Chile Forum

predicting meat availabiltiy/demand/prices is a fine art....

Hense why i like doing IT for meat companies....

Where i worked in NZ, they spent over $US10m trying to make a forecasting system to forecast demand and availability.... they called it phoenix (because of the amount of times the system rose from the ashes after being abandoned spend 10 years and gave up.... its just too hard...

However, another NZ company took a twist on that, a completely robotic plant that is programmed to allow for seasons, weather, rugby games etc and move the primary material (carcasses or large cuts) through the robotic chiller/freezer systems to the shop floors, have them cut by people or robots, then into supermarket packaging, then robotically sorted into distibution runs depending on what area is going to have the fine weather for bbqs... or the rugby game etc...

Anyway, IT for meat companies in chile is a little simpler

I did a little research on Chilean beef some time ago and wrote about it here: http://eatingchile.blogspot.com/2009/12 ... -beef.html. It may help some.

Jim

Jim S wrote:I did a little research on Chilean beef some time ago and wrote about it here: http://eatingchile.blogspot.com/2009/12 ... -beef.html. It may help some.

Some good stuff on your site. A few typos to work out (Faulkland v Falkland, fisherise v fisheries, for example) but generally nicely done.

On the subject of this history of the beef industry in Chile, there are some interesting stories, including the involvement (if we are to believe the historians) of the Butch Cassidy ranch in Cholila in Argentina. The cattle produced there were apparently driven into Chile to be sold and and slaughtered at Cochamó, from whence the beef was to be taken to the northern mining camps. Or so goes the story.

Anyone who has traveled the high-altitude Pircas Negras pass area has probably seen the stone refugios (which are still in use). According to the local histories, those refugios were built largely for the cattle drovers who took Argentine cattle across the Andes to the Copiapó area, for slaughter and distribution to the mining camps. Pircas Negras can be treacherous in that snow storms can quickly overtake a slow moving cattle herd, and sometimes the several refugios were not enough to save trapped drovers. Near Laguna Brava on the Argie side of the frontier there is a stone refugio with a grave site which is apparently for one of those drovers caught in a storm.

Jim S wrote:I did a little research on Chilean beef some time ago and wrote about it here: http://eatingchile.blogspot.com/2009/12 ... -beef.html. It may help some.

Jim

I read your blog from time to time, it's always interesting, though you're not writing so often now as you used to. You certainly put a lot of research into your blog, and it's really living refutation to anyone who thinks that Chilean food is nothing more than bland and tasteless. I liked the entry about "Mapuche Wheat", it mentions the kind of food you can get all around the Lago Ranco area. Was the photo from Illahuape a stock one or did you make it out there yourself?

As for the spelling mistakes... well, some of them are just serendipitous, like the "Frau Margtit" the German hostal-owner you mention in one entry (though maybe that was in your travel blog). Keep on writing!

FrankPintor wrote:....... anyone who thinks that Chilean food is nothing more than bland and tasteless.

The point that is usually made, and is made by many from a broad range of backgrounds and not just those with developed palates, is that the available ingredients can be of excellent quality, but there is a widespread lack of local skill/interest/tradition in preparing those ingredients in such as way as to make the cuisine respectable by international standards. It would be charitable to call Chilean cuisine "palatable but uninspired." And much of what passes for "chilean cuisine" is often not particularly healthy fare.

One of the objective measures of the poverty of Chilean cooking is the general lack of "chilean food" restaurants outside of Chilito and chilean enclaves in places like Miami. The last time I was in San Francisco I tried to find a Chilean restaurant. Ecuadorian, yes. Peruvian, yes. Argentine, yes. But the two Chilean restaurants listed in the directory had long ago gone out of business. And that is not because people in the city don't like good, tasty, healthy, well-prepared, inspired, and well-presented food.

patagoniax wrote:

FrankPintor wrote:....... anyone who thinks that Chilean food is nothing more than bland and tasteless.

