🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 19:01:43 +0000 (UTC), Paul Wylie 
   <paul@teamwylie.removemunged.org> wrote:

> In phx.eats Wotan <wotan@not.netcom> wrote:
>> No no no.
> 
>> After you kill the spammer, you demonstrate your hatred of waste by 
>> serving long pig to your freinds and family.  Any marinade you use for 
>> pork should work fine.
> 
> But see, marinading is the wrong technique for pork.  Pork is too dry and 
> therefore needs to be brined.  You can use many of the same seasonings and 
> flavorings in a brine as you would in a marinade, but the key difference 
> is a marinade is based around an acidic ingredient (wine, vinegar, etc.) 
> while brines use plain old salt (and frequently sugar) in some kind of 
> liquid (usually water or broth).

Which is why "sweet & sour" pork became common (a brine using both salt
and sugar), and why "salt pork" was such a staple.

However, the term 'marinade' can be used to include any soaking of meat
to preserve it, including in brine as well as the more common vinegar or
oil combinations.  Indeed, the origin of the term is from Spanish (via
French) where it meant "to preserve meat in seawater" (from the same
root as 'marine') or brine.  Possibly the French used wine or vinegar
instead, with their well-known aversion to water...

> It's difficult to know whether spammers truly are swine, or if they only 
> act like them, so it'll require an _America's Test Kitchen_-style cookoff 
> to find the best cooking methods.  It should only take 30-40 dead spammers 
> for the research.

I think it should be more thorough than that, we need to test it with
spammers from all around the world.  Chinese ones might be better in a
sweet & sour marinade, for instance, whereas Japanese ones should use
one based on saki.  Quite what is best to do with Americans I'm not sure
(but then no one has ever known what to do about Americans)...

Chris C