HOWTO make a meat-head

From the pages of Make's Hallowe'en issue, Andy Oakland's simple and clever recipe for making a meat-head, sure to be the smash hit at your fete (this was first seen here on BB in 2001!). For the veggies, I imagine you could make a soy-meat-head, but be sure to clearly label them.

Meat Head

• [beading queen]

  OMG i have to create this for Halloween as we are having 100 guests come over for a dinner slash costume party, get it slash lol
  this is just such a good idea, best part is its eatable,,, absolutely love it

• [Anonymous]

  Did anyone else immediately think of robot sidekick Geoff Peterson?

  Someone needs to make one of these animatronic ASAP.

• [francoisroux]

  That image just gives me the heebiejeebies…ugh…

  I’d eat it though, just to prove that meat-heads aren’t the boss of me…

• [captainbananas]

  I just started seeing this girl, and I was wondering what to cook for our first dinner together. This is perfect.

• [Anonymous]

  meat’s already gross. wtf.

• [Beelzebuddy]

  I’ve done this on multiple Halloweens, and it’s always a hoot. Unless your friends are braver than mine, no one besides you will eat it though.

  A few minor suggestions.

  I use three layers of meat: an inner layer of head cheese, then one of pastrami and one of roast pork. Together they create a nice effect of peeling back the “skin” to get at the flesh underneath.

  Horseradish cream sauce or dijon mustard make great binding agents to get all the deli slices to stick to the skull and each other.

  Use a half of a boiled egg yolk for each eye. It should just barely fit into the skull’s eye cavities. Then press in a slice of olive for the iris. Makes it look more lifelike.

  For the skull, I’m very pleased with my 2nd quality cast-off from the

  [Caroline]

  Things I learned last year: A glass head does not work as a Meat Head base. The meat will all slide off. (Otherwise, the glass head was a great Halloween decoration.)

  Suggestions to go along with your Meat Head for a Halloween dinner party:

  Everything else in the Make Halloween issue, which I highly recommend buying if you enjoy Halloween in any way at all.

  Get a brain jello mold; make vegetarian pate out of mushrooms and green herbs. Serve on a lettuce-lined plate with crackers. I suggest vegetarian pate because it has a really nice green-and-gray color and creepy, brainy kind of texture. (Not so much what brains actually feel like, but what they should feel like.) Also it tastes quite nice.

  Everything else that this guy has on his website.

  Serve Bloody Marys for those who don’t like Alien Autopsy Shooters. Put some plastic eyeballs in the Bloody Marys.

  Party setup:

  Buy a bunch of dim, colored “party lightbulbs” and put them in your lamps. Definitely add a fog machine (but keep an eye on it; the fog can get too heavy).

  Mix up some corn syrup blood — Karo syrup with red and a little bit of blue food dyes. In the bathroom, apply bloody handprints/streaks to the mirror, bathtub, a cheap clear shower curtain, and to any tiled walls. Figure out what happened first, so your blood spatters will make sense. Halloween and party stores will try to sell you mirror/shower decals of bloody hands; don’t bother. Corn syrup blood is cheaper and looks better. It also rinses quite easily off plastic, glass, porcelain, and tile. I rinsed it off at the end of the night and the food dyes did not leave stains. (Do not apply to painted/wallpapered drywall, plaster, or anything else absorbent.)

  Sound design: I mixed creepy ambient music and sound effects with cheesy 50s and 60s Halloween novelty songs. It seemed to be a good mix for the crowd.

• [sbarnes2]

  Creep-tastic! I wouldn’t be brave enough to peel-and-eat though.

• [EMJ]

  Considering the following post – isn’t this a bit distasteful?