Why people from Minnesota don't spice their meats



Although I left Minnesota many years ago, and have developed a taste for spicy food, I can still understand why there is a preference for such "un-spicy" food in Minnesota. And the reasons may offend you, but they make perfect sense to me.

The first thing that I want to say is that people in Minnesota eat Iowa beef. If you haven't, well, what I can I say, there's nothing like it (dreamy look appearing in my eyes). Yes, of course I like the stuff I get here in the west, including Angus beef, but really it's not the same. And if someone serves you a spectacular cut of genuine Iowa beef, perfectly cooked, and you reach for the A-1 sauce, or God forbid catsup, you will not be invited back. There is absolutely no reason to destroy that wonderful flavor with any kind of seasoning. No, not barbecue sauce, not salsa, nothing. The thought of someone doing that to an Iowa steak still makes me want to cry, to this day. A little bit of salt and pepper and you're good.

You also need to keep in mind that it's usually cold in Minnesota, and because of that there's always been less of a chance that meat will go bad than in a warm climate. I'm not saying that meat in warmer climates is always suspect, but putting a lot of hot sauce on it will cover a lot of sins. When I got food poisoning from some tacos that I ate in Phoenix in 1979, I never suspected - they tasted fine.

To help fit in better socially in Arizona, and in California, I taught myself to eat things like jalapeños, and I've actually developed a taste for spicy foods. I keep a bottle of Sriracha sauce in the cabinet for times when I want to blow my head off. That's hot! And there have been times when I've put it on a piece of meat that's so tough and tasteless that it did make it palatable.

Image at the top of this post: Meat being delivered in Phoenix in the 1940s.
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