LRAB Chapter 67 Chimera Meat! It's better than Kobe Beef! (1)
Chapter 67 Chimera Meat! It's better than Kobe Beef! (1)
Using his Speed and Attack stats to their full extent, Aoni made short work of the corpse, separating the pelt from the body within about an hour before setting to work scraping off all the flesh clinging to it.
Arguably, that was a process that was longer than the actual skinning portion, but once complete, Aoni folded up the pelt into a neat pile and turned to face the skinless corpse hanging by its ankles.
Sucking on his teeth, the lad walked up to the skinless animal-shaped ingredient and examined the meat with interest, not because he had a fetish of some sort, but instead because he noticed that unlike regular muscle and fat, which had a reddish color, this "Chimera" meat had a faint golden hue, reminiscent of the creature's blood.
'Strange, the myoglobin normally turns meat red when in contact with Oxygen, yet with this guy, it's gold.'
Myoglobin, a protein commonly found in things such as beef, generally is the cause of its color. Without contact with oxygen, it's typically purplish, so the fact that this meat was gold surprised Aoni quite a bit.
Even so, between his hunger and the ravenous, drooling fool sitting on the ground beside him, the lad didn't believe he had much of a choice.
'If I cook the meat thoroughly, I suppose the worst thing that can happen to me is getting the shits...' Looking around his immediate area, Aoni quickly spotted his swords, and after retrieving Vestr, he allowed Glacia up on his shoulder before asking the most important question he could ever ask a glutton.
"Which portion do you wanna try first?"
Stunned by the question and only vaguely aware of the meaning behind her Lord's words, Glacia fell into a deep contemplative state.
'If stares could light things on fire...uh...I suppose something like laser eyes isn't out of the question; THAT ASIDE, if stares could light shit on fire, Glacia would be halfway to cooking this thing by now.' Chuckling at the intensity of his summon, Aoni followed suit and tried to figure out what he wanted to try eating first.
"When I was skinning, I noticed it has abnormally dense lower back muscles, probably from years of standing on its hind legs to get leaves and fruits off the trees, so that's probably gonna be juicy; after all, backstraps are normally good." Bringing his free hand to his chin, Aoni thought about what the supposed best cuts of meat are for both bears and deer since that's what this Chimera seemed to be.
Next was the easy part, salting the meat, and since that was one thing he had an abundance of, it was no issue at all.
However, when it came to the actual cooking part, that was where Aoni was required to exert a bit of finesse.
For starters, using Vestr, he cleared out a three-foot-diameter area before making a camping fire circle out of stones and filling it with branches.
Then, with a strike of a match, the campfire was lit ablaze.
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Since the fire was going and would take some time to get to an optimal temperature, Aoni was at a loss for what to use in place of a frying pan, and in the end, his only option was the thin bowl he had been using to hold the blood earlier.
Stained gold from containing the blood for several hours, Aoni splashed a bit more blood in the bowl, just enough to coat the bottom, and brought it over toward the boulder before butterflying the first cut (thinning meat by cutting it in half long so that it opens up like a door) and tossed it into the bowl.
"That's done; now I just need something to hold the bowl, and my makeshift stove is good to go." He mused while looking around the platform and eventually settling on hanging it over the fire with one of the drying racks inside the cave.
With the final step ready, Aoni spent some time feeding the fire more branches and fanning the flames until he felt it was good to go, and after nearly half an hour of preparation...
TSSSSSSSSSS
Aoni was cooking his first real meal in over a week.