Mark Bell's Power Project - Jess Pryles - A Guide to Making Your MEAT Taste AMAZING || MBPP Ep. 798

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

In this Podcast Episode, Meat Scientist Jess Pryles, shares tips and tricks on making the best steaks ever with Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza. Jess also helps us better understand why some cuts are better than others and whether or not that smelly meat is ok to cook and eat.  Follow Jess on IG: https://www.instagram.com/jesspryles/ Use code powerproject to save at Hardcore Carnivore: https://www.hardcorecarnivore.com/collections/shop Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject  ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #HardcoreCarnivore #MarkBell

What's it entail to be a meat scientist? I think I must be three quarters of the way there. I reckon you are too. What are some maybe sleeper steaks that people don't know about? I love this. All right. So the first thing is you can't just buy a steak and hope that it's going to eat like a filet. It's like uncured bacon is cured.

How do people avoid... Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Uncured bacon is cured. I'm trying to remember the last time I had uncured bacon is cured I'm trying to remember the last time I had uncured bacon because I can't remember the flavors and it's the same thing that makes bread smell so good when it bakes in the oven it's yeah I know

RIP to carbs alright we can throw this out right because like I've had some steaks where somebody got like a really good deal and I'm like you got a good deal because this shit's bad like that's bad bad right i shouldn't say this because i'm worried for your bros but realistically you can as long as you cook it it'll always be safe to eat right it just won't taste good i i've been on a lot of trips to mexico and i've been really inspired by Mexican food.

So I like messing with like the salsas and stuff like that. Chili roasting, fire roasting, all that kind of stuff, too. Talk about food porn. Consalivating, man. That shit's so good. Wow. That was definitely a fun recipe. That might have just been porn porn.

That's seriously not okay. You said, do you eat carbs though? Because we talked about bread and you were like, R.I.P. Yeah, it makes my ass fat. But yeah. I love it. That's desirable. I love food.

That's my problem. Yeah, lads. Wait for the right spots, right? Pararogic family, how's it's it going now we have had so many different guests that have come on to our podcast and we've talked about meat a lot and the one thing that everybody that tries pete montee says is that it is some of the most tender steak they have ever had i think actually sean baker came on and talked about the lack of connective tissue in the cattle yeah he broke it down scientifically but yeah he did that's the reason why when you, whatever cuts you get, whether it's a ribeye, whether it's a flat iron, whether it's a bavette, no matter when you cut

into that steak after it's cooked, you're not getting any of that chewiness, that gristle, that you have to spit out because you can't actually chew it. Piedmontese is super tender. They have great cuts that are low fat, high fat for whatever diet you're doing. They're just an overall amazing beef company. Andrew, how can they get it? Yep. That's over at piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. At checkout, enter promo code POWER for 25% off your order. And if your order is $150 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Again, piedmontese.com, promo code POWER. Links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Yeah, right?

With the amount of people that are moving there. True. California South. California 2.0, man. That's it. All right, we're rolling now. So there's some sort of butcher tournament going on or what's going on here? Yeah, it's the World Butchers Challenge.

It's literally the Olympics of meat. And what does that entail? A lot of knives and stuff? A lot of knives, a lot of sharp pointy things, a lot of carcasses. Have you been to this before? I haven't. So the last one was held in 2018 in Ireland, and it was supposed to be in 2020. But the new stuff.

Yeah, so they've been training for four years effectively waiting for this. Wow. So I'm emceeing it, and there's 13 teams from around the world. You're the emcee? Yeah. That's amazing. That's fucking dope. Wow.

So I'm stoked for that. So you've got to give us like a rundown. Let's say Andrew's Butcher. He's from Sacramento, and it's his third year competing. Give us some emceeness. So you actually have to be chosen for your national team so it's like an elite yeah it's a it's a thing y'all how many countries 13 on this one 13 yeah there was 16 but some had to shit's gonna be popping off over there yeah this is a big deal

you thought it was a meat fest up in that bag went to downtown this weekend that's amazing yeah um dude i want to go. When did you start your business? Because you've been sending us some of the hardcore carnivore seasoning for a bit now. And it's amazing. Especially, we'll get into a little bit deeper, the camo. Because that's incredible. Especially for those people that have trouble eating game meat or liver.

But how long have you had the business for? Since 2016 is when i came out with the first one and it was never an intention you know some people have an idea of like this is what i'm going to do and this is my business plan and these are all the the things i'm going to bring to market it's definitely my passion but i never ever thought i it started as an earnest you know what i publish a lot of my recipes online. I have a cookbook and I would like for people to taste how I think food should taste. But I'm not going to open a restaurant because no one's got time for that kind of overhead, right?

Not in this economy. So I thought it would be really cool to come up with a seasoning. And I'd seen activated charcoal used in a lot of health food products. You know, they were using it in like diet shakes and things like that at the time. And I was really fascinated by what that would do to the color of meat because a lot of people, myself included back in the day, have trouble cooking basic things. Like, how do you make a steak? That's what I was telling you about Smelly's Kitchen.

That's the whole reason I started it. People didn't know what the hell's going on with cooking meat. I was telling you about Smelly's Kitchen. That's the whole reason I started it. People didn't know what the hell's going on with cooking meat. So the Hardcore Carnival Black was my first seasoning, and it's nearly like meat cosmetics because if you don't know what you're cooking, you can see it there on those steaks.

So it makes them look completely black and charred before you've even cooked them. And we do eat with our eyes. So especially if you're cooking to medium rare, it's a really nice contrast. So I put it out and I thought, if it goes south, everyone gets a Christmas present with my name on it. And here we are all these years later with several seasonings in the line. We have, I call them tools for serious meat enthusiasts. Just stuff that I use at home is, you know, it couldn't be a more organic.

I mean, it's similar to you. It's ideas for things that you genuinely use and think will help people. Try to make things a little easier. You're trying to make things taste a little better. That's it. Maybe it's easier for someone to stay on their diet. Yeah, I found that your seasonings, they taste fucking amazing.

The black one in particular, when I used it and made a post with like a hamburger, people were like, that's just a gimmick. It just turned the burger black. And I was like, what are they talking about? That's a gimmick. I don't understand what they're talking about. Like it made the burger taste really good. That's why I used it. I wasn't trying to like, I don't know, turn the burger some other color, but that's just naturally what's in that product, right? Right. So, you know, the activated charcoal is less than 1% of the whole blend, and it's nearly like an added bonus, right?

But at the end of the day, I don't know if you guys could tell from my accent, but I'm not originally from America. Shocking. What? That's it. Bring this podcast in. I was totally fooled. I know, right?

Yeah. I sound just like it. I think growing up in Australia, having a smaller population, we have a lot of what I would describe as kind of cleaner foods. There's not as much food service emphasis on, like, you know, making things last longer, all of that. And our flavors on the whole are just simpler. And I think that's what the hallmark of the Hardcore Carnivore line is,

that it is seasoning, but it's subtle and it's enhancing rather than like an in-your-face seasoning line. You know? The really funny thing, though, is when we got these, right? Mark, you sent them to Mark and he gave them out. And I went home and I was i was like god damn this is good seasoning i need to go find like the the instagram or whatever i need to go find this and then i saw you and let me in the united states there's a trend with people of mark's

complexion white people that they cannot season food or that they do not season enough and that like literally it's like and i've had the personal experience of eating food from your people uh and they don't generally season their food really really well so when i saw your face i was like what like what the fuck like she did this like it's so fucking good and flavorful and it's like and it makes sense you're not from america though you see like it's the australia australia right you thought it'd be like some southern barbecue type stuff yeah man it's good thank you i mean that's look i i wouldn't put out shit that i don't use in my own kitchen and and i have to like it if i'm gonna eat it you know so i appreciate

that that's i think that's the thing at the end of the day you know anyone who says it's a gimmick like sure that's a one bottle purchase the fact that we're still in business and that's still the number one best like activated charcoal selling rub in the world i think speaks to how it tastes do the other products have charcoal in it as well or no no it's just that one and and that one i you know we call our beef rub is really it looks great on any red meat just because of the contrast and the red seasoning which you have in front of you is basically nearly the same formula just with a little bit more heat but i designed it for pork and chicken just because the black didn't look appealing and we eat with our eyes first otherwise you just dump everything into a trough right and these are like uh are your products like gluten

free and free of like a bunch of junk and things like that as well or yeah so they are all gluten free they are all msg free although are all MSG-free, although honestly, I want to come out with an MSG seasoning because there's nothing wrong with MSG, and it's one of those maligned amino acids. That's a tri-tip. But yeah, I try and keep, there are some that are cleaner than others,

but at the end of the day, like I make them for how they taste. So I'm concerned about the quality of ingredients as well, for sure. But it just so happens that they also are very suitable for a lot of folks watching, you know, on certain diets or watching, you know, calories or macros or whatever. Do you have a top secret one that you're working on right now? No, I'm not shitting you. I want to do this MSG one. Why? Like it's it's gonna piss

people off too what uh under what kind of flavor profile like what what are you thinking so we have a i'm shooting my shot a little early here because it's literally an r&d but um there's in in barbecue there's a blend called spg it's just salt pepper garlic just for people who want to start off as a basic blend, coarse pepper. So I want to do a SP MSG, just like at a base level if you want to kick your food up a little bit without introducing too many other flavors. Because like I said, salt and MSG are enhancers. They're not flavors. So they work to sort of activate and wake up your taste buds so you have a heightened sense of taste um which i think is really neat so it's basically you doing all the work what's

the bad from msg like what's the bad rap that it's gotten like what's the reason for that uh you know i think it's it's just one of those things where you know i think it's one of those things where people have just been misinformed about it. They're scared of it. They don't know it. I came from a background. I came from an urban city. I had no agricultural background whatsoever.

