Select the best meats for holiday meals

The main feature of most holiday celebrations is a special meal and often the centerpiece of that meal is a spectacular main dish such as turkey, ham or prime rib roast. A superior product can ensure a holiday meal is both memorable and satisfying.

John Kalberg, owner of Silvana Meats, is often asked his advice about how to choose the perfect holiday entree. The first step in planning the meal is to decide what to serve. “We sell as many prime ribs as we do hams for Christmas,” Kalberg said. “At our house we have prime rib and we have a ham and we have smoked turkey, too.”

But for Thanksgiving, turkey is still the meat of choice for most families. Kalberg also sells many other meat cuts, such as pork and lamb roasts. Some families order impressive pork crown roasts or lamb crown roasts for special occasions. Geese and duck are other options.

Once the meat is chosen, the next step is selecting a superior product. Kalberg is a big fan of the free-range turkey. These are birds who have been allowed to roam and build up muscle. Muscle, Kalberg said, is what gives flavor to the meat. “I was skeptical at first, but there really is a big difference between a free-range turkey and a regular turkey.”

He also likes the fact that the free-range birds he offers have all been fed a natural diet with no antibiotics or steroids. Consumers should look for a bird with a broad breast. Products to avoid are those that have had water or marinade added. “Even if it is a marinade, that is still 97-percent water pumped into it and only three percent marinade and salt,” Kalberg said.

Added water can also be a concern when buying hams. Many hams today have been tumbled in a machine that drives brine into them. Then they are put in smokeless smoke houses where they are sprayed with a smoke-flavor solution.

“I like an old fashioned dry cured ham,” Kalberg said. “Our hams are hand rubbed, cured and put in the smokehouse and smoked with a mix of hickory and maple.”

Silvana Meats also offers raspberry hams, honey apple hams and honey glazed hams. There are bone-in and boneless options as well as spiral slicing. When buying a boneless ham, Kalberg urges consumers to look for full muscle boneless. Many so-called boneless hams are actually ham pieces that have been stuffed into a sock.

Prime rib has become a very popular centerpiece entree. Although a bone-in prime rib is attractive, Kalberg noted that boneless is usually a better value in the long run, considering the cost per pound. The key thing to look for in prime rib is good marbling, or flecks of fat that are distributed throughout the meat. He also prefers black angus. This should be vegetarian-fed with no hormones or antibiotics.

“We age our prime rib four to six weeks. It makes the meat more tender and flavorful,” Kalberg said.

Holiday get-togethers are also a time of tradition. For many Scandinavian families, this means lutefisk, pickled herring and potato sausage. “We sell a lot of that at Christmas,” Kalberg said.

Silvana Meats has many old-world-style specialty sausages and a full range of deli meats. Deli platters are very popular for holiday parties and New Year celebrations. Smoked salmon and salmon spreads are also very popular. Treats such as these, as well as full entrees, should be ordered in advance to avoid disappointment.

Something people often forget when shopping for holiday dinners are holiday breakfasts. Kalberg recommends Silvana Meats’ old-fashioned double-smoked dry cured bacon. “It’s our biggest seller of all,” he said. “It doesn’t shrink up in the frying pan. It’s nice and lean.”

A final consideration when selecting meat is where it is purchased and how it is processed. A full service meat cutter is usually a better option. Kalberg’s hamburger, for example, is made of pure ground chuck from the front quarters only. He is scrupulous about safety and cleanliness. Supermarket and warehouse stores usually have ground beef shipped in from outside processors, so standards are more difficult for the consumer to verify.