Dinners should be pretty simple. Since most of the restaurants I go to place a high value on using locally sourced & fresh ingredients, I’ll just keep going to those places. I have a rough life, I know.
Lunches get a lot trickier. Does the hole-in-the wall Mexican place I go to every week use processed foods? It’s so cheap, it’s hard to imagine that they don’t. The huge spit of lamb-beef combo meat at the Mediterranean restaurant is pretty questionable. Clearly, I need some more standards, targeted at restaurants.Guideline 1: A Restaurant Should Cook All Its Own Food
The basic idea here is that if a restaurant gets its food from a central distributor (I’m thinking pre-made chicken nuggets, French fries, etc.), then the food’s probably gone through quite a bit of processing.
On the other hand, if a restaurant makes all food in-house, they don’t need to rely on preservatives to make the food last longer or chemicals to drive down the costs.
I think my Mexican hole-in-the-wall is OK. They clearly cook all their own food and I can see that the amount of “processing” is minimal, if non-existent. The tortillas are hand-made daily, and the meats are cooked when I order it, and salsas are made from scratch.
Guideline 2: Understand All the Ingredients
This mirrors my earlier guideline of “You Have To Know What It Is.” If I want to avoid processed foods, I should avoid ordering things where I have to wonder how it’s made. This helps on several levels – I can avoid certain ingredients like cheap processed cheese, and I canAgain, the Mexican hole-in-the-wall is totally OK. I see & understand everything that comprises a taco. The delicious lamb-beef combo meat (I still don’t know how they make that stuff) is definitely out.
I'm sure I'm missing something... Thoughts?
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I agree with both of your principles, but I don't necessarily agree with your assessment of kebab. I mean, yes, it's clearly been prepared somehow, but it's also pretty clear what it is: fatty meat pressed together on a big stick somehow. Unhealthy, yes, but unless you're giving up bacon, I don't think the kebab has to go.
ReplyDeleteI decided to look into it: "The most common and authentic method is to stack seasoned slices of lean meat onto a vertical skewer in the shape of a cylinder. The stack is cooked by radiant infrared heat from electric elements or gas fired burners. Often, tomatoes, and onions are placed at the top of the stack to drip juices over the meat keeping it moist."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Döner_kebab