Meat & dairy

Buying gosht in Lahore.

Buying gosht well comes down to three checks you can do at the counter: colour, smell and feel. Fresh mutton is bright brick-red with firm white fat. Good beef sits a few shades deeper and is coarser in the grain. Chicken should be pale pink, dry to the touch and smell of almost nothing. Anything sour, tacky or dull-grey goes back on the tray, whatever else is right about it.

How to tell fresh mutton from tired mutton

Mutton in Lahore usually means goat, and a young animal gives meat that is fine-grained and brick-red — closer to raspberry than to burgundy. Colour on its own is not proof, because any cut surface darkens as it meets air, so read it alongside the fat. Fat on a young goat is white, firm and slightly waxy. Fat that has gone chalky grey, or crumbles yellow under the thumb, has come off an older animal or has been sitting out too long.

Then press it. Fresh gosht springs back and leaves your fingertip dry. Meat that holds the dent, or leaves a tacky film on your hand, has already started to break down and no amount of masala will hide it in a light salan. Look at the bone ends while you are there: a clean saw cut with pink, moist marrow is a good sign, whereas splintered bone means the pieces were hacked through, and those splinters turn up later in somebody's mouthful.

Brick-red flesh with white, firm fat — not grey fat, not yellow crumbs.
Springs back when pressed, and your finger comes away dry.
Bone cut cleanly, marrow pink and moist rather than dried brown.
Smells of very little. A metallic or sour edge is the first warning.

What to look for in beef

Beef is coarser-grained than mutton and several shades deeper — cherry-red on a freshly cut face, turning dull purple-brown where pieces have been stacked or wrapped tight. That darkening costs a lot of perfectly good beef its sale, and it is worth understanding: the pigment in muscle turns bright red on contact with air and goes dull without it. A piece that looks drab at the bottom of the pile will often bloom bright within a few minutes of being cut and turned over. What never recovers is a green or grey cast, or a surface that feels slick rather than merely moist.

Grain tells you what the piece will be good at. Tight, fine grain with thin white seams running through it comes off a younger animal and stays tender under quick heat. Wide, ropey grain with thick sheets of sinew comes off a hard-working muscle — exactly what you want for nihari and long simmering, and exactly wrong for anything you plan to finish in twenty minutes. Ask which part of the animal a piece has come from before you commit to it.

Chicken: the checks that matter

Chicken gives itself away faster than red meat does. Fresh skin is pale cream to light yellow and dry, almost papery, and the flesh beneath is an even pale pink. If the skin feels tacky or slippery, or the meat has gone grey-pink and shiny, leave it. Bring it near your nose for a second: fresh chicken smells of practically nothing, while the first stage of spoilage is a faint ammonia or sour-milk note that you will recognise instantly once you have caught it.

Whole birds keep better than cut pieces, because every cut surface is another door in. If you are buying for later in the week, take the bird whole and joint it at home, or take sealed chilled pieces rather than loose ones that have been open on a tray. Boneless breast is the most convenient thing in the aisle and also the least forgiving — it dries out fast in a hot karahi, and with no skin or bone protecting it, it turns before thigh meat does.

Tell the butcher the dish, not just the weight

The single biggest improvement most households can make is to stop ordering by weight alone. A butcher who knows you are making karahi will cut smaller bone-in pieces; the same order for korma gets larger ones; for biryani he will keep the pieces even so they finish cooking at the same moment. You generally get what you ask for, and it costs nothing but the sentence.

For qeema, ask which cut is going into the mincer, and ask for a second pass if it is destined for seekh or shami kebab.
Say whether you want the fat trimmed off or left on. A completely lean qeema cooks dry and crumbly.
For nihari or paya, ask for the marrow bone in and cracked rather than sawn to dust.
For chops and ribs, ask for a clean cut across the bone instead of a chop-through, so nobody is picking splinters out of the salan.
If it is going straight into the freezer, ask for it in two or three bags rather than one, so you can thaw a single meal at a time.

Reading a frozen pack

Frozen is not a compromise as long as it has stayed frozen throughout. Sea fish in particular is often better frozen soon after the catch than sold as fresh after two days on the road. What you are really checking on a frozen pack is whether it thawed at any point on the way to you. Loose ice crystals rattling inside the bag, a pool of frozen liquid in one corner, or contents that have set into one solid slab all say the same thing — it went soft somewhere and was frozen again.

Grey-white dry patches on the surface are freezer burn. That is dehydration rather than spoilage, but the texture there will be woolly and it never comes back, so trim it off before cooking. Check the pack is properly sealed too: a split seam lets dry freezer air straight onto the meat.

Buy it last, and get it cold

Whatever you buy, buy it at the end of the trip rather than the start, keep it in its own bag away from anything you will eat raw, and get it into the fridge or the freezer as soon as you are through the door. In a Lahore summer the boot of a parked car climbs past anything a chiller cabinet was doing for the meat five minutes earlier, and an hour of that undoes the careful choosing you just did at the counter.

Common questions

How can you tell if mutton is fresh?: Look for brick-red flesh with firm white fat, press it to check it springs back and leaves your finger dry, and smell it — fresh gosht has almost no odour. Grey or yellow crumbling fat, a dent that stays put, a tacky surface or a sour, metallic smell all mean it has been sitting too long.
Why does beef sometimes look purple instead of red?: The pigment in muscle turns bright red when it meets air and stays dull purple when it does not, so beef packed tight or stacked underneath looks darker than beef on top. Cut and turned, it usually blooms red within minutes. Grey or greenish tints and a slick surface are different, and those pieces should be left.
Is frozen chicken as good as fresh chicken?: It can be, provided it never thawed on the way to you. Check for loose ice crystals inside the bag, frozen liquid pooled in a corner or contents fused into one block, since all three suggest it softened and was refrozen. Grey dry patches are freezer burn, which affects texture rather than spoilage.
Should I buy chicken whole or in pieces?: Buy whole if you are cooking later in the week, since every cut surface is somewhere spoilage can start and an uncut bird keeps better. Buy pieces when you want one particular cut or need it fast, and prefer sealed chilled packs to loose pieces that have been open on a tray.