “It wouldn’t serve its original function of being a direct replacement for commercial meat,” Daniel Rosenfeld, who studies perceptions of cultivated meat at UCLA, told me. But at the very least, it could provide another dinner option.

Of course, it’s in the interest of the cultivated-meat industry to suggest that cultivated meat isn’t just outright doomed. No doubt some vegetarians would cringe at the thought, as would some dedicated carnivores. But considering how much meat Americans eat, it’s not hard to imagine a future in which cultivated cells satisfy people searching for a new kind of meat product. Imagine the salad you could make with chicken cells grown inside arugula, or bread baked with bacon-infused wheat. But should those prove too difficult to produce, I’d happily take a bowl of beef rice, in all its flesh-tinged glory.

Yasmin Tayag

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March 8, 2024
The Leading Lab-Grown Meat Company Just Paused a Major Expansion

It has been a rocky year for plans for large-scale cultivated-meat production. In May 2022, another Californian startup, Eat Just, announced its plans to build up to 10 large bioreactors, each with a 250,000-liter capacity, with the bioreactor firm ABEC. The deal fell apart, with ABEC later filing an amended legal complaint in federal court claiming over $61 million in unpaid invoices.

The lack of large amounts of funding leaves companies in a chicken-or-egg situation, says Chow. Cultivated meat is still much more expensive than conventional meat, so investors want to see proof that startups can bring down costs before they commit to large factories. But it can be hard for startups to prove that they can grow meat at scale without having those large factories in the first place.

Chow expects that more companies will scale up in a “stepwise” manner, attempting to demonstrate scalable production with progressively larger facilities rather than jumping straight ahead to very large meat factories.

That appears to be the approach Upside is taking by shifting focus back to its Emeryville plant instead of the Illinois facility. In his email, Valeti told staff that the expanded Emeryville facility could have a similar capacity as the initial phase of the Illinois factory with a similar commercial launch date.

“The cost to do this will be substantially less than building out the first phase of Rubicon,” Valeti wrote. “Our focus and execution will be aided by leveraging the team, learnings and existing infrastructure at [the Emeryville facility]. Colocation with the rest of our team will also enable more efficient tech transfer.”

Steve Molino, an investor at the sustainable-food venture capital firm Clear Current Capital, commended Upside for its decision to turn away from its Illinois plant and focus instead on Emeryville. “This is what every company should be doing,” he says. “Before they make these huge capital expenditures and major investments, they should be trying to maximize what they currently have.”

Upside’s Emeryville facility, opened in November 2021, is nicknamed Epic—short for the Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center. At the time of its launch, the company said it had a future capacity of over 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat per year. In September 2023, a WIRED investigation revealed that Upside’s textured chicken filets, which until recently it served at a series of monthly dinners at Bar Crenn in San Francisco, were not made in the large bioreactors within Epic but instead were produced at a very small scale in two-liter roller bottles.

While the funding climate for cultivated meat companies is still precarious, there are some signs that the industry is inching forward. In January, Israel became only the third country to grant regulatory approval for cultivated meat. In December 2023, Australia and New Zealand’s shared food safety regulator began the approval process for meat grown from cultured quail cells from the startup firm Vow.

However, the technology has attracted pushback from lawmakers in Florida and Arizona, where bills have been introduced that would ban the sale of cultured meat if passed. The move in the US follows a vote from the Italian parliament to ban cultured meat products in the country, despite the fact that they are not on sale anywhere within the EU. In his email to staffers, Valeti wrote that “critics are trying to write our obituary and are working to ban our industry in its infancy.”

With the industry still in its early days and venture capital funding tight, Molino welcomes a more stepwise approach to scaling cultured meat rather than betting big on vast meat-brewing factories. “I think this is great news for Upside and for the space,” he says. “It sounds more logical, more reasonable, well planned and thought out.”

Matt Reynolds

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February 14, 2024
ButcherBox’s famed ‘free bacon for life’ promotion was actually a happy mistake, founder of $600 million meat subscription service says

Mike Salguero likes to say that ButcherBox, the meat subscription company that made him a multimillionaire, was “built on bacon.” Though entrepreneurs can often overuse hyperbole and flowery language, this one isn’t an exaggeration.

Early on, when the company was still getting off the ground with a Kickstarter campaign, Salguero and his team told backers that if they reached $100,000 in sales, everyone would get free bacon in their box of grass-fed meat. Naturally, bacon lovers began putting their weight behind the $100,000 target, Salguero recalled in a recent interview with Fortune. And the company made good on its promise, stuffing a pack of top-of-the-line bacon into every box.

ButcherBox soon outgrew Kickstarter and began fulfilling orders from its own website, focusing on a subscription model rather than one-off purchases. Then came the funny part.

“About two weeks in, my engineer called me with a problem,” Salguero said. “He said, ‘it turns out that we’ve been giving everybody free bacon, not just the Kickstarter people. Everyone who signed up. It’s a problem.’”

