It is difficult to imagine a festive table on which there is no meat cutting. Such an elementary dish is very simple and traditional, and experienced craftswomen prepare it so that it becomes a real decoration of the table.
Meat slicing will look perfect only if the correct selection and slicing of various meat products is observed. So, the surface of boiled pork, ham, tongue is cleaned with a sharp knife, removing dried dark crusts. Pork and ham are cut across the meat fibers with a very sharp knife with a narrow and long blade. The blade should completely cut through a piece of the product at a time.
Slices should be about the same size, thin and even. As a rule, chopped boiled pork, ham and tongue are laid out on a flat dish, placing them in neat, even rows. Meat slicing looks very impressive when pieces of different types of products alternate among themselves in a certain sequence. Decorate such a dish with sprigs of parsley, lettuce, slices of cucumbers or tomatoes. This meat cutting goes well with pickled cucumbers, cabbage, beet or carrot salads, mushrooms. Separately, such sauces as horseradish, mustard, mayonnaise, adjika are served.
Meat cutting may include various varieties of sausages, balyk, fat with a layer, brisket. The main condition is the sharpness of the knife. Sliced pieces of various meat products can be beautifully laid out on the dish in several ways: overlap (each subsequent piece covers part of the previous one), fan (one side of the piece covers the previous one more than the other), in even rows (best suited for rectangular or square dishes).
Thin large slices of cooked sausage, balyk, ham or brisket can be rolled into a tube or a small roll. The meat cut, laid out from such pieces, will look very nice and appetizing. You can put pitted olive in the big edge of the roll. Appetizers are decorated with lettuce leaves of different colors, various herbs, cherry tomatoes, slices of fresh or pickled cucumbers, thin strips of cheese, slices of radish. Having laid the rolls or rolls along the edge of a large dish, in its center you can put a small gravy boat with mustard or other sauce. Making meat cuts is limited only by the hostess's imagination. Almost any product combined with meat products to taste can be used.
There are some tips for making the meat cut perfect: a very thin sausage loaf should be slanted obliquely at an acute angle. Thick sausage can be cut lengthwise into equal halves, and only then cut them into thin slices. Before cutting, smoked sausage is freed from its shell. This is easily done by first scalding the loaf with boiling water. After that, even the most difficult to clean shell can be removed easily and simply. Meat slicing from several varieties of
smoked sausage, which differ in color from one another, looks beautiful. It can be laid out in rows, roller, triangles, squares. Pieces of various meat products fastened with toothpicks look great. They can also be tied with a feather of green onions, previously curled into a tube.