I didn't know how to cook a steak. I'm now about to finish a graduate's certificate in meat science because I got so into it. And what I'm realizing as someone who didn't have a science brain is it's so hard to explain the science behind things to people who don't have any kind of context. And so the thing with MSG is I think, unfortunately, it's also just to be honest with you, I think it's tied to a lot of racism because it's traditionally used in Chinese food. But more so it's just a protein.

It's a glutamate. So tomatoes, seaweed, all of these yummy kind of meaty things are high in glutamates, which is a derivative. MSG is a derivative of that. So technically, it is an amino. It is a protein. So you could have an allergy to it, but they've never been able to establish it in any tests either. What have they tried to say that it does though? Because I just,

I remember specifically when I was a younger kid, all these Asian restaurants always no MSG, no MSG. So what was the claim of what MSG does? So there are some people who claim to have an allergy in that I think it's not that it's anaphylaxis or anything. I think they claim sort of hives or like a tight jaw or something like that. And the rest of the people have no idea. They just think it's bad. It's just the sheep situation of like, well, yikes. I say it with, you know, dihydrogen monoxide, right? Sounds pretty scary until you figure out that it's water. What's it entail to be a

meat scientist? I think I must be three quarters of the way there. I reckon you are too. You know, they do a lot of work on there's a lot of stuff that goes into meat even before it hits wherever you're buying it, whether it's a big grocery store

or a small processor. The genetics, the water holding capacity, the pH level at the time of slaughter, how that affects water holding, how that affects tenderness, safety, brines, injections, obviously things like cured meats and what have you. So they do all of the research into that. Do you know? Oh, it's fun. into that.

Do you know? Oh, it's fun. Honestly, I'm curious. Cause okay. I'm a, I'm a simple,

simple, simple person. When I cook my meat, um, I use an air fryer and it comes out perfect every time with this ninja air fryer thing. But is there a legitimate difference between meat on the grill? Meat on the smoker for sure. Meat on the smoker.

Fuck yeah. It's night and day difference. Yeah. So, so what, like, you know, all this meat stuff way smoker for sure. On the smoker. Fuck. Yeah. It's night and day difference. Yeah. So, so what, like, you know, all this meat stuff way more than I do and more than them too.

So like, why would someone want to cook meat on a smoker or something else than something like an air fryer in terms of simplicity? So it changes the flavor profile. So the way that you guys consume protein at some stage, it just has to be about the sheer needing to get it in your body, and that's completely understandable. But for a lot of people, and yourselves included,

there will be times where you're like, you know what, I want to get a little fancy. It's not just a standard, like, I need to feed myself on a Wednesday night. Let me see if I can develop different flavors. So you get different flavors in the smoker, you get different flavors on the grill, and even frying, it produces different compounds. That's what happens.

Different reactions and different aminos form and different flavors. Literally different flavors. There's a new Ninja out there, by the way. Wait, really? I saw it the other day. I saw a commercial for it. What? It was mind-boggling.

It's like seven things in one. Look it up. It's a smoker. It's like seven things in one. Look it up. Oh, look it up. It's a smoker. It's a smoker? Wait, really? It's a regular grill. It's an air fryer.

It'll fucking do your laundry. I mean, it's... Yeah, but don't you hate when they do too many things? Nah, I do, yeah. It can get confusing. You're right. It's like my dishwasher, man.

I only have one setting, right? How many times have you used all the settings on your dishwasher? Does anybody even know what they mean? No idea. Yeah, I guess so you don't get spots on your wine glass or something. Right. I always go turbo on that thing because there is a turbo button.

I just think that's better than whatever is normal. Turbo on everything. Yeah. Is it a ninja foodie, Mark, or is it just like a – Yeah, it's a ninja foodie thing, yeah. Okay. Let me have a look. By the way, what you guys hear us chomping on is Mark has a meat bag of

carnivore crisps. Those are good and delicious. You got pork, elk. What else you got in there? I think I have round steak. Oh, that's a great one for that. Very lean. Yeah, this stuff's good. Y'all should send more. But anyway, yeah, this stuff's really good.

What? It's quite delicious. Hard to find. What do you do for exercise? So I do, because of the pandemic, I had to end up setting stuff up in my garage. So I have a TRX and I have bands and I have a treadmill and I just try and do a lot of like resistant stuff. And, you know, it was very clear to me as I got older that it's important to maintain now to be, like, healthy and happy later in life too. And just try and do that. Just try and move more than anything else.

And, you know, I work in a male-dominated field, so it's important to be able to, like, lift my shit. You know, I need to be able to get in my truck. I need to be able to pick up that big-ass piece, I need to be able to get in my truck. I need to be able to pick up that big ass piece of meat and not be a little weakling about it. So it is important to me to keep that up too. You said you got into some hunting recently? Yeah, when I moved, when I moved.

So like a requirement in Texas, right? Yeah, I just felt like a big fucking hypocrite because I would see like, you know, suburbs of Austin, there are deer that like walk around the neighborhoods oh they're so cute but i eat them like there's got to be some kind of uh middle ground here so i'd already visited some commercial abattoirs and slaughterhouses and i just felt like it was something i needed to do both to you know stamp my texas but also just, just as part of being a carnivore. And I did it for the first time, loved it. Um, and I, and I go hunting every year and, but the difference is

that I process all of my own deer from start to finish all the way myself. So I think that's for me personally, part of the bigger thing and I'm not in it for the trophies. So most of the time I'm going after does, which tastes better anyway. And you never hunted when you were a kid? Never did any of that stuff? No, Australia has a really different relationship. They do have hunting there, but it's very marginal and not mainstream. We don't really have any guns there either, so it's a whole thing. So what got you so interested in meat in general?

Was it like stuff as a kid, where your family cooked? Was it a transition later in life? What was it? It was actually a visit to Texas just as a tourist. Because when you go, everyone's like, you got to eat the barbecue. You got to eat, right? It's like a whole thing. And I'd always loved eating steak as a kid.

Like always loved lamb chops, like loved meat, but didn't really know how to cook it, didn't know how to choose it, didn't know the difference with cuts. Like even what you said about eye of round, a lot of people would be like, what? I don't get it. And literally it was going to Texas, trying barbecue for the first time, being obsessed with it because you know how good smoked food tastes, right? That's amazing, yeah.

And I would go back and then want to learn more about how it was made and in learning about how barbecue was made and like why is the brisket that i'm trying to buy in australia nothing like the brisket in the united states it like unlocked this whole rabbit's hole of beef breeds and butchery and meat and cuts and selecting them and oh that's not blood. That's myoglobin. And I'm like, holy shit, this is fucking awesome. And I found what I was passionate about.

What do you think the difference is in meat in Australia versus here? I've noticed a difference myself. I've been there before. I've just heard many people talk about that as well. And what are some of the major differences, do you think? The biggest, well, the biggest difference on the briskets that I was looking at the time was the size. So they traditionally slaughtered younger in Australia and just the genetics are bigger in the States. The animals are bigger here. So, um, but the biggest difference was the butchery,

which is interesting for what's happening this weekend because different countries cut animals up in different ways because they want different cuts out of it even here in the united states it's like i think it's like uh more available now um but years ago when i tried to get a tri-tip i couldn't find one out here in california like nobody knew what i was talking about which is so weird because this is the most popular state for tri-tip right and this is the Santa Maria kind of Bay Area. Right, right, right. Where it's from. Yeah, wow.

But it's supply and demand of popularity. And now I think consumers are more aware than ever before of different cuts and what to ask for. But the other biggest difference I think between US and Australia is Australia has a lot of grass-fed product, which is just because we have a lot of quality grass too. So it's the same as, you know, knowing good dairy comes from Vermont. California, of course, has a lot of dairy too, but, you know, being in drought.

Cheese from Wisconsin and that kind of stuff, yeah. Yeah, and it's like anything, you know, the better the environment for it, the better quality product you'll get, which is why, you know, there's a lot of grain-fed beef get, which is why, you know, there's a lot of grain fed beef here, which is great because of the areas it comes out of and just got to pick and choose it. What are some maybe sleeper steaks that people don't know about? I love this. All right. So the first thing is you can't just buy a steak and hope that it's going to eat like a filet. All right. So if you like your meat to eat like marshmallows, just,

just don't stop listening now because you should never stop listening, but just ignore this part because it's useless to you. I love skirt steaks, but there's two skirt steaks, and one of them is really tender and one of them is really not. So if you can get your hands on an outside skirt, there's a muscle called the teres major. So I don't know if you'll like this too, but one of the things that I get really creepy about is

I know where all these same muscles are on us too. Do you ever do that? You're like, oh, I'm eating a rotator cuff. Right, exactly. I'll pass. I'm good, thank you. I'm just worried about him. Shit.

He's all right. So teres major is off of the scapula. That's one of the most tender ones. So is the flat iron, which comes off the top blade roast. It's the second most tender after the tenderloin, but really full of flavor because they're out of the chuck, which is up in the shoulder. Flap or Bavette steak is a great one, especially for fajitas.

That's another favorite of mine. Have you had an opportunity to try Piedmontese steaks? I have. They're so interesting. Yeah, and the bavette is amazing from there. You eat it a little bit like a filet. It's really tender even though it's super lean. Do you know about that breed?

What the deal with it is? Yeah, I know a little bit about it, but maybe you can explain more because I don't know as much as you. Yeah, educate us, please. So it's a genetic mutation of the myostatin gene, and it's basically double muscled. So it has double as many muscle fibers,

but the same amount of connective tissue. So overall, you're getting a bigger steak that appears to be leaner, or sorry, less tough, and it is leaner, because you get more muscle fiber but less connective tissue. So they're a really cool kind of animal for that. Yeah, jacked. Fucking jacked cows. They can like hurt themselves is what – when I went out to Piedmontese,

they were explaining that to me. They're like – they have so much muscle on them and they can move so powerfully that they can actually hurt themselves. Yeah. It's like, damn. It's wild. It's wild. And they look like they can actually hurt themselves. Yeah. It's like, damn. It's wild. It's wild. And they look like they're shredded for competition.

