Curry

You spend 20 minutes sharpening your knife, peeling and dicing some onions, and mincing garlic and ginger to perfection. You add olive oil to this fragrant base you’ve prepared --- and the sharp, bright taste of those aromatics compete with the umai scent of bubbling oil in a beautiful dance, foretelling the beginnings of a great stew and a warm belly. Then you add the chicken, and all of a sudden the dreamy story comes to an abrupt end, and the rotten, sulfuric smell of cabbage with a hint of cloying sweetness that you would smell near a garbage dump assaults your nose.

To make matters worse, while you were letting the chicken cook, you were chopping up your carrots and potatoes that would simmer to softness in the stew. Not less than a few times in the past did I choose to ignore my senses and finish making my curry anyway. But never did I fail to be filled with regret. Those kinds of smells persist when eating, making meals much less enjoyable. One or all of diahrrea, nausea, and stomacheaches followed every single time.

I usually prep curry and enjoy it for four days. So seeing all the time and money I put in, in anticipation of good taste and the security of food for the next few days, wasted due to bad chicken (that didn’t have any discolouration or smell upon opening at all), made me lament the very act of cooking.

Is there no way to manage this risk? Are we doomed to have food security in a state of constant uncertainty, in a superposition of four days to nil, whenever we wish to enjoy the nourishment in taste and health that meat offers our body?

After many days of agonizing over these questions, often to the tune of a growling stomach or against a nauseated, spinning world, I’ve come to a few realizations:

The cooking of meat is a case-study of risk, never zero, rising exponentially.

There is an inherent amount of risk for all meat you buy at the store, and that rises exponentially as you bring your meat home and store it. Bacterial growth is always exponential, so long as the conditions (a juicy nutritional chunk of life) are right.

Not all meats are made equal:

Low risk               High risk
- Egg                  1. Ground beef
- Pre-frozen food      2. Chicken

As the risk is never zero, to keep on buying, preparing, and eating meat, without having to choose between wasting our time and efforts or getting sick, we must

1. Reduce risk as much as possible
2. Acknowledge that there is risk, and handle it

To Reduce Risk (1)

At Source:

• Do not buy meat from racks with obvious purge
• Always buy the freshest meat. Fresh meat is packaged the most recently / has the latest expiration date (side note: freshness matters A LOT when buying milk, it’s more important than quality. If you notice your milk tasting bad even right after buying it from the store, try opting for fresher cartons and comparing.)

At Home:

• Preferably freeze raw meat right away if not in use. This slows down the exponential growth of bacteria, reducing risk dramatically.
• If keeping raw meat in fridge due to defrosting or homework overload, put in glass, airtight containers. Most plastic is semi-permeable, meaning while it appears solid, liquids and gasses will cross over them no issue. Any nasty spills or odors in your fridge increases the risk your meat will go bad.

To Handle Risk (2)

• Always have low-risk options available (can always eat oily eggs with stir-fried veggies + rice if needed)
• Do not do mise en place (gathering materials and chopping veggies) until meat is cooked. Always Cook meat first. When unpacking meat, observe closely. Note any signs of spoilage: smells, discolorations, slimy texture. When cooking, observe the scent closely. A friend told me that the oil in cooked meat can be used nicely with the aromatic base. If the meat, if good, this method is still a valid way to cook curry. In this way, we don’t waste ~20-30 minutes of time and our food store, having chopped veggies. If the meat is bad, abandon the meat, and switch to a lower-risk option. Modern society is actually somewhat advantageous: frozen food is often lower risk, if less healthy.