Carnivorous mead!      If there's a paleo alcoholic beverage, that's gotta be i! 

Now I'm wondering.  Do chuck roasts from Slankers have that much fat?

A few weeks ago I was about to buy a dehydrator and asked for suggestions here.  But then it occurred to me that I sometimes dry socks in front of a fan and it takes only a couple of hours.  Then I happened to read somewhere that air movement has a greater drying effect than heat.

So I hung some strips in front of a window fan.  They  got dry enough to be chewy in about two or three hours and completely dry by the end of the day, maybe eight or twelve hours.  My strips are about 1/8" or 3/16" thick.

Once I saw how great this works, I bought a couple of "kebab racks" for $4.99 each.  These are teflon-covered mini grills that clamp together like long clamshells.  You can put strips of meat on them and clamp them shut.  I hang the racks in front of the fan.

I've done this on plates too, but it takes longer because water can evaporate from only one side of the meat.  I also tried paper plates (which wick water away from the underside of the meat) but bits of paper stick to the meat.

I can't remember if I've tried this on an extremely humid day, but it wasn't particularly dry when I did it.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any need for a dehydrator for meat.

I buy a lot of  roasts and slice them into strips or bite-sized pieces.  I've been sharpening my knives fanatically but they don't do a good job, especially when trying to cut thin, long, uniform slices for drying.

It seems to me that a sashimi knife (the kind used by chefs in Japanese restaurants) would be the perfect tool.  Has anyone tried this, or does anyone have a different recommendation?

I'm thinking in particular of getting a Masamoto KS (white steel) 30 cm yanagiba.   They cost almost $400 with shipping but since it will be practically my only kitchen implement, what the hell. 

http://www.japanesechefsknife.com/KSSeriesHonKasumiGyokuhakukou.html

I can't stand the taste of raw ground beef either.

It's just the 75% lean I don't like, and I think maybe it's because something yucky got ground into that one batch.  I never ordered it before so I don't know if this batch is different than usual.

I also bought 87% lean from the same place (US Wellness) and I like it raw.  It's not because of the fat content.  They taste very different.

I tried store-bought grainfed and it was awful. I later tried the chili meat grind from Slankers and I didn't like it either. I tried dehydrating it (at 95*F, well below the threshold to keep the good enzymes) and it came out great. I ate it fresh out of the dehydrator so it was warm and it was a welcome change from the texture of raw meat. It's still very fatty so you couldn't use the dehydrating to store the meat but it's a thought to consider if the meat in the freezer isn't so good. Better than tossing it out.

I'll try dehydrating some.  Thanks for the idea.  Do you spread it out in a thin layer or what?

Yeah I thought soy sauce would be nice but it tends to give me migraines so I avoid it.  

Even though raw meat reminded me of sashimi I felt no desire to put wasabi on it.  But cilantro and onions and cucumber and salt and lemons came to mind immediately, even though I normally don't eat those things.  (Onions give me migraines too, even a small amount.)

I don't have any special complaints that I'm trying to solve with diet, except that I gained some abdominal fat over the summer because I ate tons of fruit.  But that's been going away because I made my diet more ketogenic (less carbs, less excess protein, more saturated fat).

I dislike starting a public journal because it implies an obligation to keep going, and for all I know, I'll lose interest tomorrow.

But here goes.

A few days ago I stumbled across this forum and was impressed by the fact that lots of people eat raw meat without getting sick.

Reading about food made me hungry, and eventually I went to the refrigerator and took out a package of Northstar bison that had been defrosting overnight.   Without much thought, I cut off three narrow strips and put them on a plate.

The idea of eating these dense cold red strips didn't seem strange.  They reminded me of tuna sashima.  Raw fish has been one of my favorite foods since I was a small boy, when my father took me to a Japanese restaurant for the first time.   That was nearly a half century ago.

It's odd how certain old memories seem vivid and completely certain.  A half century later, I can still see the simple, elegant interior of the restaurant -- at least it seems as if I can.   I remember the waitresses in their obis and spangled kimonos smiling at me in the way that women do with children.

