"mystery meat" news and stories

You've read the articles, heard the evidence: "It's better for your health; it's better for the environment." Yeah, yeah, yeah. You pass one of those trucks on the interstate stuffed full of miserable chickens and think to yourself, "I really should stop eating meat," only to find yourself at the next exit cruising through the drive-thru at KFC asking for extra crispy.

Well, for anyone who has ever flirted with vegetarianism but, regrettably, can only stomach tofu if it's fried in bacon grease, there's good news on the horizon. As John Cloud reports in Time, food scientists at the University of Missouri have engineered what may be the biggest advancement in vegan cuisine since the much-mocked Tofurky: fake chicken that, lo and behold, actually tastes like chicken.

The secret is apparently not so much in the flavor but in the texture, which isn't a surprise when you think about it: really, the only thing as bland as an unseasoned boneless chicken breast may be the mix of soy protein, wheat flour and water that they make the fake stuff out of. The difference is in the chew. Cloud claims the success of the Missouri scientists was that their invention "disjoins the way chicken does, with a few random strands of 'meat' hanging loosely." (Um, the wording alone may be enough to turn anyone vegan.)

Last year I picked the 8 best school lunch items I remember from my school days (admittedly, a long time ago). But what about the lunches that a lot of kids hate? Here are my choices:

1. Mystery meat: What exactly was this? I'm trying to go through my mental Rolodex and I can't remember. Was it meatloaf? Salisbury steak? I'm not sure, but it just seemed to be this mass-produced glob of grayness topped with lame gravy. The days I saw that this was the lunch were the days I just had something to drink and maybe a bag of chips.

When I was growing up in California, I noticed that chicken-fried steak seemed to be a popular item on school lunch menus and in dormitory dining halls. I never actually knew what it was, so I never ordered it. Was it really chicken? Was it steak? Every time I came across it, it was round, flat and breaded, with what appeared to be dark-colored meat inside. The "steak" also never looked appetizing.

As it turns out, chicken-fried steak is a variant of schnitzel. It is popular in the Southern US, perhaps especially in Texas. The dish is a cut of beef that is pounded until very thin, breaded and fried. The cheapest, least tender pieces of beef are usually the ones that are used for this dish, since the pounding softens the meat and the majority of the flavor comes from the fried coating and the cream-based gravy that the dish is inevitably smothered in.  And even afficianados will tell you that the best parts are often the coating and the gravy.

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