Engastration is a cooking technique in which the cook stuffs the remains of one animal into another animal. The method supposedly originated during the Middle Ages. [1] Among the dishes made using the method is turducken, which involves placing chicken meat within a duck carcass within a turkey. [2] Some foods created using engastration have stuffing between each layer. [3] The carcasses are normally deboned before being placed together.
Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted and killed animals for meat since prehistoric times. The advent of civilization allowed the domestication of animals such as chickens, sheep, rabbits, pigs and cattle. This eventually led to their use in meat production on an industrial scale with the aid of slaughterhouses.
Poultry are domesticated birds kept by humans for their eggs, their meat or their feathers. These birds are most typically members of the superorder Galloanserae (fowl), especially the order Galliformes.
Sweetbread is a culinary name for the thymus or pancreas, typically from calf and lamb. The "heart" sweetbreads are more spherical in shape, while the "throat" sweetbreads are more cylindrical in shape. As the thymus is replaced by fibrous tissue in older animals, only pancreatic sweetbreads come from beef and pork. Like other edible non-muscle from animal carcasses, sweetbreads may be categorized as offal, fancy meat, or variety meat.
Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body via mounting or stuffing, for the purpose of display or study. Animals are often, but not always, portrayed in a lifelike state. The word taxidermy describes the process of preserving the animal, but the word is also used to describe the end product, which are called taxidermy mounts or referred to simply as "taxidermy".
Turducken is a dish consisting of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck, further stuffed into a deboned turkey. Outside of the United States and Canada, it is known as a three bird roast. Gooducken is a traditional English variant, replacing turkey with goose.
Stuffing, filling, or dressing is an edible mixture, often composed of herbs and a starch such as bread, used to fill a cavity in the preparation of another food item. Many foods may be stuffed, including poultry, seafood, and vegetables. As a cooking technique stuffing helps retain moisture, while the mixture itself serves to augment and absorb flavors during its preparation.
Scavengers are animals that consume dead organisms that have died from causes other than predation. While scavenging generally refers to carnivores feeding on carrion, it is also a herbivorous feeding behavior. Scavengers play an important role in the ecosystem by consuming dead animal and plant material. Decomposers and detritivores complete this process, by consuming the remains left by scavengers.
A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat, or participate within any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat and poultry for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments. A butcher may be employed by supermarkets, grocery stores, butcher shops and fish markets, slaughter houses, or may be self-employed.
Dolma is a family of stuffed dishes found in the Balkans, South Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East, in which a vegetable or leaf is used as a container or wrapping for another food used as a filling. Common vegetables for stuffing are tomato, pepper, onion, zucchini, eggplant and pointed gourd. Stuffed cabbage rolls and vine leaves are also very popular, which are sometimes also called sarma. Meat dolmas are generally served warm, often with tahini or avgolemono sauce. Dolmas prepared with olive oil and stuffed with rice are generally served cold with a garlic-yogurt sauce.
In Judaism, shechita is slaughtering of certain mammals and birds for food according to kashrut.
Kosher foods are those that conform to the Jewish dietary regulations of kashrut, primarily derived from Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Food that may be consumed according to halakha (law) is termed kosher in English, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term kashér, meaning "fit". Food that is not in accordance with law is called treif meaning "torn."
The centerpiece of contemporary Thanksgiving in the United States and in Canada is Thanksgiving dinner, a large meal, generally centered on a large roasted turkey. Thanksgiving may be the largest eating event in the United States as measured by retail sales of food and beverages and by estimates of individual food intake. People often consume as much as three or four thousand calories during the course of the dinner.
Chicken is the most common type of poultry in the world. Owing to the relative ease and low cost of raising them in comparison to animals such as cattle or hogs, chickens have become prevalent throughout the cuisine of cultures around the world, and their meat has been variously adapted to regional tastes.
Roast goose is a dish found in Chinese, European, and Middle Eastern cuisines. The goose is in the biological family of birds including ducks, geese, and swans, known as the family of Anatidae. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution. Roasting is a cooking method using dry heat with hot air enveloping the food, cooking it evenly on all sides. Roasting can enhance flavor. Many varieties of roast goose appear in cuisines around the world.
Animal slaughter is the killing of animals, usually referring to killing domestic livestock. It is estimated that each year 77 billion land animals are slaughtered for food. In general, the animals would be killed for food; however, they might also be slaughtered for other reasons such as being diseased and unsuitable for consumption. The slaughter involves some initial cutting, opening the major body cavities to remove the entrails and offal but usually leaving the carcass in one piece. Such dressing can be done by hunters in the field or in a slaughterhouse. Later, the carcass is usually butchered into smaller cuts.
Poultry farming is the form of animal husbandry which raises domesticated birds such as chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese to produce meat or eggs for food. It has originated from the agricultural era. Poultry – mostly chickens – are farmed in great numbers. More than 60 billion chickens are killed for consumption annually. Chickens raised for eggs are known as layers, while chickens raised for meat are called broilers.
Turkey meat, commonly referred to as just turkey, is the meat from turkeys, typically domesticated turkeys but also wild turkeys. It is a popular poultry dish, especially in North America, where it is traditionally consumed as part of culturally significant events such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as in standard cuisine.
The broiler industry is the process by which broiler chickens are reared and prepared for meat consumption. Worldwide, in 2005 production was 71,851,000 tonnes. From 1985 to 2005, the broiler industry grew by 158%.
The process is called engastration. That's not a very appetizing term for Thanksgiving, but an important one because basically what that means is that you're actually stuffing one animal inside the other. And that process actually probably dates back to the Middle Ages.
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