It wasn’t fixable at the time, he added, because the early code was built in an irreversible way. That meant there was no way of stemming the tide of free bacon. Luckily, Salguero said a marketing leader on his team suggested capitalizing on the happy accident: “‘Why don’t we just tell people: Sign up and get free bacon?’ And that was it.”

Thanks to the technical nature of the screw-up, ButcherBox changed their messaging to “Sign up for ButcherBox and get free bacon in your first box.” The hook worked surprisingly well at bringing in new customers, Salguero found. But they didn’t stop there. When someone suggested putting bacon in every box a customer ever gets, he figured, “That’d be cool.” Thus, Bacon for Life was born. It still exists and a free order of bacon appears in every box for the duration of a customer’s subscription.

It was a brilliant incentive, Salguero found, and it’s helped bring the company to its current $500 million valuation (Salguero himself has an estimated $375 million net worth.) They’ve since rolled out several “for-life” campaigns, including chicken wings, ground beef, and steaks. “It’s a much better value for [customers]; they’re getting free products,” he said. “And they sign up much more frequently, so we have built a whole bunch of for-life offers around our business.”

The idea behind the promotions is fairly straightforward, he said. “We’re a subscription business, so we want you to get more than one box.” His team found that “customers really love when they have these additional deals in their box, and we keep them for a much longer time.” That’s a particularly vital stat given how much customer loyalty has cratered for most meal delivery kits in recent years.

That’s not quite a problem for ButcherBox, which boasts 400,000 subscribers and has sent out a $169 custom box to 1.6 million households—and counting.

As for Salguero himself, he’s more of a steak guy. “We have these amazing Tomahawk steaks, and I love cooking our ribeye on the grill—and I make a really killer meat sauce,” he told Fortune. “I’m more of a functional cook. I want to cook something in under 30 minutes and just be done with it.”

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Jane Thier

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February 7, 2024
Ron DeSantis supports legislation banning lab-grown meat

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made a name for himself backing culture-war-focused legislative proposals that have taken aim at everything from Disney to college professors’ academic freedom. However, DeSantis has a new target in his sights: lab-grown meat.

Last Friday, DeSantis came out in support of Florida legislation that would ban the sale of lab-grown meat in the state.

“I know the Legislature’s doing a bill to try to protect our meat. You need meat, OK? We’re going to have meat in Florida,” DeSantis said during a Friday press conference. “We’re going to have fake meat? That doesn’t work. We’re going to make sure to do it right. But there’s a whole ideological agenda that’s coming after, I think, a lot of important parts of our society.”

DeSantis was likely referencing House Bill 435 and Senate Bills 586 and 1084. All three bills, which are in the early stages of the legislative process, would ban the manufacture or sale of lab-grown meat—also known as “cultivated meat”—in the state of Florida.

While the bills’ supporters say they’re necessary to protect Florida’s cattle industry, lab-grown meat isn’t going to be taking over traditional animal products any time soon. While the Food and Drug Administration gave two companies’ cultivated meat the green light in 2022 and 2023, both products only had small restaurant-based launches. As of February 2024, neither is available for sale anywhere in the U.S. (though I managed to snag a bite of GOOD Meat’s cultivated chicken at China Chilcano in D.C. before it was discontinued).

That doesn’t necessarily mean that lab-grown meat startups are—ahem—dead meat. Rather, as plant-based meat investor Steve Molino told WIRED, the purpose of the early restaurant-based launches was likely primarily to raise awareness of the product before ramping up large-scale production. “It accomplished what it needed to accomplish and now it’s time to refocus,” Molino said.

Even though cultivated meat isn’t even available in the United States, let alone Florida, that hasn’t kept it from becoming a magnet for culture war hawks.

Lab-grown meat is an “affront to nature and creation,” Rep. Tyler Sirois (R–Merritt Island), who introduced H.B. 435, told Politico last November. “I think you could see a very slippery slope here leading to things like cloning, which are very troubling to me.”

However, like many attempts to curb vegan alternatives to meat and dairy, DeSantis’ support for these bills is also aimed at protecting animal farmers from competition—even if such competition is basically hypothetical.

In March 2023, congressional lawmakers revived the DAIRY PRIDE Act, which aims to restrict sales of plant-based milk alternatives by banning manufacturers from using phrases like “milk,” “yogurt,” and “cheese” to market their products.

“Pennsylvania’s dairy farmers are at the heart of our community and critical to our economy,” Sen. John Fetterman (D–Penn.) wrote in November, adding that the DAIRY PRIDE Act, would “protect our dairy farmers by prohibiting non-dairy products from using dairy names.”

Emma Camp

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February 5, 2024
Hearty Meat Lasagna Recipe
We have been long overdue for an update to this hearty meat lasagna recipe! I have been working on making it the BEST classic lasagna recipe ever, and this is finally it!