Yeah, bodybuilders. Yeah. Yeah. Any more steaks? Like some hidden steaks? I think Eye of Round is actually a really good one. It's very low in fat. It is a tougher steak, though.

Yeah, I would use it for jerky more than anything because it's one of those ones where just because it has the name steak doesn't mean that you're going to get a great steak-y experience out of it. That's also the cut that you're most likely – have you ever seen that rainbow on the surface of meat? Yes. It's a light refraction deal because the muscle fibers are so tightly knit on that particular cut as well, especially on roast beef and stuff like that.

So the meat's not bad. It's just a, it's just a, it's called by refringes. It's just a light refraction deal. Um, yeah, so it's kind of,

I don't know. I like all that nerdy shit, you know? Um, those are my big ones. Honestly, ribeye is probably my favorite that doesn't need any help, but sirloin steaks are up there for me.

I love them. Top sirloins like culotte rum cap um i just i think that they've got a great chew great flavor love them and they're good price ribeye cap is amazing yeah that's a really good one yeah have you ever bought a whole ribeye roll and just taken oh yeah that's incredible yeah that's really good it's like a loaf yeah yeah like a loaf. Yeah. Like a big loaf. And then you can give other people the rest of the ribeyes and they don't really know that you've taken the cap off and keep it to yourself.

It's called something different though, right? The cap? Like the roast, right? It's called something. It's a rib roast. Yeah. Okay. There you go.

I believe so. Sorry, I'm not sure. Yeah. It has a whole bunch of different. I mean, prime ribs, the. I believe so. Sorry, I'm not sure. Yeah, it has a whole bunch of different, I mean, prime rib's the same thing, you know. Right, like a prime rib roast is basically a bunch of rib, like once you chop it up, it's a bunch of rib eyes, right? Exactly, exactly. There's actually a meat guide.

So in the industry, we speak in numbers. So there's 107s, 103s, like how much is left on, how much is trimmed down, and you get all the way down to individual steaks. But that's the other really confusing thing the barrier to entry to meat different names for the same fucking thing oh wait about what about ribs we need to talk about ribs ribs are amazing what kind of ribs like what what are good tender ribs are you talking about beef ribs or pork ribs or any beef uh so i, chuck and plate ribs.

So that just depends where they come from on the animal, but it's the same muscle. It's still serratus ventralis. Do you ever have Denver steaks? No, I don't believe so. That's the same muscle too, just up in the chuck as well. The only ribs that I'm not a huge fan of are probably back ribs because you're getting a lot of the intercostals there.

So you get the connective muscle, but you don't get a lot of bang for a buck there. So you get like the connective muscle, but you don't get a lot of like bang for a buck muscle. But it's also why they're cheaper. So if your favorite thing is just gnawing on bones, I would go with the back rib. That's unfortunate. When people are preparing steaks, whether whatever they're doing,

what are some things that they need to try to do to make sure that they always end up with a good steak? Like for example, you know, maybe not making it it well done but letting it sit and stuff like that when i was younger i never had patience so once my steak was done i'd just go into it and be like why is it the right way then someone told me about letting it sit and i was like wow how do you cook your steaks like what do you cook them to okay first let me just give oh well what i cook it to i usually like them rare or medium rare okay because i actually i actually do yeah my girl though my girlfriend likes her

steaks well done i know like how everyone's like everyone's shins just banged into something but she also doesn't have patience so she she's just like, let it sit. Because she will eat anything as long as it's just like done. Anyway, but so yeah, I'll usually like, I have some marinades. So I let it marinate, I let it sit. Then before I cook it, I don't know why, maybe I saw it on a YouTube video or maybe, I don't know,

but I let it come to room temperature before I put it in the air fryer. Little air fryer has a little stick that you can make sure it gets to that temperature. So it cooks, I open it up, I let it come to room temperature before I put it in the air fryer. Little air fryer has a little stick that you can make sure it gets to that temperature. So it cooks. I open it up. I let it sit. And it always just comes out tasting good.

But that's just like because I'm a simple bro. Now, I mean, listen, fried shit tastes good. That's why we like it, right? But actually, quick question. Do you know why the air fryer is called frying? Because you just put it in and it's just but it's not frying, right? Do you know why a pellet grill is called a grill Because you just put it in and it's just, but it's not frying, right? Do you know why a pellet grill is called a grill? Because it's not a grill.

It's just smoking. Okay. It's the same shit. It's a convection oven. Your air fryer is effectively a convection oven. But it gets to such high temperatures that it can recreate those same flavor compounds that you get from frying as well. Okay. flavor compounds that you get from frying as well. So, you know, dumb it down for the people, which is where the whole MSG thing comes back into play.

Like, I'm sorry, that's just how it is. It's like uncured bacon is cured. How do people avoid... Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Uncured bacon is cured. I'm trying to remember the last time I had uncured bacon because I can't remember the flavors. But what? You knew that, right? Yeah, all bacon is cured I'm trying to remember the last time I had uncured bacon because I can't remember the flavors you knew that right

yeah all bacon is cured it's already basically cooked why is it called uncured bacon no you can't eat it out of the packet it's not cooked to save temperatures it's just cured I mean you can but I wouldn't

because it's a labeling loophole. So they use celery seed, which has high level of natural nitrates in it, to do the curing instead of manufactured nitrates. Yeah, it has like more nitrates than. We get 80% of our nitrates from vegetables. And then 15% from water. Celery root has more nitrates than probably what they normally use. Yeah.

Which is weird. Yeah. Yeah. So. Buy the regular bacon. Just buy it. It's the same and it's cheaper. Good to know.

Yeah. Tastes amazing too. Yeah. But real quick before we keep going, is there anything else people can do to make sure they have a good steak? Yes. Number one is pat it dry before you cook it. So that crust that you probably love on it that your air fryer gets,

that is like the hallmark for me of a great steak. Like I don't want sea marks. I don't know if you're like that. You know the grill marks? I don't want that. I want crust the whole way through. So that crust is like, I know I'm banging my head against the wall here, but it's the development of different flavor compounds.

It's called a Maillard reaction. It's what happens Maillard reaction. It's what happens when reducing sugars, enzymatic reaction between reducing sugars and amino acids. And it's the same thing that makes bread smell so good when it bakes in the oven. It's, yeah, I know. RIP to carbs. So it's one of those great things that it just smells great

and it has all these great favor compounds now that happens in the absence of moisture so like when you load up a pan when you're trying to like fry off some ground beef and it never gets brown because the water starts coming out of the beef and the pan's not hot enough same thing so if you pat your steak dry you're already putting it ahead of the game to start developing that Maillard reaction, which is going to give you that great crust on it. And just real quick when it comes to resting. So that's purely personal preference because there's some people who like their steak hot and there's some people who would rather their steak be juicy. And that's the choice you make.

I've recently said, fuck letting my steak rest and because dude there's not enough time so i just how about letting it rest for five minutes it's still warm by time i'm done cutting my son's steak like i'm good to go like i want that shit hot um what about letting the steak uh sit out for a while uh before you cook it it can help it's not so i guess one of the misnomers is that it comes up to room temperature. And if it doesn't, the core of the steak will never come up to room temperature. And you're also playing a little bit with food safety if you leave it out for too long. How long is too long?

Three hours. If you're in an hour zone, you're fine. You can also dry brine it. So you can unwrap your steak and put it on a rack, like just buy a cooling rack or a baking rack, salt it and put it back in the fridge uncovered, and that'll also help dry out the surface. You'll get a totally different steak that way.

The salt will also draw the moisture out, turn it into a brine, and then if you leave it for long enough, it'll go back into the steak. So you'll get a deeper seasoning all the way through. How long should you leave it for long enough, it'll go back into the steak. So you'll get a deeper seasoning all the way through. How long should you leave it? You can do it for 24 or 48 hours like that. And what I like to tell folks who do it with hardcore carnival black

is do a little bit of salt to do that and then do the application of the seasoning right before you cook it. Because it's just, you know, there's a conversion from muscle to meat, and meat remains biodynamic. It's pretty much a zombie if you think about it. Nice. I just want to really freak people out. Eating some zombies, I like it.

Well, think about the color change, right? Yeah. So it still has these bioavailabilities that can happen even post-mortem, and everything that we choose to do to it like leaving it out i think what leaving it out mainly does is taking takes the chill off of it so if it sweats and then you pat it dry you're going to get an even better sear so yeah i probably leave mine out for i mean mine's out for a while because a lot of times i will uh take it out the night before and i will let it thaw from the freezer and then sometimes I forget

and I come home and I cook it. My house is pretty cold, but I don't know. I'm fine. You have an iron stomach. I'm indestructible. We also have a pretty good food system. It's still packaged and everything. Yeah. You probably do have

really good gut biome and I probably have a lot of worms that are like fighting each other or whatever they're stoked like keep feeding me that rotten meat it's great let's kind of go down this path a little bit because there's a lot of bros that listen to this

podcast and we probably do some bad shit so what do we need nah man sometimes i'll leave that sushi grade fish out to defrost and i get home like fuck it i'm gonna eat it and it's been on the counter defrosted for like six hours and it's fish that's not a good idea still do it or like or that or like while i'm cooking i have blood on my hands i'll just wipe it off i'm not like what i really want yeah yeah and then i'll like oh let's say most food yeah what blood uh well sorry whatever the uh the blood like looking substance that comes out of

the package that's water okay there it is that's water colored with myoglobin okay so that's what you're talking that stuff on my hands i know i'm the worst at parties by the way i just kill everyone yeah the blood is supposedly like a like a protein kind of thing, right? Amino acid or something like that? Yeah, well, the blood's drained during slaughter. So that stuff in the packages, especially vacuum seal, is called purge. It's literally just cellular water that's colored by a protein called myo-woven. That's it. So is that color, because I had brought this up on a podcast a long time ago, is that color there for like thefront to make the steak look red instead of that grayish, pale color?

