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If you’re paying attention to what you’re doing — and you should be — the food will teach you about itself, but you have to use your hands. If you handle a chicken breast for even one minute, you will notice that the muscle is layered. My money says that realization will change the way you season it and even the amount of heat it gets.

These days even meat loaf recipes call for you to mix your own pork, beef, and veal (yes, meat loaf is more than one meat) in a food processor. That’s bunk — food processors rupture the cell walls of the meat, releasing all the moisture held inside. And if you don’t grind your own meat, you should at least have a local butcher mix your pork and beef together to order and watch him while he does it to make sure he doesn’t sell you already ground stuff. Add the remaining ingredients by folding them into the ground meat with both hands, stopping the moment they’re evenly distributed and before it all becomes a mushy single-celled organism.