Posted on 11/14/2010 6:48:08 AM PST by decimon
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13, 2010 — With chitlins about to make their annual appearance on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day menus, scientists have good news for millions of people who love that delicacy of down-home southern cooking, but hate the smell. They are reporting the first identification of an ingredient in cilantro that quashes the notoriously foul odor of chitlins — a smell known to drive people from the house when chitlins are cooking. Their report appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Yasuyoshi Hayata and colleagues note that chitlins — hog large intestines — are infamous for their foul smell, which is reminiscent of the waste material that once filled the intestine. However, many people enjoy the taste of the southern delicacy. When boiled or fried, chitlins are most popular in the United States during the winter holidays, from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day. However, hog large intestine also is a year-round staple in the cuisines of the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia.
Hayata's group knew that cooks long have used fresh cilantro, an herb also known as coriander or Chinese parsley, to mask the unpleasant smell of certain foods, as well as add flavor. They previously showed that cilantro could help to remove the fecal or sewage-like odor from chitlins. In the new research, they set out to discover the identity of the deodorizing chemical compounds in cilantro.
The scientists treated samples of hog large intestine with cilantro extracts of different concentrations. A panel of human sniffers identified the concentrations that were most effective in reducing the odor. Using high-tech instruments, the scientists then isolated the main deodorizing ingredients in the most effective extracts. The scientists identified several cilantro ingredients that appeared to suppress the foul odor of chitlins. One of the substances with the tongue-twisting name of (E,E)-2,4-Undecadienal had a flowery fragrance that seemed to completely erase the odor. That substance worked at concentrations as low as 10 parts per billion — an equivalent to about 10 drops of substance in an Olympic-size swimming pool.
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ARTICLE # "Identification of (E, E)-2,4-Undecadienal from Coriander (Coriandrum sativum L.) as a Highly Effective Deodorant Compound against the Offensive Odor of Porcine Large Intestine"
DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT ARTICLE http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/jf102297q
CONTACT: Yasuyoshi Hayata, Ph.D. Meiji University Kawasaki-shi, Kanagawa Phone: (81) 044-934-7812 Fax: (81) 044-934-7812 Email: yhayata@isc.meiji.ac.jp
The American Chemical Society is a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 161,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
Cilantro is nasty. Ruins everything it touches.
From Wikipedia: "Casing or sausage casing is the material that encloses the filling of a sausage. Casings are typically divided into two categories, natural and artificial.
Natural casings are made from the submucosa, a layer of the intestine that consists mainly of collagen. The fat and the inner mucosa lining are removed. Natural casings tend to be brittle once cooked and tend to "snap" when the sausage is bitten. They may also rupture during the cooking process; often, this indicates that the cooking was done too rapidly. Natural casings may be hardened and rendered less permeable through drying and smoking processes. Natural casings are generally made from pig, cow or sheep intestines."
So, if that's the way the cookie crumbles then this is the way the sausage snaps.
Makes you really thankful to get on to the turkey.
Better idea-just don’t ever bring chitlins into your house.
Problem solved.
I dated a black girl for more than 2 years.
I ate Thanksgiving dinner with her family the first year, and they loved their chitlins, and I of course, had to eat and pretended that I found it delicious out of respect for their tradition.
The next year, I made sure that I treated them to a great Thankgiving dinner at a high-end restaurant, and chitlins was not on the menu. The family didn’t complain about not having chitlins, and I didn’t either. I never got around to a third Thanksgiving dinner with them.
I don’t eat collards, but I like the smell. Smells like home.
On that “southern delicacy,” chitlins, on the other hand ... the war was a long time ago. We can afford to throw away some parts of the hog now.
A serious answer to that question is that it is about as cheap a meat as is available.
The poor (80 or more years ago) purchased the cheapest cuts of meat because that is what they could afford. The of course learned ways to prepare these cuts to make them palatable.
Welfare has of course changed the mathematics of the food supply and now the poor can afford better quality cuts of meat. However eating habits of families change slowly because eating habits are passed down from parent to child.
Other cheap cuts of meat that you will still find people buying because of family or ethnic traditions are; pigs feet, pigs skin (prepared by pan or deep frying to make pork rinds or cracklings), Rocky Mountain Oysters (do I need to tell you what these are?), tong (most often pickled).
I would be surprised if most people in this country, if they thought about it seriously could not think of an ethnic dish that their family enjoys that fit in this category of cheap meat dish that is now an ethnic delicacy.
Not if you are the one selling it. The only thing that is wasted is the squeal.
You and me both! Another dish that turned my stomach growing up was menudo. Bleech. It smelled like a rotting carcass when cooking, so I never could bring myself to eat it. But it was all the rave in my neighborhood growing up...you could smell it from down the street. I guess if I eat meat I just want the ‘muscle’ parts and not the ‘internal organs / weird stuff’ portions. lol
Add a little cilantro and maybe it’d keep the flies away (from Barry, that is).
Akk! I'm reminded of pickled pigs feet that would sometimes make an appearance at my Polish Grandparent's house. I loved kelbasa, golumki, and kapusta. I drew the line at little pig's feet bobbing round in brine. Just plain scary.
This NBC has never had chitlins in all my xx years and I've eaten some crazy stuff - reindeer, rattlesnake, armadillo, minnow eggs, sweetbreads and mountain oysters but never intestines.
This one sentence could increase attendance: "Okay, well if you don't want to try the chitlin's, we won't hold it against you!"
When Lil Miss was young she went on a field trip to a meat market where they learned how sausage was made. She grabbed some of the uh, "natural" casings and made ballon animals to the amusement of the butcher.
You ever heard of souse?
I worked in a local grocery meat department my first year after high school.
We sold it in the case. Only a few customers bought it. But I never seemed to go bad.
I never tried it myself. The idea of jellied meat does not appeal to me. (also known as head cheese)
But who am I to talk, I like Braunschweiger.
So, you know souse is the ears and snouts of hogs, right?
Well it depends on who is making it.
But typically it is all of the meat of the entire head.
And in certain seasons they may throw in the meat from the feet.
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