We layer this lasagna with our authentic bolognese meat sauce, a creamy bechamel sauce and 2 types of cheese all tucked between layers of lasagna noodles. You’re absolutely going to love this easy lasagna recipe!

It was 2009 when I first posted this recipe…2009…15 years! SO much has changed since then…we’ve expanded our family. We’ve moved (three times). We’ve progressed from toddlers and tantrums to teenagers and still tantrums 🤪. It seems natural that this lasagna recipe should change a little too. It’s now better and bolder and everything a homemade lasagna should be.

Ingredients for Hearty Meat Lasagna

I’m going to divide up the ingredients list between the three different parts of this recipe – the meat sauce, the bechamel sauce and the items needed to assemble the lasagna. Here is what you will need:

Meat Bolognese Sauce
- Butter and Olive Oil
- Vegetables: Carrots, Celery, Red Onion, Garlic
- Proteins: Ground Beef and Italian Sausage
- Tomatoes: Roasted Tomatoes, Tomato Sauce, Fire Roasted Tomatoes (canned)
- Milk and Heavy Cream
- Cooking Wine
- Lemon Zest and Juice
- Seasonings: Nutmeg, Bay Leaves, Salt and Pepper
Bechamel Sauce
- Butter
- Flour
- Whole Milk
- Nutmeg
- Kosher Salt
- Pepper
Lasagna Ingredients
- Oven Ready Lasagna Noodles
- Fresh Parmesan
- Mozzarella Cheese
Don’t be alarmed! You did not read ricotta cheese in that ingredients list. We actually found that we preferred the lasagna without it! Keep scrolling to the end of the post for the measurements for each ingredient.

How to Make Homemade Meat Lasagna

To Make the Meat Sauce
1. Prepare the bolognese sauce as instructed in that post and set aside.
For the Bechamel Sauce
1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
2. Sprinkle in the flour continuously whisking it in until a paste forms and it bubbles a little.
3. Add in the milk slowing still whisking constantly. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and let the sauce simmer until it thickens.
4. Whisk in the salt, pepper and nutmeg.
For the Lasagna
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Prepare the parmesan by pulsing it in a food processor or blender.
3. Now we will starting assembling the lasagna. Start by pouring a layer of bolognese sauce in a rectangular baking dish. Spread it around so it’s an even layer.
4. Add a layer of noodles, then add another layer of meat sauce.
5. Pour some of the bechamel sauce over the top and spread it evenly over the top.
6. Sprinkle with a layer of parmesan cheese.
7. Repeat these layers 4 times. When you reach the top layer, add the meat sauce, bechamel then top with all the mozzarella cheese.
8. Top the baking dish with a sheet of foil that has been sprayed with cooking spray.
9. Bake for 25 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for another 25 minutes.
10. Sprinkle with the last of the parmesan cheese and some chopped fresh parsley (optional), then let the lasagna rest before cutting and serving.
These instructions in full detail can be found in the recipe card at the end of this post. You can also print or save the recipe there.

Can I Use Regular Lasagna Noodles?

Yes, you can definitely use regular lasagna noodles if you have the time. The no boil noodles are so easy to use, however they will absorb a bit more of the sauce so make sure you add a little more if you’re using those noodles.

To make regular lasagna pasta, bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook lasagna noodles in boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes. Drain noodles, and rinse with cold water to they don’t stick together and keep cooking. Then they are ready to start assembling.

What to Serve with Homemade Lasagna

I consider it a crime to eat lasagna without a really good garlic bread, but if that doesn’t do it for you, I would go with one of the following…

Can Lasagna Be Made Ahead of Time?

The entire lasagna can be assembled 1 day in advance. Just keep it in the refrigerator until baking. You will probably need to add a few minutes to the baking time since you’ll be baking it from cold.

If you want to spread out the prep, the bolognese can be made up to 4 days in advance or made and frozen. The bechamel can be made up to 3 days in advance or frozen.

How Long Will Lasagna Keep?

Lasagna leftovers will keep for 3-5 days in the refrigerator. To store left over lasagna, cover tightly with foil or place in an airtight container.

Lasagna also freezes quite well. Let it cool completely then wrap it in plastic wrap followed by aluminum foil. It can be frozen as a whole lasagna or cut into individual pieces. It will keep in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Lasagna is best reheated in the oven. Remove the plastic wrap and cover the top with foil and reheat in the oven at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until heated through. Single servings can be reheated in the microwave.

Can You Freeze Lasagna Before Baking?

You can prepare and freeze lasagna to be used at a later time.

Assemble the lasagna in a freezer safe container and freeze for up to 3 months.

It might have been 15 years in the making, but we have nailed the perfect hearty meat lasagna recipe! The meat sauce is bold in flavor and the cheeses are perfection, but it’s that bechamel sauce is totally does it for me. You are going to love this comforting lasagna recipe!

