Lifeworld

There are pizza restaurants, whose specialty is pizza, even though they usually have a few side dishes. Not healthy enough?

Well, don’t despair, there are meatball restaurants too. I know of at least one, The Meatball Shop, on 84 Stanton Street, in New York City.

Finally a restaurant that elevates the "lowly" meatball to its well deserved place!

Meatballs are delicious, easy to prepare, and you can use quite a variety of meats to do them. Below is a simple recipe. We used ground grass-fed beef, not because of omega-6 concerns (see this post), but because of the different taste.

- Prepare some dry seasoning powder by mixing sea salt, parsley, garlic power, chili powder, and a small amount of cayenne pepper.
- Thoroughly mix 1 pound of ground beef, one or two eggs, and the seasoning powder.
- Make about 10 meatballs, and place them in a frying pan with a small amount of water (see picture below).
- Cover the pan and cook on low fire for about 1 hour.


There is no need for any oil in the pan. On a low fire the small amount of water at the bottom will heat up, circulate, and essentially steam the meatballs. The water will also prevent the meatballs from sticking to the pan. Some moisture will also be released by the meat.

Part of the fat from the meat will be released and accumulate at the bottom of the pan. If you add tomato sauce and mix, the fat will become part of the resulting red sauce. This sauce will add moisture back to the dish, as the meatballs sometimes get a bit dry from the cooking.

Five meatballs of the type that we used (about 15 percent fat) will have about 57 g of protein and 32 g of fat; the latter mostly saturated and monounsaturated (both healthy). They will also be a good source of vitamins B12 and B6, niacin, zinc, selenium, and phosphorus.

Add a fruit or a sweet potato as a side dish to 3-5 meatballs and you have a delicious and nutritious meal that may eve impress some people!

Pressure cooking relies on physics to take advantage of the high temperatures of liquids and vapors in a sealed container. The sealed container is the pressure-cooking pan. Since the sealed container does not allow liquids or vapors to escape, the pressure inside the container increases as heat is applied to the pan. This also significantly increases the temperature of the liquids and vapors inside the container, which speeds up cooking.

Pressure cooking is essentially a version of high-heat steaming. The food inside the cooker tends to be very evenly cooked. Pressure cooking is also considered to be one of the most effective cooking methods for killing food-born pathogens. Since high pressure reduces cooking time, pressure cooking is usually employed in industrial food processing.

When cooking meat, the amount of pressure used tends to affect amino-acid digestibility; more pressure decreases digestibility. High pressures in the cooker cause high temperatures. The content of some vitamins in meat and plant foods is also affected; they go down as pressure goes up. Home pressure cookers are usually set at 15 pounds per square inch (psi). Significant losses in amino-acid digestibility occur only at pressures of 30 psi or higher.

My wife and I have been pressure-cooking for quite some time. Below is a simple recipe, for top sirloin.

- Prepare some dry seasoning powder by mixing sea salt, garlic power, chili powder, and a small amount of cayenne pepper.
- Season the top sirloin pieces at least 2 hours prior to placing them in the pressure cooking pan.
- Place the top sirloin pieces in the pressure cooking pan, and add water, almost to the point of covering them.
- Cook on very low fire, after the right amount of pressure is achieved, for 1 hour. The point at which the right amount of pressure is obtained is signaled by the valve at the top of the pan making a whistle-like noise.

As with slow cooking in an open pan, the water around the cuts should slowly turn into a fatty and delicious sauce, which you can pour on the meat when serving, to add flavor. The photos below show the seasoned top sirloin pieces, the (old) pressure-cooking pan we use, and some cooked pieces ready to be eaten together with some boiled yam.




A 100 g portion will have about 30 g of protein. (That is a bit less than 4 oz, cooked.) The amount of fat will depend on how trimmed the cuts are. Like most beef cuts, the fat will be primarily saturated and monounsatured, with approximately equal amounts of each. It will provide good amounts of the following vitamins and minerals: iron, magnesium, niacin, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, selenium, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12.

I am yet to be convinced that grilled meat is truly unhealthy in the absence of leaky gut problems. I am referring here to high heat cooking-induced Maillard reactions and the resulting advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs). If you are interested, see this post and the comments under it, where I looked into some references provided by an anonymous commenter. In short, I am more concerned about endogenous (i.e., inside the body) formation of AGEs than with exogenous (e.g., dietary) intake.

Still, the other day I had to improvise when cooking meat, and used a cooking method that is considered by many to be fairly healthy – slow-cooking at a low temperature. I seasoned a few pieces of beef tenderloin (filet mignon) for the grill, but it started raining, so I decided to slow-cook them in a frying pan with water and some olive oil. After about 1 hour of slow-cooking, and somewhat to my surprise, they tasted more delicious than grilled!

I have since been using this method more and more, with all types of cuts of meat. It is great for round steak and top sirloin, for example, as well as cuts that come with bone. The pieces of meat come off the bone very easily, are soft, and taste great. So does much of the marrow. You also end up with a delicious sauce. Almost any cut of beef end up very soft when slow-cooked, even cuts that would normally come out from a grill a bit hard. Below is a simple recipe, for round steak (a.k.a. eye round).

- Prepare some dry seasoning powder by mixing sea salt, black pepper, dried garlic bits, chili powder, and a small amount of cayenne pepper.
- Season the round steak pieces at least 2 hours prior to placing them in the pan.
- Add a bit of water and olive oil to one or more frying pans. Two frying pans may be needed, depending on their size and the amount of meat.
- Place the round steak pieces in the frying pan, and add more water, almost to the point of covering them.
- Cook on low fire covered for 2-3 hours.

Since you will be cooking with low fire, the water will probably not evaporate completely even after 3 h. Nevertheless it is a good idea to check it every 15-30 min to make sure that this is the case, because in dry weather the water may evaporate rather fast. The water around the cuts should slowly turn into a fatty and delicious sauce, which you can pour on the meat when serving, to add flavor. The photos below show seasoned round steak pieces in a frying pan before cooking, and some cooked pieces served with sweet potatoes, orange pieces and a nectarine.



A 100 g portion will have about 34 g of protein. (A 100 g portion is a bit less than 4 oz, cooked.) The amount of fat will depend on how trimmed the cuts are. Like most beef cuts, the fat will be primarily saturated and monounsatured (both very healthy), with approximately equal amounts of each. It will provide good amounts of the following vitamins and minerals: iron, niacin, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, selenium, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12.