Or is it something different? Well, it's naturally in there. Yeah. Oh, okay. That's the color of meat. That's the color of muscle. It's just coming out because it's getting warm. But there's things that they can do to it to hold that color so it looks better for longer.

So the steak actually might have started to turn and it'll still look good and and that's not that's not they don't inject it or it's like so if you think about it right what changes the color and what makes it it starts off as a dark purple it goes to a bright cherry red which is what we like as consumers the best and when it starts to turn or oxidize it goes to met myoglobin brown um one thing that we know that makes that change happen is oxygen so it's oxidizing right there's an iron heme in it that's why blood tastes irony so it's just it's basically rusting for lack of a better i've eaten a lot of gray meat in my time yeah unfortunately so it happens when you're broke well i used to be broke i'd eat fucking you know the the i don't know 60 off beef that was just sitting you know you knew it was like

on its last leg so you know what here's the thing about that and your bro question it's not that it's bad for you it's just when it oxidizes it can start to develop some off flavors and smells yeah right but you know it's you know how sometimes when you warm stuff up in the microwave like meat in the microwave and you're like it's got that flavor to it yeah that's the same thing and the weird thing is some people like that flavor we call it warmed over yeah and it's it's also a hallmark of the beginnings of friends the beginning of the end you're eating a dead zombie yeah acquired taste yeah when that when that zombie starts to taste a little fishy that's when it's like you can be like all right we can throw this out right because like i've had some steaks where somebody got like a really good deal and i'm like

you got a good deal because this shit's bad like that's bad bad right i shouldn't say this because i'm worried for your bros but realistically you can as long as you cook it especially the way that your girlfriend likes it it'll always be safe to eat right it just won't taste good because you'll these other bad flavor compounds will have developed but you won't get sick from it okay because you've cooked it to a safe temperature yeah no no smoker is going to cover that fishiness though it's gross fucking gross. Is it true that... Is it true that... Oh, fuck. I forgot what I was going to say.

Sorry, Mark. I do that all the time. God damn, I missed it. It'll come back to me. Any other safety precautions? Anything else? Buy a meat thermometer. You know what you were talking about? That's what you're using in your air fryer. It's great for food safety. And I'm not trying to bore people i get it whatever like eat steak

tartare i don't give a shit to your body put whatever you want into it the thing is i i really don't give a shit i give a shit about what i eat right you do you it's cool so but food safety aside if you want to know when your steak is ready and perfectly cooked use a meat thermometer 130 to 135 is medium rare every time um and and none of this kind of guessing pressing bullshit it's idiot proof it truly is when i was younger i didn't have a meat thermometer so i'd always be playing the guessing game i'd take it off it was too cooked i'd take it off you don't want to be the guy that chops it open midway through either. Yeah, because Instagram will kill you. But in regards to the meat thermometers, do you think it's bad to rely on it too much to kind of have some knowledge of when you know,

like, ah, that's probably good enough right now? It's kind of training wheels, like anything. And that's the thing with barbecue, and especially the rise of craft barbecue and how obsessed people have got with it. It really is by feel, and you're talking about a natural product that as much science as we apply to it there's still going to be exceptions to the rules just like how you can have trained five people doing the same exercise and they're all going to come out looking different at the

end of it right so i think it's one of those things where it's a great training wheel to start off with and then you can sort of get a sense of like, oh, that was actually two degrees more than it should have been, but it looks the same as the other one. And you'll start with anything with repetition you get good at, I think. Yeah. What about, so like at what, I mean, if you do, I forgot if it's reverse here or whatever, but like if my stake's at like 120, is that good to crank the smoker up and start getting like a good flame through to kind of get that crust over the top what smoker do you have that i have a pit boss so you have a pellet grill yeah yeah so it has that

like uh it's called a sear slide so they keep open it up and like the the actual like cup at the bottom that gets full of pellets just fucking ignites and it goes like just get a fucking charcoal grill dude just man off so but that's the thing though so along with that that's why i'm like if i pull out my meat pro with like while it's like some other like hardcore dudes are fucking grilling yeah like are they gonna make fun of me just like no no for having a fucking pellet smoker no no no one's gonna make fun of you for using a meat at the moment. I still use them. She lies. She lies.

Right after I just got clowned on. I'm using an air fryer, bro. I am at the lowest of the low when it comes to anybody here. Yeah, but you're like 6'3", 240. Charcoal works really good, though. Yeah. You get really good flavor from charcoal, but it is a little harder to figure out. But you can control it, right?

I'm not the one to do it, but I'm sure there's some parable to workouts and lifting here as well, which is like when you use a machine that does it for you, you're limited by what that machine lets you do. But when you're on charcoal, I can pile the coals up. I can spread them around. I can have entire control over the heat. And so you get to be a better cook by having better control that way. I was going to say, is it true that food poisoning happens more often in the home than anywhere else? Like you poison yourself basically and then someone blames the restaurant down the street?

Well, there's also different windows. So it can happen in up to 72 hours. And a lot of people don't know that. They think it's 24. So they blame something else when it was really them. And most of the time it goes undiagnosed and unreported. Right. So it's a whole thing. Yeah. Sometimes somebody gets really wiped out from it and other times it's like just not that bad. I've probably had a lot of food poisoning. I'm just being real. I think I've had a lot of recent food poisoning with this fish I've been eating and I just haven't known. Did you end up with some double dragon?

Dog, yeah. That's the worst. I've been buying sushi grade fish and like I freeze it and I'll sometimes defrost it and it sometimes gets defrosted too long. We just mentioned this and sometimes my bubble gut, but I have an iron stomach just like you. So I think, uh, I think this is called aging, right? You're aging your meat. Yeah, you are. What's the deal with aged meat? That's the thing.

It's controlled decomposition. But it's in a cold environment, right? Yes. It shouldn't be out on your counter, just to be clear. It's on his roof. 90 degree heat, no big deal it's in his car cool cool uh it's it is it should be done so listen the deal with dry aging it should be done in a controlled environment it should ultimately be in its own fridge there's a lot more things that can go wrong with dry aging than any other meat cooking so it's not

like a like hey i going to throw this steak in the back of my fridge and cross my fingers. That's not a fucking good idea, okay? But it's basically everything that we do to meat to promote tenderness is trying to undo rigor mortis. So you're basically trying to let the natural enzymes of the meat break down some of those actin-myosin bonds that are basically

flexing the muscle um and so it becomes more tender the difference with so when you vacuum seal something that's wet aging automatically as long as you don't freeze it freezing stops the aging process so if you were to buy a ribeye roll in a vacuum seal you could leave it like that for two weeks that'll be an extra two weeks of aging. It will enhance the meat. It will continue to tenderize it. The difference with dry aging is you can get other flavors develop just like a cheese. You like blue cheese.

So some people introduce certain molds to try and get those nutty, funky flavors as well. He's obsessed with it. He got pissed at me the other day. He's like, you haven't put any steak in the dry ager for ages. So I had to do that this week too. What about taking some steak like out of the package and putting some of your hardcore carnivore seasoning on it

and then like maybe let's say leave it in the fridge for two, three days or something. How does that come out? Like almost like a marinade but like a rub. Is that something you would advise or is that not a good idea? It's personal preference. I don't like to do that just because I feel like, you know, we talked about how salts are flavor enhancer and the rest of them are delicate spices and they change their, their, they lose potency. So especially in refrigerated environment, that's why we don't store spices. And then you kind of burn them when you cook sometimes too,

right? You can. I don't, I can. I personally don't mind that flavor. That's why I'll put it on beforehand. But I just don't like what can happen to the more fragrant spices like garlic and onion when they just sit in the fridge. They nearly get muted. But it's personal preference. I rarely put a wet marinade on my steaks just because I really like to get that dry crust. I had two questions.

I was wondering, Andrew mentioned the Piedmontese, and you have experience of cooking it, but when we first got Piedmontese years ago, we were like, damn, I overcooked it a few times because I was like, it cooks way faster than normal steaks that I get, right? So number one, why does it cook faster? And number two, do you find that you need to cook them slightly differently than you do when you cook other meat? Yeah.

You know, you do. And dry aging is the same because it's had such water loss as well that it will feel different when it's done to like a normal steak. Yeah. With the Piedmontese, I would imagine that as part of that genetic profile, it just has less water holding capacity potentially. So it's still tender. Do you notice it being, and this is not a detriment, but do you notice it maybe not as juicy as other steaks or is that still there for you? No, well, the juiciness is there. So when I was cooking initially, I'd cook it for the same time and it'd end up being way more cooked. So when I cook it correctly, it's still juicy.

It's still tender. There's no issues there. It just cooks faster than like a ribeye that I would get at Costco or something like that. It's honestly probably just the double muscle factor. So you've got twice as many muscle fibers in there. It's going to react differently. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And then the second question I had, and this might sound pretty stupid, but is there a certain amount of time you can just keep frozen meat or can it just be frozen perpetually and two years later you can pull it out, defrost it, cook it, and you're good? Yep. Pretty much. Okay. So you will have some quality loss the longer it goes.

And you can technically defrost and refreeze, defrost and refreeze as long as you're keeping it food safe. Like, so you throw it in your fridge and then you change your mind. So then it goes back into the freezer and back and forth. Every time you do that, you're going to affect quality, but not safety. And it's just a water holding capacity. And when I say that, it's a fancy way of saying how juicy it's going to end up being at the end.

Okay. And the only other thing that that can affect it is if it starts getting freezer burn, which is usually going to be from your vacuum seal or whatever you've got it packaged in being compromised and there being oxygen in there. And that is the frozen version of oxidative rancidity. So you'll start to get bad flavors and it'll also have a really bad texture

because it'll be really dry. Can you mess around with making your own jerky or have you played around with that before? Yeah, yeah. How does someone do that? Especially with venison. There's so many tough muscles, tough lean muscles on there.

