Processed Meat
This post is inspired by being in Korea again and eating a national delicacy called Budae Jjigae (Buda Chigay). From my “Seoul Food” post last May, some of you will recall that we roughly translate the name of this delightful dish as “Army Stew.” It is a spicy sausage stew made with canned baked beans, kimchi, ramen noodles, and gochujang, which features Spam, Vienna sausages, hotdogs, and several yet-to-be-identified cold cuts. It is a cornucopia of processed meats, a food type that critics have recently treated harshly. As I was sitting and enjoying the wonder of Korea’s tribute to the American G.I., I was motivated to make a defense on behalf of the delicatessen wonder of meat that comes in cans and tubes.
For instance, the humble hotdog has served as the main dish for hundreds of our family cookouts, primarily because it’s almost as much fun to roast as it is to eat. But this nostalgic perception of tube steak tends to undervalue the wiener’s ability to balance the family budget while providing a ready source of protein. Because of its general utility in our culture, we tend to think of the hot dog as American food, conveniently forgetting its German roots as the Frankfurter sausage. Especially when we pair it with baseball, this ballpark delicacy tends even to take on religious overtones. But now, along with the whole family of processed meats, hot dogs have gotten an increasingly bad rap from the so-called health conscious. I think the appropriate response to this is, “Bologna!”
Now I’m not going to deny that the nutritional value of processed meats deserves some scrutiny. Those cryptic little charts the FDA has imposed on a package of my favorite salami can be a little sobering. Fortunately, almost everything is in Hangul in Korea, so I don’t even know whether a package’s contents are a health hazard. If it looks interesting, I eat it. My son’s housekeeper/master chef knows her way around both Hangul and Korea’s glorious assortment of processed meats. So I feel fully vindicated in my callous attitude toward food value assessments on packaging while devouring her delightful dishes.
Rather than refuting the national addiction to reading food value labels, I prefer to make my case for processed meats on a more spiritual level. Early in my life, bologna literally saved my religion. Growing up, trips to church were long, arduous affairs driving around lake Pend Oreille. The scenery was gorgeous, and the opportunity to track wildlife along the way was remarkable. But for a growing adolescent, the trip home was long enough to give me a deep spiritual understanding of Jesus’ forty foodless days in the wilderness. I confess to being less spiritually resilient than our Lord and would have welcomed the transformation of a few rocks into caramel rolls. Fortunately, my parents got ahead of the game. After a quick stop at the grocery store, my mom started handing pieces of bologna wrapped in slices of white bread over the back seat. To this day, I still love the culinary cringe of plain bologna on white bread, and behold, I still have a positive attitude toward church attendance.
Jerky is the one processed meat that escapes negative press, likely because it does not come in a can or a tube. Soaked in brine and smoked within an inch of its life, jerky is truly a miracle of the modern food industry. Today’s public has only recently discovered jerky as a laudable source of protein in a nearly incorruptible state, easily carried for consumption while on the go. It’s a pity this new constituency often fails to grasp the historical significance of those same traits during the thousands of years of jerky’s use by aboriginal people, traders, and explorers.
Jerky has other important uses that often go unnoticed. I don’t think my three adult children know why they have such a positive relationship with jerky. I insist it is because jerky played an essential role in their development before their conscious memory kicked in. At that crucial teeth-cutting stage, I transform an unfortunate deer into venison jerky. I soon discovered that those chunky strips were ideally suited to chewing our children’s new teeth into existence. Adding some high-quality protein to their diet was a pure bonus.
Unlike jerky, SPAM skulks around in the darkest corners of the public antipathy for processed meat. Naming it in polite company is often considered a cultural joke. However, more than the vaulted hotdog, SPAM is the most genuinely American of all processed meats since its name is an acronym for Specially Processed American Meat. It was bravely carried into battle by American servicemen for decades and now deserves more esteem in its native land. However, one must come to Korea to truly appreciate its lasting heritage. The Korean people have a much different societal attitude toward SPAM. There are Koreans with living memory of their family’s health and survival depending on the gift of SPAM, which was shipped in abundance to American G.I.s and distributed to the war-torn populace following the Korean Conflict. Koreans love SPAM. Their grocery stores have sections filled with various SPAM flavors, and Koreans give each other gift packages of assorted SPAM for holidays. You’re lucky in an American grocery store to find a single can of SPAM hidden behind the green beans.
On the whole, I have a very positive relationship with processed meats. If we’re willing to admit it, most of us baby boomers do. I grew up eating and loving Vienna sausages, smoked oysters, canned sardines, deviled ham, and so many other tin-clad delicacies. I have no plans to stop eating them, no matter how silly our society gets about its modern dietary practices. My nomadic life has only heightened this resolve. Travel opens the palate for the possibility of many new experiences, but sometimes you need a home base. No matter where I roam, the presence of thinly sliced corned beef, sauerkraut, swiss, and thousand island dressing on fresh rye bread is succor indeed. Nothing says “home” like a Reuben sandwich.