About Marczyk Fine Foods

It’s the dawn of a new year

It’s the dawn of a new year, and with that comes more than just little-used fitness memberships and NFL playoffs. Each and every new year brings out the pundits. The predictors. The soothsayers. (Here’s a joke I just made up: Who does a soothsayer go to see when he has a sooth-ache? Answer: a Transcendentist.) 

And who are we to miss this train? Herein lies (in no particular order) our picks for this years biggest, baddest, and most trendy food trends.

• Healthier kid fare

Healthier kid food

As parents, and even kids, become more conscious of what they eat, more and more healthy choices aimed at the ten-and-under crowd will make their way to grocery shelves. We’re not saying it won’t still be frozen or convenience food, but don’t be surprised to see some healthier, more natural selections.

• Portion diets rather than elimination diets (i.e. Atkins, South Beach)

Portion diets

Remember when the Atkins diet was all the craze? Well people know now apparently what they didn’t know then. Eliminating entire food groups from a diet is simply not healthy, and can even be dangerous. While still avoiding generally unhealthy foods, like foods high in saturated fat or high fructose corn syrup, smart and healthy dieters are embracing things like carbohydrates and fats. But they are tailoring their diets by eating smaller portions.

• Traditional dishes with non-traditional ingredients (i.e. Shepherd’s Pie with pulled pork instead of ground beef)

turnip-gruyere gratin

We are becoming more creative and daring with our ingredients. Perhaps this is because of The Food Network, or maybe it’s due to a wider variety of fresh ingredients being more readily available. Regardless, today’s home chefs are more willing than ever to reinvent traditional recipes and to mess with tradition. And now that we think about it, it may have more to do with the desire to utilize the fresh ingredients home chefs have on hand.

• Mixed ethnic offerings (i.e. Asian tacos)

tacos

Korean BBQ tacos, anyone? Food fusion is not just for trendy restaurants anymore. Savvy home chefs are painting with broader strokes by combining disparate ethnic favorites into savory selections. 

• Smaller portions at meal-time, with more snacks throughout the day

mixed nuts

Many health and fitness experts are beginning to promote a diet where we eat carbohydrates and proteins every three hours, hungry or not, while forgoing traditional big meals. By doing so, the protein and fat (most proteins contains some fat) help keep the carbohydrates in the stomach longer, which increases gastric emptying time. We won’t get into all the gritty details here, but suffice to say that doing so helps burn your body’s fat stores, while helping you feel energized.

• Potatoes

potatoes

Plain old mashed potatoes are for the Cleavers (you remember June, Ward, Wally and the Beaver, right). Today’s home chefs are getting more and more creative with their potato companions. Prosciutto, brie, brown sugar, mustard, and artichoke bottoms are just some whacky (and by “whacky,” we mean “delicious”) suggestions. And when it comes to french fries, don’t be surprised to see some new twists in toppings, as well as enjoying them cooked in pure beef fat, pork fat, or duck fat. 

• Us! 

United States of Marczyk's

Perhaps an outgrowth of the push towards buying locally grown or produced foods, itself a trend from recent years, small, local markets are gaining favor, especially in urban areas where city dwellers (”localvores”) are paying more attention (pun intended) to whose pockets their dollars line. Locally owned small businesses actually have the leg up over the big box stores in this case. 

• Social cooking

Dinner for friends

Here’s how it works: Invite some friends over for dinner, and when they ask you what they can bring, give them a list of ingredients for one or two of the side dishes. Then when the cooking begins, get them involved. Today’s homes have larger, open floor plans that play to the fact that the kitchen is always where the party ends up anyway, so you may as well start it there, too.

There you have it. Think you can play this game, too? Have some trends of your own that you think will show up in the months to come? Please share them with us in the comments section. We love to hear from you!

Posted by Kyle Durlam, MFFII meat dept. and wordsmith.

Butcher Fun!

Butcher and fun aren’t usually in the same sentence, but here at Marczyk’s they are! Marczyk butcher Jimmy Cross, aka Jimmy the Butcher, has been busy giving advice and showing off his skills. Last fall, The Museum of Contemporary Art hosted Art Meets Beast, a three day nose-to-tail event featuring butchering, then a feast of the beast. Jimmy did the cutting, and 10 of Denver’s top chefs did the cooking. Check out this fun video MCA put together!