You can buy pretty inexpensive dehydrators and I take it nearly all the way there and I usually finish it off in the oven at 160 for a couple of minutes after that just to hit it with the extra bacteria factor. And I usually also save those, you know those little silica

packets you get in random things? I save those for when I make jerky and throw that in the Ziploc. Those things drive me crazy. They're everywhere. I know, but you may as well upcycle them for yourself, right? What do they do actually? Do they just help preserve? They're supposed to keep stuff fresh or something.

It's a dryer. So it attracts the moisture and so it'll keep that jerky dryer because mold is going to grow when there's moisture there. So it keeps it less moldy for longer. Hardcore Carnivore, Tex-Mex, and Michalada, which is our chili lime, is bomb on jerky. Yeah, the Michalada. And Camo is too actually.

The Michalada one's really good. Thank you. I like that. The camo works really good. I've been using it on my liver. How do you prepare it? Like, because I don't eat that much liver. I just, it's prepared just by being chopped up and frozen.

Okay. So it's not cooked. It's just, but it has the camo on there and I pull it out of the freezer and I let it thaw for a little bit and I just eat it just like that. All right. It's actually. And you can keep doing that. Yeah. It actually, like, I think it out of the freezer and I let it thaw for a little bit and I just eat it just like that. All right. It's actually.

And you can keep doing that. It actually like I think it's fucking awesome. But if you were going to make liver taste good, what would you do? So there's an idea behind wild game that you can soak it in milk to get rid of some of the gaminess. And the concept behind that is that you're introducing a different pH level and that can change the flavor again. So you could try soaking it in some kind of dairy for a little bit and seeing how that goes to change pH and change the flavor.

What's a little bit? Like how long? I mean a couple of, maybe in the fridge. Okay. Blend up some liver, chuck it in your milk. Yeah. No, I'm going to try that. I don't know why my milk curdled on my rooftop next to my fish.

It's just weird. I'm not that wild. Okay. It's on my counter in the house. Sometimes the house gets hot. Okay. You know, you're not wasting good fish. No, it might be bad. Not wasting it. I can deal with hot. Okay. You know, you're not wasting good fish. No,

it might be bad. Not wasting it. I can deal with it. That's cool. I get it. I get it. Yeah. You know, being somebody that, you know, made these products and stuff like that. Do you, when, when you're at home, do you cook stuff like real conveniently, real easily, or do you get way into it? I think it's both. So for my job, I do recipe developing. So I'm constantly cooking things and doing recipes and all kinds of stuff like that. And sometimes you're just in chill mode. You just fucking order pizza. Yeah, that happens for sure sometimes.

You're just like, I'm tired of all this. I just want to order some pizza. This video is going to make you guys super hungry. Oh, fuck, man. Are they the scotch eggs? Yes. those are incredible soft boiled eggs on the inside and then smoked sausage on the outside what's that yeah so i brought this one up because like other than like just a traditional like uh steak like what else do you like to like what else is some of your favorite things to make? I really like making...

I've been on a lot of trips to Mexico and I've been really inspired by Mexican food, so I like messing with the salsas and stuff like that. Chili roasting, fire roasting, all that kind of stuff too. Talk about food porn. Fucking salivating, man. That shit's so good. Wow.

That was definitely a fun recipe. That might have just been porn porn. That's seriously so good. Wow. That was definitely a fun recipe. That might have just been porn porn. That's seriously not okay. That happens a lot too. That happens a lot too. No, I like, I mean, I use the seasonings at home and I cook. There are nights that I'm chill about it and there are nights that- And Seema's going to fall down.

He's getting weak in the legs. I haven't eaten anything today. This is the fucked up thing that I'll do on this podcast podcast we always pull up food my bad no it was so good it looks fucking amazing they were pretty good not gonna lie they were tasty power project family how's it going now i want to talk to you guys about within you supplements this is mark's supplement line and the amazing thing is mark used to be 330 pounds he was a fat guy so obviously this stuff tastes really damn good. But another cool thing about within you supplements is that none of these products are white labeled.

Now, what a lot of people do when they come out with their own supplement lines is they do something called white labeling. And white labeling, all that means is there's a supplement that's already out there. They take off the tag of that supplement. They put their name on it. And now it's their supplement line. of that supplement, they put their name on it, and now it's their supplement line. Quite literally, there's nothing else like Within You supplements out there because Mark formulated these supplements with other individuals that he knows within the industry, like Joel Green, who we've had on this podcast. So you guys should check out Within You. We have

amazing protein, electrolyte supplements. We have fasting gum and many other things on the website. Andrew, how can they check it out? Yes, that's over at markbellslingshot.com. And at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT10 to save 10% off your entire order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. But actually, I was going to ask the Tex-Mex seasoning. If somebody has that, what would you suggest they try cooking that? Like, just try that seasoning on. So I use it if I'm making any kind of tacos or fajitas. So if I'm doing ground meat, I throw a bunch in as taco seasoning. I'll do that flap or bavette steak or skirt steak for fajitas.

I use it even on like cast iron seared chicken breasts because it'll give like if you were going to put that chicken in like a taco salad or something, it just gives you that Tex-Mex flavor. Yeah. taco salad or something. It just gives you that Tex-Mex flavor. So that's become probably like our second used, Black's the most used seasoning in our house. On that note, so many people that listen in love to cook ground beef. And it's like everyone that makes ground beef has their different way, but it's just like, it ends up just being this meat that doesn't, the texture sucks, doesn't taste that great. What do you think is a good way to prepare ground beef so it's actually pleasurable? What you have, I need more info. I need more info.

I need to know what's going wrong here. A lot of bros just love like, you know, just taking ground beef out and just like, you know, putting it in a pan and frying it up and it just tastes like ground beef. It doesn't taste good. Yeah. Right. So maybe what are they missing? Because like people just eat ground beef and rice ground beef and rice ground beef and rice on a diet right how can you make that ground beef something that

you look forward to i mean straight up you're missing seasoning at that point okay which is what we were talking about it it's you know i understand as well at that point if you're doing it for for a diet you know you know obviously we know that fat is also a big proponent of flavor in meat and if you have to take that out for other reasons you've got to put the flavor in other ways literally fat is so important to the flavor of meat that they have done experiments where they've taken something like an eye of round which is so super lean and they've tried to extract as much extra fat from it as possible with like a centrifuge. And then they'll take that. It's now lean beef muscle and mix it with other animal fat. And it'll taste like, so it'll now taste like ground pork if they mixed it with pork fat or ground

lamb, if they mix it with lamb fat, just speaking to the importance of fat being flavor. So if you're at like a 97, you know, lean, you got to put seasoning in it. The cool thing about, you know, having gotta put seasoning in it yeah um the cool thing about you know having a seasoning line is you work your way through it so you're doing something tex-mex

inspired use the tex-mex seasoning you want a little something different chili lime you want some fragrant all spice situations go the camo um you can we've got a jalapeno salt in the line now if you like it a little bit spicier. So that's your key without adding a lot of calories to really change up the flavor and still have a really quick and simple meal because it's like a real quick shake and you've changed the flavor immediately. Yeah, the 96% lean ground beef from Piedmontese mixed with the meat gelato that she has is amazing. And then if you have it with like rice, then it's even fucking more amazing. But a good hack for anybody listening is to add Porking Good pork rinds to the mix.

They make their – the Porking Good – fuck, I don't even know what it's called. It's just like the powder or whatever. I don't even know what that's called. Just like their own the powder or whatever. I don't even know what that's called. Is it just like their own seasoning? No, it's not even seasoning. Like panko crumbs? Panko, there you go. Sorry, I couldn't find the word.

But yeah, you dump that in there with your beef, and it's unbelievable. You add that in when you're cooking? Yeah, when you're cooking. And you'll get a big old, like every once in a while, you get a big old giant clump of it that comes in. Yeah, it's perfect. It will mix in just perfectly.

And you could also, you could throw a little cheese in there if you wanted, a little marinara sauce. And then you end up with a kind of an Italian thing going on. The plain one is the easiest one to work with because then you can kind of change it to whatever. But you could take that and you can dump that in with your ground beef

and you can turn it into anything because the panko is going to help absorb whatever flavor you put in there. So if you put like – if you want to turn it into like a buffalo wing style of thing, you can throw some wing sauce in there. I mean this just gives you a lot of options right here. So I would take that. This is the ultimate hack right here. I would treat that like a breading. I would add seasoning to that and then you could dip like chicken tenders in them and put them in the air fryer.

And they'll be crispy. Oh, shit. I'm buying this right now. Oh, you blew my fucking mind with that one. Oh, I eat so many wings. I use the red on the wings all the time. I think I have a code for it. I think you can use Mark Bell, I think.

On Amazon? Oh, just on their website. I want that shit today. I'm sorry. I told you I'm going to use your code. I'm letting the peeps want that shit today. I'm sorry. I totally would use your code. I'm letting the peeps know. All right. Oh, fuck.

Yeah, that works really good. Wow. What other seasonings and things? I like using salt and I like using some of these seasonings, but sometimes I forget about certain things like pepper and spices. Are there some side things that maybe people aren't really thinking about? One of my favorites left on is Szechuan peppercorns. Have you all ever cooked with those?

I've had them before, yeah. They're really interesting. So they actually make your mouth tingle and they have a numbing effect when you eat them. And they're not really super spicy, but they have a really nice heat to them. So I put those, you toast them up, put them in a spice grinder or coffee grinder. I put a little bit of five spice powder in. So you get your fragrant spices like star anise, cinnamon, and a little bit of salt. And you've got this like crazy different, like again, especially if you're on a diet and you want to just break things up.