More Comforting Italian Pasta Recipes:
Servings: 8

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 55 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

Description

We have been long overdue for an update to this hearty meat lasagna recipe! I have been working on making it the BEST classic lasagna recipe ever, and this is finally it!

Cook ModePrevent your screen from going dark

For the Bechamel Sauce

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

4 Tablespoons Butter

Sprinkle the flour in while whisking and cook, stirring constantly, until the flour paste cooks and bubbles a bit to cook out the flour taste.

4 Tablespoons Flour

Slowly add in the milk while whisking continuously. Bring this mixture to a boil and then turn to a steady simmer on medium low to allow the sauce to thicken. Add in the salt, pepper and nutmeg. Reduce to low heat, and cook, stirring, 2–3 minutes more. Remove from the heat and set aside.

2 1/2 Cups Whole Milk, 1 Teaspoon Kosher Salt, 1/4 Teaspoon Pepper, 1/4 Teaspoon Nutmeg

For the Lasagna

Heat oven to 375 degrees F.

Pulse the parmesan in a blender or food processor until you have 1 1/2 cups. Set aside 1/4 cup for the topping.

1 1/2 Cups Fresh Parmesan

Cover the bottom of a 9×13 with 1 cup of the meat sauce (avoiding large chunks of meat).

Place 3 noodles on the bottom of the dish, two vertical and one horizontal at the end usually works best.

1 Box Oven Ready Lasagna Noodles

Spoon 1 1/4 cups of the meat sauce evenly over the noodles followed by 1/4 of the bechamel sauce. Use an angled cake knife or spoon to spread the two sauces evenly over the pasta.

Top with a heaping 1/3 cup fresh parmesan and repeat the layers 4 times.

On the top layer, add the sauce, bechamel, smooth everything out and add the mozzarella.

2 1/2 Cups Mozzarella Cheese

Spray foil with nonstick spray and place over lasagna.

Bake 25 min then remove the foil and continue to bake until the cheese is bubbly and spotty brown, about 25 min.

Sprinkle with leftover parmesan cheese, allow to rest 10-15 min and serve!

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook lasagna noodles in boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes. Drain noodles, and rinse with cold water to they don’t stick together and keep cooking.

The bolognese can be made up to 4 days in advance or made and frozen.

The bechamel can be made up to 3 days in advance or frozen.

The entire lasagna can be assembled 1 day in advance.

The no boil noodles are so easy to use, however they will absorb a bit more of the sauce so make sure you add a little more if you’re using those noodles.

Serving: 1gCalories: 744kcalCarbohydrates: 45gProtein: 43gFat: 45gSaturated Fat: 20gCholesterol: 148mgSodium: 970mgPotassium: 718mgFiber: 4gSugar: 8gVitamin A: 2573IUVitamin C: 29mgCalcium: 550mgIron: 3mg

Author: Sweet Basil

Course: 100 + BEST Easy Beef Recipes for Dinner
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Sweet Basil

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February 4, 2024
Iran’s allies are attacking the West. What happens next?

Could the U.S. take a tougher line?

While the scale and target of Biden’s promised response is not yet clear, any unilateral move is likely to draw blowback from key allies in the Middle East who worry about sparking a regional war.

Saudi Arabia has pushed for restraint in dealings with Tehran and fears the economic cost of regional instability.

Turkey, a key NATO ally, has denounced Israel’s campaign in Gaza, while President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused the U.K. and the U.S. of trying to turn the Red Sea into a “sea of blood.”

“Turkey does not want to be drawn into this conflict because it shares a border with Iran,” said Selin Nasi, a visiting fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics. “If the U.S. as its main ally in NATO gets involved in this military conflict directly then Turkey has to choose a side, and that will mean it’s harder to maintain a balanced approach — like it has done with the war in Ukraine.”

The challenge for Biden is how to retaliate without risking escalation by Iran and its partners in the region. Conversely, doing nothing — especially after having said he would avenge the deaths of the three U.S. soldiers — would leave him vulnerable to a charge of weakness from Trump.

“Iran’s leadership probably calculates that the United States will be reticent to fulsomely respond in any manner that would risk escalation of tensions in the Middle East and spark the region-wide [conflict] the Biden administration has admirably tried to prevent the past three months,” said Jonathan Panikoff, a former U.S. deputy national intelligence officer.

But the U.S. may have “to undertake a more fulsome response to restore deterrence,” he added.

Jamie Dettmer, Jeremy Van der Haegen and Laura Kayali contributed reporting.

Gabriel Gavin

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January 29, 2024
This Super-Classic Sunday Dinner Is Legendary in England for a Reason

Rachel PerlmutterCulinary Producer

Rachel Perlmutter is a recipe developer, food stylist, and culinary producer at The Kitchn. Originally from Houston, Texas, she spends her free time trying to perfect kolaches and breakfast tacos that taste like home. Rachel currently lives in Brooklyn with her partner, dog, cat and rabbit, where they all share a love of seasonal local produce.