The point that is usually made, and is made by many from a broad range of backgrounds and not just those with developed palates that the available ingredients can be of excellent quality, but there is a widespread lack of local skill/interest/tradition in preparing those ingredients in such as way as to make the cuisine respectable by international standards

Yes, that point has been made... hmmm I made it myself, as it happens in this forum, and I guess we could be in agreement but for the fact that while my glass is half-full, yours is persistently half empty, and you somehow seem to have a side order of boiled toilet-paper as well which... well... oh dear. (By the way, I tried to shush Gatito and his impertinent queries about how you know how boiled toilet-paper tastes but I believe he'll be back sometime with even more questions...). Apart from proof-reading, did you read Jim's blog? He didn't cook for himself a lot of the time and as far as I can see he never once found boiled toilet paper on his table.

As far as the general lack of Chilean food around the world is concerned, at some point I mentioned La Cumbia in Munich as a flag-bearer for Chilean cuisine in Germany, there's also a restaurant in Mexico City which is a Mecca for the Chilean community there every 18th September. I haven't been everywhere and it's not a major world cuisine, but... how many are? Maybe you could identify NZ restaurants worldwide? Or, well... from whichever nationality with which you... um... self-identify?

You want really really bland cuisine? Then come to Venezuela, where people come out in spots at the sight of spices, and in particular chile. I suspect it's pretty much the same all over the Caribbean, having experienced Colombian, Cuban, and Dominican cooking. The only high point here is when a little dish of guasacaca is put on the table, and... it's all mine

FrankPintor wrote: Maybe you could identify NZ restaurants worldwide? :

Having grown up in a NZ household, I can say that Kiwi cookery of that era was just as bad as chilean is today, but that was at least partly due to wartime and postwar conditions, coupled with quite limited local food production (and one of the reasons that even today I don't much care for anything that comes from sheep). NZ has come a long way in the last 50 years in adopting foreign influences and significantly improving its cooking. Chile, in general, has made comparatively few such improvements.

BTW, I worked in Venezuela for a short time, mostly in the west, on the Paraguaná peninsula, and also on Isla Margarita. Perhaps I was simply fortunate in finding decent places to eat.

Thanks for the comments Patagoniax and Frank, and for catching the typos/spelling errors. And no, the fine Illahuapi photo is not mine. I gave a link to it, but perhaps that wasn't clear. See http://www.elranco.cl/?p=26775. And you're right, I'm writing less now having more or less run out of topics--but there are a few left that interest me. Any suggestions?

Jim

zer0nz wrote:Normal chilean beef is not intentionality fed corn or grain like in the usa....

There are some wagyu and black angus available in chile... this MIGHT be grain fed depending on the farm...

.

Wagyu? do you mean delicious Kobe-Style beef in Chile? I thought the Argentinian or
Texas beefs were famous for, but never heard of Chilean Carne de Res!

Most good steak restaurants (the ones I go to anyway - Santabrasa, Cuero Vaca, Ox etc) have Wagyu on the menu. Also, you can buy Wagyu in the supermarket as well as in specialty meat stores like Gourmeat.cl. Chile has very, very good beef, you will just have to learn the cuts. They don´t only have different name...

Tombi wrote:Most good steak restaurants (the ones I go to anyway - Santabrasa, Cuero Vaca, Ox etc) have Wagyu on the menu. Also, you can buy Wagyu in the supermarket as well as in specialty meat stores like Gourmeat.cl. Chile has very, very good beef, you will just have to learn the cuts. They don´t only have different name...

_Wagyu_ or Aborigenes Cows of Japan,AKA: Kobe Beef: The trick is in how the Wagyu farmers rise them. Special diet, just enough exercise,Beer-Feeding.Corn,Dried pasture,Special maasage machines! So when a Wagyu is cut up, it will show all the fine marbles in the red meat. No knive needed to slice the cooked steak into small morcels! Use the side of a fork to cut it,
that is how tender and juicy the meat is!

Dude, get used to tougher but more wholesome beef (grass-fed, high in good for you CLA natural trans fats, no corn or GMO corn feed). Even the Argentina stuff is tainted with possible GMO corn finishing, In Chile, you will find labelled Brasil, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay beef. The Argentina stuff is good but possibly no longer wholesome.