One of the waitresses put a tray with nigiri sushi before me.   I had never seen it before.  I couldn't believe how good it tasted.  The combination of raw fish, wasabi, soy sauce and (forgive me, I'm being honest) sugary vinegared rice -- it was like nothing I had ever tasted, but fantastically good.  As good as chocolate cake, but utterly unlike chocolate cake!

So here I was two nights ago, a half century later, long past the age when pretty young women dote on me for no particular reason, looking at three narrow strips of bright red buffalo muscle, thinking it looked like sashimi and not put off in the least.

I should mention that I only started eating grass fed meat about two weeks ago.  My first reaction to grass fed beef, when I ate it cooked,  was that it tastes a bit like fish.  Maybe that's my reaction to the higher omega 3 content.

I tasted one of the raw bison strips cautiously.  It tasted quite good.   I liked it.  In fact I liked it very much.   

The meat was very lean, though, and I'm trying to stay in ketosis as much as possible because I gained a bit of abdominal fat over the summer, so I added a few small pieces of grass fed butter to the plate and ate them with the other two strips.  They didn't go well together.

I waited a few hours to see I would get sick, but I felt fine.  Later that night I ate most of the rest of the bison together with some cucumber slices.  For some reason I felt like adding salt, although I rarely do, so I did.  It was a fine meal.

All together I ate about 14 ounces of raw meat on my first day.

... so what are the reasons FOR cooking?

Until a couple days ago I would have said the main reason is killing pathogens.   If that's not an issue, then I don't think there are any good reasons.

Another thing I've always disliked about cooking meat is that (in my kitchen at least, where the ventilation is poor) fat vaporizes and condenses on the walls and makes everything greasy.

I ate another six ounces of raw liver last night.  This time I was struck not by the slimy texture or unfamiliar taste or beautiful beet-like color but by the fact that I was nourishing myself by eating another living thing's body.  

Of course we do that all the time when we eat muscle, but I'm used to that.  This was the animal's liver, the vital center of its metabolism, one of the cornerstones of its life force.   It had a sort of spiritual impact.

And the liquid was so red, and looked so much like fresh blood.  It was on my hands and all over the plate.  I felt like a real carnivore, like a lion in a Youtube video with its face immersed in a zebra's flank.  

It was sobering.

Until yesterday it had never occurred to me to eat raw meat.    I've always assumed it could be dangerous.  But yesterday I stumbled across this forum and read for several hours.  Lex's journal made a particularly big impression.

I noticed that there are a lot of people here eating raw meat -- even rotten raw meat -- and very little sickness.

Reading about food made me hungry, so after a while I went to the refrigerator and took out a package of Northstar ground bison which had been defrosting overnight.   I had been planning to cook it.  I sliced off three narrow strips and ate it standing at the counter.   It tasted good.   It tasted like a kind of sashimi.  Really, it tasted quite good.

A couple of hours went by and I didn't get sick, so I ate most of the rest of the package.   In all, I ate about 14 ounces of raw bison yesterday.   I ate half of it plain and the other half sandwiched on thin slices of cucumber with a little salt.  It was a nice meal.

Just now I read some more and decided to try something more adventurous, so I defrosted a package of grass-fed beef liver.  (I started buying this stuff from US Wellness two weeks ago.)

The thing is, I hate beef liver.   I bought this piece as an experiment, expecting to throw it out after I cooked it.

I sliced off a tiny piece and tasted it cautiously.   I tried to taste it as if for the first time.   It wasn't bad.   I ate the second piece.  Really, not bad at all.  But the liver was very cold, just barely defrosted, and that dulls the taste.  For a full experiment a sliced off a fairly large piece and kept it in my mouth till it warmed up and chewed thoroughly.   It really isn't bad.

I've been on a more-or-less paleo diet for about two years, but if I hadn't stumbled across this forum yesterday, I don't know if I would ever have tried raw meat.

Now I have, and I imagine I'll mostly eat it that way for the rest of my life.  It seems obvious to me that it's a good idea to try to eat foods that evolution designed us to eat, and clearly raw foods come closer to that ideal than cooked ones.

I'd like to thank everybody here and especially Lex.