meat

Segment 1: Lone Jack animal feed operation expansion concerns Powell Gardens.

Wearing a heavy smock and rubber boots, Amadedin Eganwa stands over a large conveyor belt that’s carrying unconscious lambs. He faces east, towards Mecca, gently lifts the animal’s head in the same direction and under his breath he quickly says a prayer — bismillahi allahu akbar, or “in God’s name” — before swiftly cutting the lamb’s throat.

Seeking what he called “clean” food for lunch, Alexander Minnelli chose ProteinHouse, one of the newer restaurants in downtown Kansas City.

The bodybuilder ordered a Greek Bowl, which was topped with a "natural" turkey burger, produced without antibiotics. Minnelli describes "clean" as a number of things: "not something deep-fried," "non-GMO, no preservatives, something cooked right away, fresh."

There once was a time when "sausage" meant links or patties served with pancakes.

Not anymore, especially in Kansas City. We’ve seen a lot more sausage variety over the past few years.

“I think it’s part of the butchery trend,” Jenny Vergara told host Gina Kaufmann on KCUR’s Central Standard. “We have more and more chefs who are opening great butcher shops. With this return to artisan do-it-yourself butchery, sausage is a really incredible way to use up all the pieces and parts.”

On a busy Sunday afternoon in Kansas City's East Bottoms, there are people lunching at picnic tables on a gravel lot outside of the Local Pig. Inside, just behind the deli counter, there’s a huge butcher’s block, where chefs and amateurs alike have gathered for a crash course.

“There's a pretty good mix of people in the class,” butcher Jimmy Spradlin says. “There's a young chef and then just some old rough and tumble redneck guy that's like, ‘I'm just here for the pork chops.’”

But today, they’re all here to make sausage.

A local chef tells us about the white barbecue sauce that he'll be serving at his new restaurant; a New York food writer discovered that Kansas City has the best cinnamon rolls; then the Food Critics search out the best sausages in and around town.

Guests:

Fourth of July is an especially big day for the grill. Steaks, sausages, and burgers are de rigueur, so we're trying something a little off the beaten path this time around. Today, Karen Adler and Judith Fertig, self-proclaimed BBQ queens, offer up some unique recipes, including veggie sliders with herbed cream cheese, grilled lemon whiskey sours and more!

Tim Mueller has raised corn and soybeans on 530 acres near the city of Columbus, Nebraska, for decades, but today he is planning to take a big gamble.

The big box retailer Costco is building a new chicken processing plant in Fremont, about an hour from Mueller’s farm. The company plans for the plant to slaughter 2 million birds per week. To raise all those chickens, the company is recruiting about 120 farmers to sign on as contract poultry farmers.

To kick off the summer grilling season: a visit to a Brazilian steakhouse, where the meat goes from grill to table in under 15 minutes; how to grill non-meat items (romaine lettuce and eggs in the shell); then our Food Critics search out the best grilled dishes in and around Kansas City.

Guests:

A proposal that would jumpstart the chicken business in Nebraska has some residents concerned about the potential impact on the environment and are trying to block or delay its construction.

Costco, the warehouse retailer and grocery chain, plans to build a giant $300 million chicken slaughterhouse on the south side of the town of Fremont in eastern Nebraska.

From greasy to gourmet, the burger is an American classic. We chat with a chef who spent a lot of time developing his veggie burger recipe, then KCUR's Food Critics search out the best burgers (and sides that aren't fries) in KC.

Guests:

Massive bison herds used to be a staple of the Great Plains. That is until we almost hunted them out of existence.

Now, with a new designation as the United States’ national mammal, bison ranchers argue that to conserve the species we have to eat them.

It’s an idea called “market-based conservation,” and it contends that humans are no good at saving species out of the goodness of our hearts, or motivated by some driving force of environmental justice.