Dragonroasted
August 23, 2019 12:56 PM   Subscribe

I have a seriously dumb question, it‘s for a fantasy story and I think I need to ask some...BBQing experts?

My question is if this scene can be made to work from a food point of view.
A dragon and a human join forces. In the spirit of providing dinner, the dragon dumps a whole cow carcass at the human‘s feet. It‘s pretty ripped up, because dragon, but it‘s still a whole cow, hide and all. The human protests that he can‘t eat process or eat raw meat and there‘s no way for them to get it roasted right now. The dragon loses its temper and engulfs the carcass in flames. At this point, the human judges it politic to at least give whatever is edible about this a try.

My question is...what would a whole cow look like if you blasted it with very hot fire like that for a short time? (Temperature is variable but time wouldn’t be very long.) And would you be able to cut a chunk out of it to make a show of eating it?

Thank you!
posted by Omnomnom to Writing & Language (18 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Burnt on the outside, raw in the inside, if my BBQ experience is any guide.
posted by SPrintF at 12:58 PM on August 23, 2019 [9 favorites]


Response by poster: so the hide would be burnt and it would be hard to separate from the (raw) meat?
posted by Omnomnom at 1:01 PM on August 23, 2019


Best answer: The hide would be burnt and there would be an awful smell from the burnt hair. The burning might make it easier to separate the hide from the meat.

As SPrintF said, anything below the surface would be entirely raw; the high moisture content of the (presumably) recently-killed cow's flesh means that it would take a long time for heat to penetrate into the carcass. In thermodynamic terms, this is referred to as "specific heat".

When I cook a big hunka hunka (non) burnin' meat, I like to use a low temperature for a long time to ensure I get a nicely browned but not burnt exterior and a perfectly done interior. The thicker the meat is, the longer it takes for the surface & interior temperature to equalize, and the lower the cooking temperature.
posted by EKStickland at 1:09 PM on August 23, 2019 [5 favorites]


Best answer: The burning might make it easier to separate the hide from the meat.

Bovine hair might be different, but at least on a pig, it is not uncommon to actually blowtorch the hair, so that it can be easily scraped off. This does nothing to loosen the skin of the animal from the rest of the animal.

From a culinary, even edibility angle, this is pretty gross.

A freshly killed animal, dumped on the ground, would have a lot of blood still in it. Meat from an animal that has not been bled properly tastes very gross in very short order. There's a reason why most major ancient religions, had strict blood-letting policies written into their religious textbooks. It was a big deal for hygiene, not to mention just food quality. Blood in the meat is also moisture which will unfortunately both congeal and keep the meat cool at the same time.

Also, if delivering dinner by dragon many organs could easily be punctured, releasing all sorts of mess from bile to shit, into the 'eating portions.' Butcher is a technical profession for a reason.
posted by furnace.heart at 1:20 PM on August 23, 2019 [15 favorites]


Response by poster: I am really enjoying those answers and will attempt to adjust the scene accordingly. Thank you!
posted by Omnomnom at 1:58 PM on August 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


ok so then what if the dragon killed the cow by biting its head off in one chomp and then carried it carefully unpunctured in its lil dragon hands upside-down? now there is less blood inside and also no holes for poop tainting.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:19 PM on August 23, 2019 [7 favorites]


What if, instead of a cow, it's some kind of large fish?
posted by box at 2:31 PM on August 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


There's a cooking term called spatchcock that describes the sort of thing the dragon here does organically to the cow. I don't think it's dumb; if you worked this term into your writing it could be hilarious. You go.
posted by effluvia at 2:35 PM on August 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


Would the dragon be amenable to lighting some wood on fire for more extensive cow roasting? Although perhaps the human would be hesitant to ask their fire-breathing companion for further favors...
posted by litera scripta manet at 2:48 PM on August 23, 2019


Just to clarify that spatchcocking requires the backbone to be cut out, and the carcass then spread out (legs to either side), and the breastbone broken as it's pushed down (it's mostly used on poultry, I believe). It flattens the animal out, decreasing the cooking time. (Used on a turkey I didn't put in the oven in time and didn't have hours to cook. Worked perfectly)

In this premise, having the cow "ripped up" by the dragon, because, dragons, means more messy, less calculated cuts.
posted by annieb at 4:04 PM on August 23, 2019


Well, a spatchcock is the same as butterflying, at least for poultry. Just to maintain culinary, uh, verisimilitude.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 4:05 PM on August 23, 2019


Best answer: So let’s say the dragon slashes at the cow with a claw, knocking it down and dealing a deep cut to the cow’s flank, exposing the good-eating sirloin. Once on the ground, the dragon can pounce on it and bite its head off. Picking the cow up by the tail, the dragon flies it back to the campsite, thus draining it quickly of a good deal of blood. It drops the carcass so that the sliced-open flank is facing up, and then roasts the cow with a relatively controlled flame for 30 or 60 seconds. The sirloin will be blackened where it is exposed to the flame, and rare to blue just an inch under the cooked surface, but there might be some decently edible meat at the margins of the wound there.

