137: Secrets to Cooking Mind-Blowing Burgers and Steaks, Shopping for Meat on a Budget | Anya Fernald

The length of life is the major discrepancy between that supermarket chicken and a farmers market chicken. So, a farmers market chicken, like a Belcampo one, [takes] 10 weeks to come to full age and maturity. So, 2.5-3 pounds—it'll take 10 weeks to grow from a little fluffy chick to that same weight. For a conventional chicken, even in an organic operation, it will take 2.5-3 weeks.

I'm not a fan of sous vide. Sous vide is something that I think, from a toxicity perspective, is really questionable because that's when you're doing that same process of slowly cooking the interior, but you're doing it in a plastic bag in water. And there you have a lot of potential for contamination. Those bags, some of them don't have BPAs, but they've got something else that you would know more about than me.

You can cook your meats in their own fat very easily ... You should never be spraying a grill with avocado oil or with PAM. The only case where you [should ever do that] would be for a boneless skinless chicken breast because it's the only cut of meat that doesn't have enough fat on it.

Sauces are like an inflammatory cocktail. It's typically canola oil, sugar, and soy ... 99% of marinades are basically canola oil, safflower oil, sugar of some sort, and soy.

If you decide that cooking is part of what you want your adult life to encompass, I would recommend starting with simplicity. I think that a lot of things get masked by rub or a marinade ... Really good clean meat doesn't need it.

If it's like 'I only like my steak with this marinade or this thing,' I encourage you to use that as a provocation to [say] 'Do I have the right steak?' It's the same thing as 'I can only go out with my boyfriend if I'm drunk.' Do you have the right guy?

We talk a lot about collagen in bone broth, and people take collagen in powders, but... the best way to get collagen is just to make stew.

If you want your meat to be moist, use good quality meat. And if you want a delicious marinade, marinate your meat after. Don't soak your chicken in your teriyaki sauce beforehand. Cook it simple, hot, and fast, or however you want to, and then slice it thin against the grain, and then toss it with your marinade.

There's been like billions of dollars convincing us to not cook the meat of the animals we love to eat in the fat of those same animals we love to eat.

When flake salt is in water, it's just the same as regular salt, so there's really no reason to use it unless you have an application where it can stay totally dry.