Rachel Perlmutter

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January 21, 2024
Mexican Meatball Soup Is Exactly What You Need Right Now

So warm, so cozy.
READ MORE…

Marissa Gencarelli

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January 20, 2024
My “Lazy Lasagna Skillet” Hack Will Forever Change the Way You Make Lasagna

Lasagna meets Hamburger Helper in this easy one-skillet pasta dinner.

Serves6

We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.

I like to call this my “lazy girl lasagna.” While my Italian grandfather would gasp at the thought of this one-skillet wonder, I know that if he were still alive he’d take one bite and then quickly devour the entire pan.

Inspired by my love for lasagna, one-pot meals, and the Lasagna Hamburger Helper, this recipe is the ultimate way to feed my hungry family with very little effort. Feel free to swap in regular marinara instead of the arrabbiata sauce if you are sensitive to heat. However, we don’t find this dish spicy at all — the arrabbiata just kicks the flavor up a notch!

Alex Snodgrass

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January 9, 2024
I Guarantee This Slow Cooker Stew Is the Coziest Recipe You'll Make All Month

Making beef stew doesn’t get any easier than this recipe. Instead of browning the beef to build flavor, we’re relying on a trusty set of ingredients — namely tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce — to give this stew a deep and comforting flavor. Here are the simple steps to take to make this dump-and-cook dinner.

Patty Catalano

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January 4, 2024
The 6-Ingredient Breakfast Casserole I Make Every Christmas

Make ahead: The casserole can be assembled, covered with aluminum foil, and refrigerated for up to 24 hours before baking. Uncover before baking.

The casserole can also be frozen fully baked. Let cool, cover first with aluminum foil and then plastic wrap, and freeze for up to 2 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and let sit at room temperature while heating the oven to 325ºF. Remove the plastic wrap and bake covered with aluminum foil until heated through, 50 to 60 minutes.

Storage: Leftovers can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 4 days. Reheat individual servings in the microwave until warmed through, 45 seconds to 1 minute.

Christine Gallary

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December 21, 2023
Dairy Milk Hormones’ Effects on Cancer | NutritionFacts.org

What are the effects of the female sex hormones in cow’s milk on men, women, and children?

All foods of animal origin contain hormones, but most of our dietary exposure to hormones comes from dairy products. By quantity, as you can see below and at 0:16 in my video The Effects of Hormones in Dairy Milk on Cancer, it is mostly prolactin, corticosteroids, and progesterone, but there are also a bunch of estrogens, which concentrate even further when other dairy products are made. For instance, hormones are five times more concentrated in cream and cheese, and ten times more in butter.

When it comes to steroid hormones in the food supply, about three-quarters of our exposure to ingested female sex steroids come from dairy, and the rest is split evenly between eggs and meat (including fish). Indeed, eggs contribute about as much as all meat combined, which makes a certain amount of sense since an egg comes straight from a hen’s ovary. Among the various types of meat, you get as much from white meat (fish and poultry) as you do from pork and beef, and this is just from natural hormones—not added hormone injections, like bovine growth hormone. So, it doesn’t matter if the meat is organic. Animals produce hormones because they’re animals, and their hormones understandably end up in animal products.

About half of the people surveyed “did not know that milk naturally contains hormones,” and many “lacked basic knowledge (22% did not know that cows only give milk after calving)”—that is, they didn’t realize what milk is for—feeding baby calves. Researchers suggested we ought to inform the public about dairy production practices. In response, one Journal of Dairy Science respondent wrote that telling the public about the industry’s new technologies, like transgenic animals (meaning genetically engineered farm animals), “or contentious husbandry practices” (such as taking away that newly born calf so we can have more of the milk or “zero-grazing for dairy cows”—i.e., not letting cows out on grass), “does not result in high rates of public approval,” so ixnay on the educationay.

The public may not know the extent to which they are exposed to estrogen through the intake of commercial milk produced from pregnant cows, which has potential public health implications. “Modern genetically improved dairy cows, such as the Holstein,” the stereotypical black and white cow, can get reimpregnated after giving birth and lactate throughout almost their entire next pregnancy, which means that, these days, commercial cow’s milk contains large amounts of pregnancy hormones, like estrogens and progesterone.

As you can see in the graph below and at 2:42 in my video, during the first eight months of a pregnant cow’s nine-month gestation, hormone levels in her milk shoot up more than 20-fold. Even so, we’re only talking about a millionth of a gram per quart, easily 10 to 20 times less estrogen hormones than you’d find in a birth control pill. In that case, would drinking it really have an effect on human hormone levels?

Researchers analyzed three different estrogens and one progesterone metabolite flowing through the bodies of seven men before and after they drank about a liter of milk. Within hours of drinking the milk, their hormone levels shot up, as you can see in the graph below and at 3:08 in my video.

