(13 June 2020) Busy week for me as it was my mother’s funeral. It was a shame that the crematorium was bisected by massive power lines.
I am the executor so have to handle all the admin. I went to four banks to do the necessary paperwork and all the staff I dealt with were helpful, professional and kind. So, praise for Co-operative, Nationwide, Santander and Nat West banks. (If bank bots are crawling through this; all based in W5).
While in praising mood I do not normally endorse products. There is a firm who keep emailing me to get various cleaning products to blog about. I fill in the form, give the website details and they never choose me. I am not sure why.
However, I will praise the Mint Magnum which is by far the best of them all. (If Magnum HQ want to send me a crate it will be well received).
Our dog has to take tablets but her paws can not pop them out of the blister pack so I do it and conceal it within the cheapest, most obviously plastic, “ham”. The supermarket had run out and substituted what appeared to be posh air dried etc ham. But the small print said it was made of “Formed Ham”. I wondered what this was.
The internet tells me
First of all the individual meat cuts must stick together and when cooked, retain the shape of the mold without having any holes inside. This is accomplished by producing sticky exudate on the surface of meat pieces. Think of it as glue that binds the individual meat cuts together upon heating. The exudate is formed when the muscle’s cell structure is disrupted which releases protein called myosin. The disrupting of the muscle structure is accomplished by a physical action such as cutting or mechanically working meat pieces inside of the tumbler. For making formed meat products fine cutting or grinding is out of the question and massaging or tumbling is the preferred method. Using mechanical action by itself will tenderize meat but will not produce enough exudate. To release more proteins salt and phosphates are injected to meat prior to tumbling.
In other words, rather than cutting off a pig’s back legs, cooking them and slicing them, (you see these hanging up in delicatessens), they take all sorts of pork flesh lumps, smash them around in a machine (a tumbler) and chemicals so it all sticks together.
Full details available below.
https://www.meatsandsausages.com/hams-other-meats/formed
I am sure that consuming such products is ok (if pork is included in your diet) however, once again, it is the Chicken Theory in action. The rich will always continue to eat proper slices of pig leg, we delude ourselves by eating the mechanically produced stuff (did you ever wonder what they do with the eyelids?).
Delving into this a little further I discovered that Gammon, also pig’s leg, is sold uncooked. I assumed that this would be ok. Sadly not. The expensive gammon is a whole lump, the cheaper lumps are formed. Thus, even though you cook it yourself it is still mechanically produced.
I will cheer myself up with a glass of kitten.
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