It's such an easy way to just have a completely different flavor yeah so yes that's one peppercorns are a big one for me I think I've tried that before I think I used it was it was like a wet type of seasoning thing but I think it was in there because every time I would use that seasoning when I would cook stuff I'd eat the food I'd be like why's my mouth going kind of numb why is it sh tingling it's good but is there something wrong here so that's what that was yeah that's sick yeah they have it in that

have you had chili crisp before I don't know that's another condiment that always stays in my fridge it's like all these different like chilies you get that from like the Asian food markets okay yeah I've had that before okay now we gotta know like what are some other things like the In food markets? Okay, yeah, I've had that before. Yeah. I'm looking right at it. Okay, now we got to know. Yeah, shit's awesome.

What are some other things? This one? Like the, oh, is that? Yeah, well, that's the fancy hipster one, but I'm sure it's good. But there's cheap and cheaper ones too. But yes, that's conceptually it. What stays in your fridge? Like things that you think like, ah, all y'all bros need to have this in your fridges.

Fridge or counter, yeah. I always have salt on your fridges. Fridge or counter. Yeah. Um, I always have salt on my counter. Always. Uh, I have two on each side, one on each side. Like that's how I'm going to do it.

Are you a truffle salt kind of person? No, I'm a kosher salt person just because you get a bit of like, it's just more tactile to kind of sprinkle on easily. Um, I always have tallow in my fridge. So beef fat. Because I make it myself from the stuff that I cut down and from my dry age stuff as well.

And how do you utilize that? So you can use it in place of any oil. So you can use it to start pan searing something. It makes the best goddamn roast potatoes you've ever had in your life. In the oven? Or you pan fry them? In ever had in your life um uh in the oven or you pan fry them in the oven so you roast them in the beef tallow and you can even do like i think i it was insane like 15 heads of garlic in there until like so you can't feed garlic and beef tallow so i mean everything's gonna uh everything's gonna come together really

well because you got the garlic and you have the fat to help kind of infuse into the potatoes, right? Yeah, exactly. It just picks up, you know, it picks up the flavors of whatever's around it. So it's an interesting vehicle to carry that as well. So quick question about the beef tallow. Do you know if there's any difference or is it just, is there any difference between the Wagyu beef tallow versus normal beef tallow? Do you think that matters? I'm on Amazon right right now no okay so i literally posted a video about this like five days ago okay because there's been a trend of people who have put like wagyu tallow in a pan and then they'll deep fry an entire steak and be like wow it tastes just like a wagyu steak like bro if you buy three dollar pork lard and you deep fry a fucking steak is gonna taste sick like amazing

so the main difference in wagyu tallow is it's gonna have a it it's got a different titer of fat so it's like gonna be scoopable out of the fridge because it's softer whereas regular beef tallow is sort of much much harder nearly sort of flaky if you try and and and push into it but no no what about just using uh, like leftover bacon grease? Also. Also great. Good option. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, that's the thing at the end of the day. You know, there are so many ways that you can preserve and reuse so much animal fat that we have access to, and it's very, very easy to use it. I made duck fat caramels the other day, which are definitely not a diet food. What are caramels? I know.

Like the candy. But you said, do you eat carbs, though? Because we talked about bread, and you were like, RIP. Yeah. Yeah, you do? It makes my ass fat, but yeah. I love it. That's desirable.

I love food. That's my problem. Yeah, adds weight to the right spots, right? Okay. Oh, man. That was bad. I was like, can I laugh at this? We need a mix of foods, right?

You can't just always be meat and fruit and that's it. It gets to be boring at a certain point. You know, for me, it's like I have tremendous respect for people that are really dialed in on what works for them. We have had, you know, we've come across some issues

I guess every now and again where people think that we're a carnivore product and there's very small amounts of sugar in these and it's designed to just balance the flavor. Like, overall, for your macros, it's not going to hit you at all, right? But there will be people... People are a little too crazy about their sugar.

Well, but they'll be like, you've been misleading, and I'm like, except that these came out before the carnivore diet got popular. I'm sorry that I picked the cool name. So I empathize by... Hardcore carnivore?

There's fucking garlic in here. That's not carnivore. This should be a whole steer in this job. I want my money back. It's like you could have read the label. You don't understand. It's a religion. They've done that for my cookbook too

because it has the same name and people are like, this has fries in it and a salad recipe. All right, we're changing the name. It's softcore, okay? Everybody just relax. Softcorecarnivore.com, okay? Not a big deal.

No, no, it's romance novel. Yeah, just cross it out and just write on every single one of them, right? You know, I am actually really happy that you have all of that, Pat, like trademarked and all of that because it is nice pissing off carnivores. It's like the most entertaining thing to see how mad.

I mean, I know a lot of y'all are carnivore. I'm not trying to make fun of y'all, but when y'all are mad, it's funny. There's no reason to get all mad. Yeah, there isn't.

But if you are, I'll laugh at you. You make it really easy for us. No, I'm kidding. Listen, you can use this and still be on a carnivore diet. It's fine. But also you don't own the word carnivore. Yeah. How long did it take you before

this became a business? Like, were you doing, did you have a previous job where you, you know, had to wait a little bit to like leave that job and to pursue this even further? No, I was already kind of working even back then it wasn't even called an influencer, but I was already really a full-time influencer back then because I had enough sponsorship deals, recipe creations, things like that that I was funding myself. And that's why I was like, oh, I wonder what would happen. T-shirts and stuff like that,ak and bourbon, a complete meal. What if I had my own product?

Yeah. Yeah. It was just, yeah. And then that's where it came from. And now you sort of realize that you're handling this delicate baby of like, oh shit, people like this. Oh shit, I have to bring more flavors out. Like, wow, cool.

You know, and there are people who are really dedicated to our brand. And I still make every single seasoning. It starts at home in my house, blended by me. It's the way that I think it should taste. And I think the coolest part about that is that when someone likes it, it's like agreeing with you, you know, nearly like, that's cool because that's how I think steak should taste. You like it too, so yay, you know.

And you guys do eat pretty clean. I mean, you're both in good shape, so that probably helpful right it is it definitely helps as well and we try like it's it's it's like anything like we try and just be reasonable about what we eat i've tried to personally cut out all dessert or sugar just because that's that so for me, that's like a, the door is either all the fucking way open or it's shut. Game on. That's fair. So if I just don't do it, it doesn't become a thing. He has a whole snack cupboard you can ask him about.

And he's able to actually have moderation with that shit. Like when I buy bags or something, I eat the whole bag. You ain't going to see me take a few and then, okay, put it back. No. Do you have to like go in another room when he does that? You're like, I gotta go somewhere else. No, because I save my calories for steak. I save it for

the fat, the beef fat that's in my... We've done a lot of pork belly lately too. Oh! Pork belly! I've got a pork belly air fryer recipe for you. Oh, let's go! You're gonna lose your shit. Can we talk about it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. What do you do?

Buy the strips. Okay. Cut them up into about two inch strips. Okay. So like buy a belly, cut it into two inch strips and then make incisions so it's like a hedgehog but not all the way through. Is it this thing? That's pork belly burnt ends. Oh god. So they're also really good. This is ridiculous. Oh man. This is on your YouTube channel? Yeah. Yo, I love pork belly burn ends oh god so they're also really good oh man this is on

your youtube channel yeah yo i don't know yeah yeah so that's a that's a thing that's about to happen um but you cut it into strips you put it in the air fryer for like a 390 for 20 minutes then turn it over another 20 minutes and then you season it because otherwise the seasoning will burn and 400 for five minutes. And they come out like crispy. I just filmed a video. I haven't, I haven't released it yet.

Otherwise I'd be like, look, look, look. But, um, it's yeah, that they come out like crispy,

ridiculous, delicious. I have a quick question. How do people know sometimes if, uh, their pork belly is ready to eat? Cause I, the amount of time that you just mentioned there,

I'm just like, damn, have I ever cooked pork belly that long? Sometimes I eat the pork belly and I'm like, mmm, soft. But it's good. I did a good job on this one. I'm like, I could be taking a risk right now, but I'm pretty sure I'm okay. So when do you know your pork belly is safe to eat? Pork belly is an interesting one, right? Because you've got big seams of fat that you have to render.

And it tastes better when it's rendered. It's softened. It's like a nicer mouthfeel. But also, basically, the meat as it cooks is going to tense up and then relax again. And that's why you want to cook it so long. I'm so fat that I know exactly how that tastes. My previous fat self knows all about that. I can tell it's like caramelized.

It's got a little sweetness to it. How quickly do you release your podcasts? Pretty fast. Yeah? Yeah. Like maybe this one in three to five days. Yeah, early next week. Oh, I can probably tell you then

Because we'll do it by that stage That we're about to bring out A burnt end sauce Oh shit Let's go That's gonna be good Yeah That's gonna be really good

That's It's very dangerous That's why there's been A lot of pork belly in our house Yes You probably haven't Cooked pork belly in the oven Though have you

You probably just cooked Like fry it up or something I air fry that shit man Yeah yeah That's great though Yeah It's great, though. So I made some crispy pork belly bites. Basically, I tried to make burn-ins, but they ended up like Chinese

char siu. You can't fuck it up. Right? Even if it's squishy, it's still pretty good. Also, the air fryer doesn't take very long to get super hot, right? It doesn't. I mean, it gets right to the temperature pretty quickly. So you probably don't have to cook it that long, probably. Maybe a little longer.

I think that's right. I think I've been taking risks. I truly have been taking risks. What about eating some raw food? What are the risks involved with that, being a meat scientist? So the idea is that there's bacteria on the outside of everything, on us, everything on this table. So if you take a steak, there's bacteria all over the outside of it, but it's effectively sterile on the inside, which is why you can eat it rare.

But if you were to run that through a grinder and mix the bacteria and the sterile meat together, that's why you have to cook ground meat to a different temperature. Having said that, that's the lowest common denominator, like stopping Darwinism in its tracks, right? We have a really good food safety system here in the United States, so you can take controlled risks. So I will eat steak tartare at a good restaurant. I mean, I'll eat soft-boiled eggs. I'll eat sushi.

