The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

Cooking something thoughtfully is a way to celebrate both that species and our relation to it. By grilling one cut of my pig and braising the other, I was drawing on the two most elemental techniques people have devised for transforming raw meat into something not only more digestible but also more human: that is, cooking meat directly over a fire and, with liquid, in a pot. Both techniques promise to turn the flesh of animals into something good to eat and good to think, but each reflects a slightly different stance toward the animal. The second proposes a more “civilized” method of cooking meat, since it achieves a more complete transcendence or (take your pick) sublimation of the animal, and perhaps the animal in us, than the first. It leaves no trace of blood, which suits some meat eaters more than others, but it seemed to me I should give both approaches to the pig their due.