This month, Jimmy is part of a beautiful new book from Williams Sonoma, The Cook and the Butcher, which features recipes and advice for preparing meat. It’s a beauty and would make a great gift.

Next month, an event called Couchon 555 is coming to Denver. Couchon 555 is a one-of-a-kind traveling culinary compition and tasting event - 5 chefs, 5 pigs, five winemakers - to promote sustainable farming of heritage breeds. Mike Anderson made a video for Jimmy’s entry, it is a riot so check it out!

Holiday FAQ’s

Christmas dinner!

What is dry-aging?  In the past, beef was slaughtered in a central area with good proximity to railway (like Denver or Chicago) and then it was shipped, whole and hanging, around the country to skilled butchers closer to the final point of sale.  Two technologies changed all this: Cryovacing (Cryovac is like Kleenex—a brand name for the process of removing all air from a plastic bag and sealing it) and refrigeration. Centralized slaughter became centralized meat packing.  Now beef is packed in plastic bags and boxed very soon after slaughter (2-4 days) then shipped in trucks and “aged” in the bag, aka “wet-aging”. In the dry-aging process, approximately 20-30% of water weight is lost as the meat hangs in a cold room.  The result of dry aging is a densely flavored (less water to dilute flavor) extremely beefy and tender piece of meat.  This is the meat you will only find at the very best of the very best steak houses and markets. Like Marczyk’s! We get all our Niman Ranch rib roasts in late November, and age them in our cold room. Then Jimmy the Butcher cuts them to your specs.

All natural meat?

“We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.” ~Alfred E. Newman

Pete was asked an interesting question the other day: “Why is your meat more expensive than so and so’s? They’re both all natural, right?”
WRONG. “All natural” on a label refers to the meat after it has been processed. Many retailers call their meats “antibiotic free” meaning that when tested, there are not residual antibiotics—it doesn’t mean that the animal was raised without their use. According to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, “natural” can be used on a label as long as a product does not “contain any artificial flavor or flavoring, coloring ingredient, chemical preservative or any other artificial or synthetic ingredient; and the product and its ingredients are not more than minimally processed (ground, for example).”  Under these guidelines,  CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation—the source of most meat in the USA) beef, pork and chicken can be labeled all natural. Under these guidelines, it includes animals that have received antibiotics and hormones to promote rapid growth. 
So what does Marczyk’s “all natural” mean? All our meats are raised without the use of antibiotics or hormones by family farmers within the Niman Ranch company.  None-Ever. They are naturally raised, outside, with room to roam. The chickens come from Boulder Natural Meats, raising chickens naturally since 1990. “We are concerned with husbandry and genetics, vegetarian feed and supporting family farms,” says Paul Marczyk. “but most of you don’t need a story… the proof is in the taste,” he says. Marczyk meats and chickens are antibiotic free, hormone free, and free range. If you ever wonder, come ask us at our Denver Store!

Spotlight on Colorado Milk:

Fresh glass of milk and pie!

Morning Fresh Dairy/Noosa Yogurt.

The Graves family in Bellvue, CO has been in the dairy business for 116 years. These days, the Graves and their 5 children work the dairy daily, providing fresh, non-homogenized milk in glass bottles to homes and businesses like Marczyk’s.
Modern milk is usually homogenized and pasteurized. Pasteurization is a heating process that kills bacteria and homogenization breaks down the molecular structure of the fat cells, which makes the milk more stable and increases its shelf life. Morning Fresh sells cream top milk, whole milk, 1% and 2% milks, chocolate milk, and seasonal eggnog. The taste on all their milk is richer than homogenized.  Heavy cream is their stand-out product - it can be whipped by hand, holds together for days once whipped, and hardly needs any sugar.
And to keep up with the times, they have added Noosa yogurt: an Australian style yogurt in several flavors. Imagine…a thick, not too sour, not too sweet yogurt that our customers swear is the best yogurt we carry. (A yogurt with its own Facebook page?)