All of those are, you know, I mean, how many times have you seen on a menu, like the consumption of oysters and undercooked food? Like it's just the warning. I probably wouldn't eat it at certain restaurants. It's a common sense thing, you know, but yeah, I'm, I'm, I eat it for sure. It just has to do with time, right? Because like we were, you know, we've obviously used to eat stuff raw. We didn't always have such great access to fire but it's the amount of time uh right so from the time the animal's killed and there could be like so many different things that happens to uh that particular meat by the time it gets on your plate or to your home right it's usually pretty controlled all the way up until it gets to the grocery store and then it's obviously the

mercy mercy of the groceries or the butcher shop as to, like, are they keeping it at the right temperature? It's mainly a temperature thing more than anything. Yeah, you don't know if they had it in the display case for a day or two, and then they had to freeze it again or whatever. I mean, they're not supposed to do stuff like that, but they probably do sometimes. Probably.

Right. It's like the guy spitting in your burger at McDonald's. You know, like, we've seen videos of, like, does that happen in every Big Mac? No. But does it happen? Probably. Probably. It's like the guy spitting in your burger at McDonald's. We've seen videos of, like, does that happen in every Big Mac? No. But does it happen? Probably. Yeah, so it's just, and bacteria will rapidly double and grow the more time you leave it exposed.

But the two biggest risks on the animal for contamination are the hide and the gut contents so that's why there's really really strict measures in place it's amazing deer and elk are much more forgiving than cattle as well um otherwise you'd have like a lot of sick hunters like from some of the shit that i've seen the way that people process their animals like like wild. But yeah, you just have to be really careful taking the hide off. And there's very strict processes in the slaughterhouses themselves about what happens once the carcass comes off. And it usually gets a lactic acid or a hot water spray once it's a side of beef before it goes into the chiller for bacteria control as well. Have you explored some stuff with uh whether meat is

negatively impacting our environment is that something that you've looked into much at all or what are your thoughts on that so i i i obviously you know understand that that's a part of of doing what i do being carnivorous um it's not something that i can speak to with a level of of assurity as some you know other people um I know that it's a lot maligned I know that regenerative farming uh and sustainable grazing are great options I know that 60 percent of the land that's currently used for agriculture could not be used for crops so you're taking because it's you know too rocky or unsustainable so you're taking an area that couldn't be used for that and turning it into food for humans um you can take spent brewers grains which are inedible from human for humans and put them into an animal and turn that in that's upcycling you know

um and more than anything i think the thing is especially when it comes to cattle three percent of greenhouse gas emissions are because of cattle. The most, more likely you'll hear the number about 20%. That's globally. So 3% in the US. So you doing meat, not you, anyone else doing Meatless Monday, you're going to, you will save more carbon emissions taking one less international flight a year than being vegetarian for a year.

Wow. Just for context. Or planning your trips than being vegetarian for a year. Wow. Just for context. Or planning your trips to the grocery store more efficiently. Correct. Something like that. So I think that sustainability and particularly animal welfare is something that the industry is taking very seriously and they should. And it's a conversation that we need to have for ourselves and the next generation. But I do think that there's like a completely reasonable middle ground that we can move forward and it's not impossible meat

It's not the impossible burger. Yeah, have you tried it? I have so what should scare the shit out of you about the impossible burger is all of the regulations that surround me None of them surround that so they can make any claim they want and there's no laws that exist that stop them from doing that Because it's uncharted territory. So what, like, let me ask you this. Are they making any claims where you've seen that you're like, oh, yeah. Like what? Like what? Mainly about the sustainability aspect of it.

The model, first of all, no one has scaled it to the point where it could actually replace meat. meat. The amount of fields that they would need to grow the soy proteins that they use to emulate the myoglobin change would be, surpass what is needed for livestock. Like, it's not scalable. So, there's

a lot of conversations that need to happen. Everything right now is hypotheses with no proof. But it tastes just like beef. Except shitter. It doesn't taste like beef. To me, it doesn't taste like beef. It's a facsimile. It's like carob. Did you ever get that when you were a kid? Someone tried

to give you carob instead of chocolate and you're like, it's sick. You're like, nope. Doesn't work. Immediately, no. Yeah, a friend of mine because he was trying to stop eating as much meat and he had the impossible burger. He's like, it's just like steak. And I had one. I'm like, dog, this is shit.

It's disgusting. How do you deal with some of your social media? Do you get inflammatory comments here and there? And do you bother or do you just post and ghost? Or how do you handle it? I used to give a shit. Social media has gotten so much worse. And I have to keep adopting the new profiles

you know like i'm old i'm 42 and and you know i shouldn't be on tiktok and yet i am so uh being on there and and like just knowing that you're the old people on there is a thing um i've seen a huge rise in people just being bitches for the sake of being bitches and trolling for the sake of trolling. And so I usually just don't bother responding. If someone has a genuine question, I think it's important to engage. But there's some stupid stuff that would make me stupid to dedicate my time responding to it. On TikTok, I'm just curious because it seems that there's a, the best word is just, there's a lot of wokeness on TikTok.

So when you talk about, I don't know what your TikTok profile looks like, but I'm assuming there's meat, there's barbecue, there's seasonings, and maybe Gen Z is angry at that. Is there any of that that's ringing bells or am I totally off? So I did a TikTok where,

no, you're right. that's what's on there and I do a lot of meat myth busting where I'll like find other TikToks and be like let me tell you what's going on here actually. So I found one and I didn't realize how big the account was and it's these really young dudes and they're like we're gonna check this steak and see how it compares, $60 steak compared to a

$4 steak and they bought like literally the most tender muscle and then one of the most, you know, toughest and then he's like i i just i like i don't know why this is four bucks it's this much steak i don't know why this is four bucks i don't know if it's gonna look like give me a disease or something so i did it like stitch with it where i'm like i don't know why you think it's cool to act dumb but real quick and i and i'm like hey let me let me explain to you how beef pricing works let me explain to you how beef pricing works. Let me explain to you how these da-da-da.

And I kind of made fun of them. Well, I didn't realize that they had three million followers. And they did a follow-up, which I'm sitting here laughing, honestly, because all it did was boost my engagement through the roof, which is not what I intended, but I'll take it as a side effect. But all of their

fans were like, brah, it's just a joke. Don't you know it's just a joke? I'm like, I weep for the next sense of humor. They're not even going to think Saturday Night Live is funny in their generation. Saturday Night Live has gotten a little bit unfunny over the past few years. Not as funny as it used to be. Well, everyone says that. But yes, I agree.

I agree. It was a bad example. I guess what I'm saying is, you know, they're like, brah, they're just making it for entertainment, brah. Brah. That's a good American bro accent. You hit that one on the head. Yeah.

Yeah. I can do it from time to time. It works. I want to know about this. Because you mentioned that you were a – fuck, what is it? Recipe designer for a while, right? You created recipes. That is something I haven't heard about much.

So if someone loves to cook and they love creating new stuff, how do they get into selling their recipes to people if that's a thing? So there's two ways you can do it. So the way that I did it is I obviously have, you know, I have big social media profiles. So it starts with companies coming to you to try and promote your product. And then at the same time,

like when you have the bigger contracts, they'll be like, hey, can you also develop recipes for this, that, and the other? So I work with Kingsford Charcoal. You'll find some of my recipes on the bags of some of their products. If you want to do it without the public-facing thing, it's a food economists do that.

So they're like every brand that you're involved in, even Carnivore Crisps, you know, or the Pork Guys, they can hire people to make recipes for them. So when you go to their website, there are recipes there. And usually they're food economists that do that. There are people who ghost write cookbooks like that because maybe someone's a celebrity that doesn't really cook that well or wants you to buy their book.

That wasn't me. I wrote my whole book. But, you know, and they'll work with someone like that on that too. So it's really just getting in there and testing it and testing it again to making sure it works and taking out the variables. And just, you, you have to make sure the recipe works. Okay.

Yeah. Do you learn about, um, like the digestion of meat and stuff like that too? Being somebody. Not as much. Not as much. We, we, we, we generally deal with it to the point of consumption and no further. Not past that. No, not so much past that.

Food scientists kind of do that, right? They do, and nutritionists would do a lot of that as well. It's just meat science in itself is so specific. A lot of people are like, what happens when you cook it this way? I'm like, well, that's a thermodynamics thing. That's like a food science thing. That's not even a meat science thing because you're talking about the reaction that happens from the cooking itself.

So it's nearly like doctor specialities. Yes, they're all doctors, but you have your areas of expertise for sure. So I just, I don't know, I was fascinated with the idea of like, well, how can you make it more tender? And why is there so much stuff that affects it? And I just, I think it's really neat to empower yourself like now to be able to stand at a meat case and be like i know what that is i know that's a really good value cut that's awesome i feel great you know that's what feels really good about it who's like the standing champion at this butcher thing that you're going to their current reigning champs are ireland and the problem is

i've got friends on the australian brazilian american uh and a couple of other icelandic uk teams um so it's gonna be i have to remain impartial i have to remain impartial but it's uh it's gonna be brutal because butchers you know they're gonna give each other a lot of it's gonna be great brazilian steakhouse i'm really curious about what those brazilians are gonna make how do you watch this thing like is it is it on going to be live yeah they're going to live stream it um from their youtube channel but yeah if y'all want to come you just come as my guest but um they they will be live streaming it and you'll be able to see these guys literally three and a half hours and actually the biggest somebody cooks some of this stuff up you get to eat some

of the stuff uh they're to probably donate it to... Like local restaurants? Yeah, or charities like to feed the homeless is generally what they do with that, as long as there's nothing in the way of them preventing them to do that. Yeah, it's going to be sick. So they have three and a half hours to do it, but the challenge is normally in a butcher shop they're in a cool room. And if y'all know,all know well you might not know it's really really hard to cut up fat when it starts

getting soft when it starts warming up um and they're going to be in a in in an arena warmer so it's going to be a real challenge for them to work really quickly it's it's it's going to be really interesting wow yeah it's kind of neat, huh? Yeah, that's really cool. It's a real craft. It's a real lost art. The meat industry moved to just sending things out pre-cut to grocery stores. That was the other reason it was really hard to find certain cuts because they would just identify what was selling,

grind everything else because America always wants ground beef, and just ship out what there was demand for. So you had to go to maybe a small butcher who was breaking down the whole carcass and you could ask for a tri-tip. But if the guy before you bought the tri-tip, well, that's it. That's the only one tri-tip per side. So the art of butchery was nearly lost for a while there until it sort of started to become a resurgence.

