The Covid Cooking Club
Chapter 2: Meat
Meat. The manliest of all foods, according to people who don’t understand how chemicals work and think eating soy will invert their gender. I don’t think eating meat will make me any less of a wimp, but it’s filling and tastes good. The meat I eat the most is canned tuna fish, because it’s cheap and requires zero preparation aside from opening the can and chowing down—though sometimes I drink the fish oil first like some sort of absolute barbarian. The problem with tuna is that it makes your whole room smell like fish. I don’t find it that irritating, considering the other things my room could smell like. Sometimes I mash it up with a fork and mix it with mayonnaise to make tuna salad, but my most successful attempt has been boiling it in oil with garlic and parsley to create a less messy pasta sauce (which wasn’t in last week’s article because I did it this Wednesday).
I’ve cooked whole fish as well, covering it in flour and frying it in oil on a pan. The result is a relatively bland white mean that falls apart faster than a South American republic that refuses to export bananas to the US in the early 20th century when touched with a fork. I could probably get more flavor out of white meat by cooking chicken, but I’m also scared shitless by anything involving raw chicken. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to food—though not enough to wash my hands for the full recommended duration each time when cooking—so whenever I try to cook chicken it ends up getting totally burned because otherwise I won’t touch it for fear of contracting salmonella. In theory, I have more success with red meat. I can cook sausages okay, since I just need to cover them in oil and pan fry them. The real issue here is steak. I love steak, and I’m not terrible at making it. The trick is to add a completely excessive amount of salt and pepper on both sides to build up a big crust, then fry each side in oil until it looks like it’s burned. It ends up being too crispy on the outside and too soft on the inside, but it’s still tasty. At least it would be if I didn’t keep comparing it to my dad’s steaks. Honestly, I’m probably the worst cook in my immediate family. My sister is a naturally gifted cook, and my mom and dad have essentially been trying to one-up each other in cooking skills since their divorce. I’ve only just started trying to make food since last March when going outside became the equivalent of taping an “eviscerate my lungs” sign to your back. So even when I enjoy the steak, it just reminds me of how crappy of a cook I am compared to the rest of my family. That still doesn’t stop me from making it, it just means that once every few weeks I subject myself to feelings of deep inadequacy in exchange for a burst of cholesterol. There have been worse tradeoffs in history.
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By: Alexander Rose
Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.
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