The researchers also looked at the average levels of female sex steroids flowing through the bodies of six schoolchildren (with an average age of eight) before and after they drank about two cups of milk. Within hours of drinking the milk, their levels shot up, tripling or quadrupling their baseline hormone levels, as you can see in the graph below and at 3:23 in my video. So, one can imagine the effects milk might have on men or prepubescent children, but what about women? Presumably, women would have high levels of estrogen in their body in the first place, wouldn’t they? Well, not all women.

What about postmenopausal women and endometrial cancer, for example? Estrogens have “a central role” in the development of endometrial cancer, cancer of the lining of the uterus. “Milk and dairy products are a source of steroid hormones and growth factors that might have physiological effects in humans.” So, Harvard researchers followed tens of thousands of women and their dairy consumption for decades and found a significantly higher risk of endometrial cancer among postmenopausal women who consumed more dairy, as shown below and at 4:19 in my video.
What about dietary exposure to hormones and breast cancer? Unfortunately, “understanding the role of dietary hormone exposure in the population burden of breast cancer is not possible at this time.”

For more on the relationship between cancer and dairy, see related videos below.

I talk about the effect of dairy estrogen on men in Dairy Estrogen and Male Fertility.

What about the phytoestrogens in soy? See here.

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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December 21, 2023
Beef Wellington is The Most Impressive Main Dish You'll Ever Make

Pulse the mushrooms, shallots, garlic, and thyme until finely chopped, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally, in 10 to 12 (1-second) pulses. Transfer to a medium bowl. Add the remaining mushrooms to the food processor, pulse until finely chopped, and transfer to the bowl. (Alternatively, very finely chop everything by hand.)

Christine Gallary

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December 20, 2023
Grilled Beef Tenderloin Is the Easiest Fancy Main Course

Scrape the grill grates clean if needed. Place the tenderloin on the grill (the hotter side if using a charcoal grill). Cover and cook until dark grill marks form on the bottom, about 5 minutes. Flip the tenderloin, cover, and cook until dark grill marks form on the second side, about 5 minutes more.

Christine Gallary

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December 11, 2023
42 Steak Dinner Recipes for Any Night of the Week

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If you’re not already slotting steak into your meal plan once in a while, I’m here to encourage you to do just that, be it date night at home or a random Wednesday night. There’s no need to go out for steak when you can make a delicious steak dinner from the comfort of your own home. You can keep it light with a steak fajita salad, or switch things up and make a sirloin steak sandwich.

Whether you fire up the grill, cook it on a sheet pan under the broiler, or sear it in a skillet along with potatoes or a quick pan sauce, getting steak on the table during the week is a totally doable affair. In fact, it can seem intimidating, but a really good steak dinner is a lot faster and easier to cook up than you might think. Here are 42 steak recipes to make for dinner any night of the week — no special occasion required.

Steak Recipes in a Pan

For cuts like hanger steak, flank steak, and steak tips, a quick sear in a screaming-hot pan on the stovetop is all you need to get dinner on the table.

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Warm Fajita Steak Salad

This fajita salad features cumin-rubbed flank steak along with charred peppers and onions over a bed of crunchy, chopped romaine and red cabbage.

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Pepper Steak

Made with fermented black soybeans and colorful bell peppers, this pepper steak is hearty and filling — perfect for cold weather months.

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Italian Seared Beef

This 5-ingredient recipe from Jamie Oliver calls for pounding a sirloin steak extra-thin to keep cook time to the bare minimum.

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Lomo Saltado

What makes lomo saltado stand out? It has two carbs in one dish: crispy potato fries and steamed rice.

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Loaded Steak Quesadillas

When you’re after a meal-worthy quesadilla that’s guaranteed to satisfy all the hungry eaters around the table, nothing beats a loaded steak quesadilla.

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Grilled Steak Recipes

Whether you’re cooking up skewers, foil packs, or a marinated flank, it’s truly hard to beat a steak dinner from the grill.

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How to Grill Steak

If you’re intimidated by grilling steak, this is the recipe for you. It’s an easy, foolproof method walks you through which type of steak to buy, how to prep it for the grill, and exactly what to look for once it hits the grates.

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Marinated Grilled Flank Steak

This is the flavor-packed marinade I whisk together every single time I toss a flank steak on the grill. Make it once and you’ll barely need to glance at the recipe the next time around.

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Carne Asada

A citrus and garlic marinade flavors this tender grilled steak. For the best results, choose a cut of steak with great beefy flavor that can absorb the marinade easily. Flank and steak and skirt steak are great options.

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Steak Fajita Foil Packets

These steak fajita foil packets are fun, practical, and tasty, too. Everyone can customize their own add-ins, they require virtually zero cleanup, and the rice is extra flavorful thanks to all the juices from the meat and vegetables.

