Fire It Up - Andrew Schloss [52]
Chapter 4
Veal
Food lovers have always exalted young, tender foods like baby vegetables, kid goat, and baby beef or veal. “The more tender the better” has been the mantra, and the veal industry has been happy to oblige. Veal has historically been the apotheosis of tender meat. In North America, most veal producers rely upon the dairy industry to develop their special brand of luscious meat.
Dairy cows must bear calves once a year to produce sufficient quantities of milk, and those male calves not used for breeding are sold and raised for the veal market. To keep the meat creamy, veal calves are typically fed a diet of up to 70 percent milk products, such as whey and whey protein concentrate, which also comes from the cheese and dairy industry. Technically, any calf slaughtered before nine months of age can be called veal, but most veal comes from male dairy cattle brought to slaughter at five months of age or less.
Milk-Fed, Grain-Fed, Grass-Fed, and Natural Veal
All veal is young, but the quality of the meat has more to do with exercise and feed than age. As North American veal producers improved and streamlined production, they found it advantageous to confine young calves to stalls. Individual veal crates became the norm to restrict the calves’ movement, prevent muscle development, and keep the meat ultra-tender and mild in flavor. Velvety soft, finely grained meat is the hallmark of milk-fed veal, and consumers pay a high price for it. But animal protection groups raised enough red flags about production methods to split the veal industry into two primary camps, which now produce two distinct types of veal: milk-fed veal and a broader category of “natural” veal.
For milk-fed or white veal, the calves have historically been confined to stalls or crates just large enough for them to stand, stretch, and lie down. They are fed a nutritionally balanced yet iron-free formula of milk products. (In the Netherlands, the calves are fed skim milk, whey, and fat to produce even larger retail cuts with exceptional tenderness, known as Dutch Provimi veal.) A steady diet of iron-free formula prevents the calves’ muscles from developing myoglobin, the red muscle pigment, leaving the meat pale pink in color, rather than dark red like mature beef. Because of the calves’ solitary confinement, lack of space, and poor diet, the production methods for milk-fed veal have been under scrutiny for decades. Pressure to improve the standards of the animals’ welfare finally prompted the U.S. veal industry’s primary advocacy group, the American Veal Association (AVA), to phase out solitary veal crates and stalls by 2017. The AVA now advocates a move to group housing instead.
Group housing has long been a mainstay of European veal production. It is also the cornerstone of natural or red veal, the second type of North American domestic veal. Methods for raising natural veal hearken back to the days prior to the 1950s, before cattle production was streamlined and concentrated. Back then, calves were raised on grass with their mothers, like the fatted calf mentioned in the Bible. Natural veal production dispenses with solitary crates. The calves are essentially free-range, feeding on grass, grain, or a combination of the two. To meet USDA regulations for the term “natural,” calves must not be given hormones or antibiotics. Natural operations also allow the calves to forage on pasture—sometimes in grouped pens. The additional exercise and grain in the diet gives natural veal deep pink meat with a beefy flavor. When the two types of veal are tasted side by side, natural veal will taste assertive and meaty, with a satisfying chew; milk-fed veal will taste mildly sweet and much more tender. The choice is yours. We tend to prefer natural veal for grilling because its richer flavor and firmer texture take better to the grill. The delicacy of milk-fed veal is often overshadowed by strong grill flavors.
How to Grill Veal
Grilling veal is mostly a matter of knowing where on the animal the cut comes from and how thick the