And we started to break down whole animals again instead of just getting them in plastic. I'm curious since you know a lot about different meat prices and all that. But let's say like there's a college student listening and all they really know, like they're like, I can't afford ribeyes. All they really know about is eating a bunch of ground beef and they want to buy some really good tasting meat, except they don't have the budget. So what would be the best cuts that are generally a little bit less expensive that they could afford? I think tri-tip is a great cut. The other thing is it's going to cost you more up front, but if you can buy bigger pieces and cut them into smaller steaks yourself um that will that will help too um the best value that you can possibly get is to buy what's called a top blade roast and you can cut flat iron steaks

out of that and these flat iron steaks end up being about this big each um they can feed three they can feed one of you three of someone else and they end up being like seven bucks each whoa yeah and they're really tender and they're really packed with flavor they're one of my favorite steaks so top blade roasts and generally you have to try to go to a butcher to find that you're not just gonna be able to go to raley's and you can so the other thing is you should always try and talk to your butcher or your meat market even at your local grocery store now some of them will be like sorry i don't know what you're talking about and some of them will have programs where as long as you're willing to pay for it they'll order it in for you they can order anything they just need

notice so it can never hurt to ask okay yeah you got anything over there andrew i'm just like googling top blade roast where and like nothing even comes up like near me or anything like that so it's you might even be able to buy them as flat irons, which are also not expensive. So if you can see a flat iron steak, just grab that. It's great, great value steak. Got it. Um, so what about like, uh, cause I think I could be way wrong, but I, somebody had told me, I think it was Michaela Peterson that like Costco imports their meat from Australia. Um, if that's true, is there anything weird about importing meat? Or has that been all on the up and up? Or should we still just focus on getting our meat locally?

No, it's completely on the up and up. There are some, you know, it just depends what you want. So not all Costco meat is imported. All their lamb is from Australia. That's what it was. It was their lamb. I'm sorry. You have shit lamb in America.

Let's go. Sorry. Sorry. We have a lot of lamb in Australia per capita as well. So it's like anything, right? Like we talked about like get it where it's best from. So it's the lamb that is normally imported. All of Chipotle's meat is imported. Beef is imported because they need it to be grass-fed,

and America does not produce enough grass-fed beef to feed Chipotle. So that's all from Australia too. Wow. But anything that's imported to the United States as a meat still has to pass USDA FSIS requirements, so it's still like they go and approve their facilities to be able to export it. So yes, it's safe.

Yes, it's up to scratch. What's the deal with factory farming? We hear a lot about that. Do you know much about that? I know heaps about it. What do you want to know? Well, I just don't know much about it. Because there seems to be a lot of regulations,

especially here in the United States, are there practices that are still just foul and just way outside of what their regulations should be, I guess? So everything usually works within the regulations. It's mainly more that there's a distaste for people about what just happens when you produce anything on a scale like that. The other concern for some people is that there's four main companies that control the industry. And, and, you know, you know, I'm not going to try and pretend that there's not some issues with pricing and that they've had to watch them controlling, uh, supply and demand and things like that. But I think where people really get stuck is the idea that there are these

factories like, you know, Simpsons did a great, great version where the animals go in and get treated just like a commodity and shipped out. So first of all, every cow or steer in America is born on a ranch and is born onto grass. If it's a beef cow, it'll spend some time with its mama and then go to grass and then go to a feedlot. So nothing is born on concrete and done that way. The other thing is, and I didn't know this because I grew up in Melbourne, 5 million people, urban as fuck, did not have any agriculture classes. So there's a thing going on in California at the moment called Prop 12 where they're trying to ban the import of any pork from other states

that use what we call sow stalls, right? And it's one of those things that's just not that simple. If you are a farmer or you've ever raised pigs, you'll know the very first thing that a mother pig will do if you leave it alone with these babies is sit on them and potentially kill them. They have really weird maternal instincts. So they keep them in these sow stalls, in these confined areas for the safety of the mothers and the babies. And there's some stuff that they have to do to animals that is just because it is on that scale,

which is probably a little less palatable. But there's other stuff like that that gets completely lost in translation in terms of like, well, what's actually going to be better? There's been a lot of work done into animal welfare to try and increase. Anthony Bourdain said it once in one of his books that, you know, there's a direct correlation between animal welfare and good quality meat. And so if you want good quality meat, you effectively have to look after the animal.

And so they really work in tandem and the industry has been trying to do a lot for that. I've been in processing plants. I've been on slaughter floors. I've seen dodgier shit in small areas. I support the entire industry as a whole. I hate the narrative that like knowing where your meat comes from makes a difference um i think it's a scare tactic for people honestly meaning like oh if you buy from the guy locally at the farmer's market well i've seen know your local farmer i always think that's bullshit too i mean why why why doesn't it why doesn't a farmer in vermont earn your dollars as much as a farmer in california they both came from farmers originally you know and someone is working hard to make those dollars in America either way.

Yeah, it's part of the reason why I brought it up. I mean, again, I'm sure there's plenty of practices that are outside the lines, but there are a lot of regulations and it really wouldn't suit you well to mistreat the animals because it wouldn't be good quality meat. And eventually I'm sure your practice would probably get, your farm would probably get shut down if that was the case. And I haven't personally visited a slaughterhouse. I haven't personally been behind the scenes, but just in driving by and seeing cows

and just observing them for long periods of time, they're herd animals. They hang out on top of each other. 100%. And people are like, I don time, like they're herd animals, like they hang out on top of each other. 100%. And people are like, I don't like that they're so close to, they're so close to each other, so close to each other. You'll go and look at a field, the field will be gigantic and all the cows are literally

on top of each other. Like they're choosing that. They're not in a cage, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Like they're all huddled in the one area that, yeah, that's what's natural to them. And that's why it's actually more humane to keep them all together at the slaughterhouse like right before they go up into the ramp um they've learned with pigs that they they've they've designed the shoots to be curved

and they'll paint the sides of them red because it calms the pig in the peripheral vision if they can't see where they're going the animal's much calmer so they've changed a lot of those practices to keep the animal as calm as possible right up until slaughter. And the slaughter process itself, like, you know, I'm a hunter. I'm a rifle hunter. My number one aim is to drop that animal as quickly as possible. I personally, this is just my opinion, think that I've seen more inhumane bow hunting from people who are like, I want to get back to what it was like back in the day.

It's like, yeah, but the animal's running. I promise you that pig, that sheep, that steer is not running in a slaughterhouse. It is over like that. So we've got to consider that as well. How does it get killed? So for beef, they have what they call a captive bolt. It just goes right into the brain or something, right? Yeah.

So it renders them. It's a big bolt that shoots out. I love this. Here, I'll show you exactly how it's done. The funny thing is that some of this is true. Like the sluicing, the collecting of the blood in a giant sluice. That's true. Oh, my God.

So the bolt goes, it cracks their skull and goes into their brain and it renders them unconscious. And then they are shackled by their hind leg, lifted up, and they're bled out and it's actually the exsanguination that kills them. But they're non-responsive at this point. But that's another thing that a lot of people don't understand. Like, you know, if you don't understand what brain dead is, but the body's still alive,

then you're not going to really understand why that's a completely humane practice. With pigs, they usually gas them. They used to use electrodes on their heads. They now just lower them into gas, and it's much more humane too. Yeah, none of it's ever going to sound good, but it's like, how do we get our food?

Yeah. Do you know how many animals die from crop machines? That's why no food is vegan. Because you couldn't actually, like the amount of field mice and things like that. And most of the time, the best arguments that vegan can make is that, like, is the sentience of those animals different to a larger animal? And it's just, it's ridiculous. Why don't they gas cows? Might sound dumb, but I'm like, they gas pigs ridiculous. Why don't they gas cows? Might sound dumb but I'm like they gas pigs but why don't they gas cows? They're too big and they don't need to. The pigs are much more aware.

They are and much more squirrely. Cows will just move in front of the next one in front of them. So they're safer to do with captive voles. Andrew, want to take us out of here, buddy? Sure thing. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode.

Real quick shout out to all the vegans that do watch our podcast. They never comment until a conversation like today pops up. So thanks for watching, guys. Appreciate it. And everyone else, drop us a comment down below also on anything you guys found interesting today. And hit that like button and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already uh please follow the podcast at mb power project on instagram tiktok and twitter my instagram tiktok and twitter is at i am andrew z and sema where you at hit up the discord it's in the description uh and if you are angry about

anything that was mentioned here let us know we are curious about your thoughts it doesn't help us at all if you comment. At and see me on Instagram and YouTube. At and see me on TikTok and Twitter. Jess, where can people find you and all the seasonings? Jess Pryles on everything. Hardcore Carnival on everything. And let them know, not me, because I'm not interested.

No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Hey, give our fans like a percentage off or something. Can we make something up? Like 10% off or something? Yeah. Can we make a code? Yeah. 10% off or something? Can we make a code? We'll do a-

Power project? We'll do power project for, it'll be active for a little bit from once this goes live for 10% off. There we go. All right. Guys, really buy a fuck ton of those seasonings because they're really fucking-

It makes a big difference. It makes a big difference, man. I'm at Mark Smiley Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.