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Steak Recipes for the Oven

When you want a more hands-off cooking method, turn on the broiler and grab a baking sheet or your cast iron skillet to cook your steak in the oven.

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Filet Mignon

Here’s our foolproof method for making a crusty-on-the-outside, fork-tender-on-the-inside steak that’s finished with a garlic butter to melt and pool around it all.

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Kelli Foster

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December 8, 2023
The Safety of Keto Diets | NutritionFacts.org

What are the effects of ketogenic diets on nutrient sufficiency, gut flora, and heart disease risk?

Given the decades of experience using ketogenic diets to treat certain cases of pediatric epilepsy, a body of safety data has accumulated. Nutrient deficiencies would seem to be the obvious issue. Inadequate intake of 17 micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals has been documented in those on strict ketogenic diets, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:14 in my video Are Keto Diets Safe?.

Dieting is a particularly important time to make sure you’re meeting all of your essential nutrient requirements, since you may be taking in less food. Ketogenic diets tend to be so nutritionally vacuous that one assessment estimated that you’d have to eat more than 37,000 calories a day to get a sufficient daily intake of all essential vitamins and minerals, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:39 in my video.

That is one of the advantages of more plant-based approaches. As the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association put it, “What could be more nutrient-dense than a vegetarian diet?” Choosing a healthy diet may be easier than eating more than 37,000 daily calories, which is like putting 50 sticks of butter in your morning coffee.

We aren’t just talking about not reaching your daily allowances either. Children have gotten scurvy on ketogenic diets, and some have even died from selenium deficiency, which can cause sudden cardiac death. The vitamin and mineral deficiencies can be solved with supplements, but what about the paucity of prebiotics, the dozens of types of fiber, and resistant starches found concentrated in whole grains and beans that you’d miss out on?

Not surprisingly, constipation is very common on keto diets. As I’ve reviewed before, starving our microbial self of prebiotics can have a whole array of negative consequences. Ketogenic diets have been shown to “reduce the species richness and diversity of intestinal microbiota,” our gut flora. Microbiome changes can be detected within 24 hours of switching to a high-fat, low-fiber diet. A lack of fiber starves our good gut bacteria. We used to think that dietary fat itself was nearly all absorbed in the small intestine, but based on studies using radioactive tracers, we now know that about 7 percent of the saturated fat in a fat-rich meal can make it down to the colon. This may result in “detrimental changes” in our gut microbiome, as well as weight gain, increased leaky gut, and pro-inflammatory changes. For example, there may be a drop in beneficial Bifidobacteria and a decrease in overall short-chain fatty acid production, both of which would be expected to increase the risk of gastrointestinal disorders.

Striking at the heart of the matter, what might all of that saturated fat be doing to our heart? If you look at low-carbohydrate diets and all-cause mortality, those who eat lower-carb diets suffer “a significantly higher risk of all-cause mortality,” meaning they live, on average, significantly shorter lives. However, from a heart-disease perspective, it matters if it’s animal fat or plant fat. Based on the famous Harvard cohorts, eating more of an animal-based, low-carb diet was associated with higher death rates from cardiovascular disease and a 50 percent higher risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke, but no such association was found for lower-carb diets based on plant sources.

And it wasn’t just Harvard. Other researchers have also found that “low-carbohydrate dietary patterns favoring animal-derived protein and fat sources, from sources such as lamb, beef, pork, and chicken, were associated with higher mortality, whereas those that favored plant-derived protein and fat intake, from sources such as vegetables, nuts, peanut butter, and whole-grain bread, were associated with lower mortality…”

Cholesterol production in the body is directly correlated to body weight, as you can see in the graph below and at 3:50 in my video.

Every pound of weight loss by nearly any means is associated with about a one-point drop in cholesterol levels in the blood. But if we put people on very-low-carb ketogenic diets, the beneficial effect on LDL bad cholesterol is blunted or even completely neutralized. Counterbalancing changes in LDL or HDL (what we used to think of as good cholesterol) are not considered sufficient to offset this risk. You don’t have to wait until cholesterol builds up in your arteries to have adverse effects either; within three hours of eating a meal high in saturated fat, you can see a significant impairment of artery function. Even with a dozen pounds of weight loss, artery function worsens on a ketogenic diet instead of getting better, which appears to be the case with low-carb diets in general.

For more on keto diets, check out my video series here.

And, to learn more about your microbiome, see the related videos below.

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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December 7, 2023
Classic Navy Bean Soup Is Pure Comfort in a Bowl

Renae Wilson

Originally from South Carolina with family roots in East Texas, Renae has been based in Brooklyn for 13 years. A U.S. Navy vet, Renae used her Montgomery GI Bill to fund her culinary & pastry education at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York. Graduating in 2015, she has since worked as a private chef, freelanced in test kitchens developing in recipes, testing cookbooks for prominent authors, and catering. More recently, she made her debut in the pop-up world serving Southern comfort food under the name “Dear Henry”. A color and glitter enthusiast, her hobbies include budget traveling the world so that she can eat more, dancing, crocheting, engaging in various tomfoolery, baking, and frying the hell out of some chicken cutlets.

