Meat pickles are the single most innovative marvel there has been in the food industry (at least for me). Imagine good quality meat smoke dried or sun dried, with liquid spices seeping into the thin strands of the meat making it so juicy and irresistible. You bite into a single piece and all the juices dancing in your mouth with the wonderful texture of meat to go with it. Meat pickles sure do make a great friend to liquor and before you know it you’d have gobbled the entire jar of meat pickles not realizing that that was the last piece.
Many states in India are known for their meat pickles but did you know that north eastern stand out in the best way possible. Here’s why:-
- The array of spices you have never tried
There is a really wide array of spices and combinations in the northeast that one may not even have heard of let alone tried. These spices make the meat taste so different and in a finger-lickin’ good way. Tastes and flavor profiles that are so different from the kind of spices we’re used to having, spices that don’t taste like your usual haldi, Kashmiri mirch, dhaniya and zeera. Just to name a few spices, we use chingphing, philingey, dallae khursani, timbur, silam, ing makhir ginger, axone, winged prikly ash, bhut jholokia etc all that have really tantalizing flavors and unique aromas that do so well with meat.
These spices will take you to a new world of flavors you never knew existed; a very unique food experience is what you get with meat pickles from the North east.
- Processes of pickling meat
Ever heard of bamboo smoked meat pickle? So one takes bits of meat pieces and inserts them inside a hollow bamboo with fresh hay on either openings of the bamboo and hang it above a good fire where the smoke dries the meat pieces and also cooks them in the process. After a few hours of smoking the meat now has a distinct smoky flavour to it which is retained even after spices are added to the mix. Now that is a technique that is laudable in the culinary world. I’d love myself some really well smoked meat and turn that into a pickle be sure that your taste buds are in for a good time.
- Good, reared busty meat
In the northeast we consume a lot of different kinds of meats and here we believe that the meat is best when it comes from a cattle reared in the busty area. Something about the natural feed, the air, the water and the food it gets, busty meat is 20 times more nutritious, medicinal even, flavourful and stronger than the cattle that is reared commercially. Any meat from the busty costs way more than meat found commercially. A good quality meat always tastes better and that is what you get in the meat pickles from the north east. The cattle are fed and reared near the Himalayas for god’s sake its bound to be double the-everything!
- Meat is a forte here
Like it was mentioned earlier, in the northeast we consume a lot of meat of different kinds. Which goes on to say that we have so many ways of curing, preparing and cooking the meat we consume. The recipes are vast and sometimes they can be really quirky. Concepts of cooking meat can be so rare that once you start discovering the culinary ways of our meat cooking, you realize it’s just the tip of the ice-berg. There are culinary masters in the north east who can create magic with meat. They are so well read with the meat, it’s age, it’s texture, its raw flavours, the best flavour combinations that go well with a particular meat that even while tasting a single piece of meat pickle, you can taste every story every process that went on to create that single piece of meat wonder you have in your mouth.
- We love ourselves a good dose of mirchi!
In the north east, a meal without a chilli to crunch on is incomplete. We have really diverse chilli variants that all have heat levels of their own. We LOVE spicy, mirchi lagi toh achha lagta hai, mazaa aata hai, thandi mein bhi garmi ka ehsaas aata hai! So if you like mirchi like we do! Be sure that there is enough mirchi in your meat pickle to cut out the liquor you drank in the party, it’ll freshen you up right away!
These are little but enough reasons for you to try our north-eastern meat pickles now. Head to NE Origins today and try our meat pickles we’re sure you’d enjoy! Let us know your reviews though! Do review us on the NE Origins website!