That’s probably the best possible scenario, and even that’s not great.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:12 PM on August 23, 2019 [2 favorites]


If the cow is perforated in various spots, the meat right around that might be cooked by a blast of flame. (But I think we're talking one bite's worth, not even a whole serving.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:13 PM on August 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: When roasting smaller animals such as a young pig or a sheep over a fire it takes roughly one hour per ten pounds of carcass. This is assuming that the coals have been prepared and that the day is not windy and the weather is summer. Moreover this is cooking the poor creature above the heat, so the natural tendency of heat rising means that little heat is deflected or lost.

However, a dragon would be presumably directing its flame downward. And a dragon can potentially produce a flame considerably hotter than a mere wood or charcoal fire. If the cow was dumped on stone the heat would penetrate the stone and reflect back up into the cow. It would continue cooking for some time depending on how much heat the stone absorbed. But what if your cow is dumped into grass and weeds? Well, you may just have to handle a grass or brush fire.

Burnt skin smells the same as burnt hair; the cow's hair might singe away rapidly but if the hide is subjected to enough heat that it burns it would also produce a lot of the classic burn hair smell.

There is also the possibility that the outside of the cow would be totally incinerated. In that case the viscera might reach boiling temperature and you would be in danger of steam explosions and scalds if you managed to hack your way deep enough into the carbonized carcass trying to find some meat that was not black and woody - but if the carcass of the hapless creature was that carbonized it would be too hot to even approach for awhile - which means two or three hours of fighting brush fires would give it a chance to cool enough that you might be lulled into thinking it was safe to take a sword or an axe to the poor beast, only to to get a geyser of super heated viscera when you puncture the peritoneum. If you were cautious you'd notice that there were signs of high pressure tissue fluid having spurted from any orifices or wounds... But would you be cautious with a glaring dragon behind you making your neck uncomfortably hot and urging you to eat, damn it...?
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:04 PM on August 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: It also depends on the nature of the dragon's fire.

How clean does it burn? Will there be dragon fire-spittle all over the carcass? Maybe there are thermostable enzymes in fire-spittle that will slowly eat through the human.

In the case of the enzyme thing, who's not to say that it might denature proteins sufficient for human consumption, once deactivated/ diluted/ the enzymes themselves denature.

Unburnt fire-spittle residue could taste atrocious... or could be a culinary sensation - leading to dragon hunting for capture.

If dragon fire is pure fire and the dragon is angry, then, yes to the above comments. If the dragon can do a controlled burn, or even one at a lower temperature for longer, then it's potentially plausible for much of the cooked meat to be palatable.

There are plenty of youtube videos of people cooking steak with a blowtorch.
posted by porpoise at 5:48 PM on August 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


You have some leeway as to the properties of dragon fire in your world, but consistency...ha...to worry about vis a vis BBQ concessions now that might run up against some other (battle-type) situation.

What’s the effect you’re looking for? By the same logic, this is an opportunity to set up the what’s and how’s of dragonfire in your world if it those properties might matter later on.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:00 PM on August 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


Sounds suspiciously similar to Pittsburgh Rare.
posted by Hatashran at 9:52 PM on August 23, 2019 [3 favorites]


So, the dragon and the human, can they communicate? Just wondering about what the realities of explaining cooking methods through pantomime.

As mentioned up thread, butchering an animal, or even field dressing something hunted is vitally important. If the internal organs are damaged or leaking, you’re dealing with tainted meat (hence E. coli, listeria, and tons of other nastiness). For the most part, you want to get those out, intact, as soon as you can.

If the dragon eats meat raw, and they can communicate, maybe the human just requests a leg, and some fire to burn wood for a campfire. Haunch roasts over campfire, meat cooks slowly, problem solved.

That, or yakiniku/Korean barbecue, thin strips of meat over high heat.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:49 AM on August 25, 2019


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