Renae Wilson

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December 5, 2023
“Cheeseburger Casserole” is a Weeknight One-Pot Wonder

It tastes just like Hamburger Helper.
READ MORE…

Christine Gallary

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December 5, 2023
Can You Sustain Weight Loss on Ketosis? | NutritionFacts.org

Might the appetite-suppressing effects of ketosis improve dietary compliance?

The new data are said to debunk “some, if not all, of the popular claims made for extreme carbohydrate restriction,” but what about ketones suppressing hunger? In a tightly controlled metabolic ward study where the ketogenic diet made things worse, everyone ate the same number of calories, but those on a keto diet lost less body fat. But, out in the real world, all of those ketones might spoil your appetite enough that you’d end up eating significantly less overall. On a low-carb diet, people end up storing 300 more calories of fat every day. Outside of the laboratory, though, if you were in a state of ketosis, might you be able to offset that if you were able to sustainably eat significantly less?

Paradoxically, as I discuss in my video Is Weight Loss on Ketosis Sustainable?, people may experience less hunger on a total fast compared to an extremely low-calorie diet. This may be thanks to ketones. In this state of ketosis, when you have high levels of ketones in your bloodstream, your hunger is dampened. How do we know it’s the ketones? If you inject ketones straight into people’s veins, even those who are not fasting lose their appetite, sometimes even to the point of getting nauseated and vomiting. So, ketones can explain why you might feel hungrier after a few days on a low-calorie diet than on a total zero-calorie diet—that is, a fast.

Can we then exploit the appetite-suppressing effects of ketosis by eating a ketogenic diet? If you ate so few carbs to sustain brain function, couldn’t you trick your body into thinking you’re fasting and get your liver to start pumping out ketones? Yes, but is it safe? Is it effective?

As you can see below and at 1:58 in my video, a meta-analysis of 48 randomized trials of various branded diets found that those advised to eat low-carb diets and those told to eat low-fat ones lost nearly identical amounts of weight after a year.

Obviously, high attrition rates and poor dietary adherence complicate comparisons of efficacy. The study participants weren’t actually put on those diets; they were just told to eat in those ways. Nevertheless, you can see how even just moving in each respective direction can get rid of a lot of CRAP (which is Jeff Novick’s acronym for Calorie-Rich And Processed foods). After all, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:37 in my video, the four largest calorie contributors in the American diet are refined grains, added fats, meat, and added sugars.

Low-carb diets cut down on refined grains and added sugars, and low-fat diets tend to cut down on added fats and meat, so they both tell people to cut down on donuts. Any diet that does that already has a leg up. I figure a don’t-eat-anything-that-starts-with-the-letter-D diet could also successfully cause weight loss if it caused people to cut down on donuts, danishes, and Doritos, even if it makes no nutritional sense to exclude something like dill.

The secret to long-term weight-loss success on any diet is compliance. Diet adherence is difficult, though, because any time you try to cut calories, your body ramps up your appetite to try to compensate. This is why traditional weight-loss approaches, like portion control, tend to fail. For long-term success, measured not in weeks or months but in years and decades, this day-to-day hunger problem must be overcome. On a wholesome plant-based diet, this can be accomplished thanks in part to calorie density because you’re just eating so much food. On a ketogenic diet, it may be accomplished with ketosis. In a systematic review and meta-analysis entitled “Do Ketogenic Diets Really Suppress Appetite,” researchers found that the answer was yes. Ketogenic diets also offer the unique advantage of being able to track dietary compliance in real-time with ketone test strips you can pee on to see if you’re still in ketosis. There’s no pee stick that will tell you if you’re eating enough fruits and veggies. All you have is the bathroom scale.

Keto compliance may be more in theory than practice, though. Even in studies where ketogenic diets are being used to control seizures, dietary compliance may drop below 50 percent after a few months. This can be tragic for those with intractable epilepsy, but for everyone else, the difficulty in sticking long-term to ketogenic diets may actually be a lifesaver. I’ll talk about keto diet safety next.

The keto diet is in contrast to a diet that would actually be healthful to stick to. See, for example, my video series on the CHIP program here.

This was the fourth video in a seven-part series on keto diets. If you haven’t yet, be sure to watch the others listed in the related videos below.

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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December 5, 2023
I've Made Dozens of Pots of Beef Chili, But THIS Is the Best One

Add 2 pounds ground beef, 2 teaspoons kosher salt, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper. Cook, breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon, until browned and cooked through, 6 to 8 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons chili powder, 1 tablespoon ground cumin, 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 teaspoons dried oregano, 1 teaspoon paprika, and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper if using. Stir to coat the meat and cook for 1 minute more.

Kelli Foster

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December 2, 2023