The unmistakable aroma of grilled meat wafted from a tent bearing a large “Sausage Fest” sign.

A cookout, held Wednesday by UCLA MEAT, or Meat Education and Appreciation Team, doubled as a fundraiser and informational session about the newly founded club’s existence.

The club is interested in attracting students who enjoy eating meat and are interested in learning more about its preparation and where it comes from, said Kyler Murlas, a fourth-year mathematics/economics student and the club’s CEO.

In considering what their first event should be, the club’s officers decided to go with a fundraiser that showed students how easy it can be to make high-quality, flavorful meat.

“We’re just showing people what good meat tastes like,” said Jonathan Waxer, a third-year psychobiology student and the public relations chair of MEAT. “We have the highest-quality sausages you can buy in bulk, and we’re just showcasing them.”

The event, which took place in the Court of Sciences, featured a one-third pound plate of sausages – chicken with walnut and apple, pork andouille and classic bratwurst – all paired with homemade sauces. But for the cooking enthusiasts who make up the club, sausage is just the beginning of the meat-cooking endeavors they plan to undertake.

“Since coming to college and having to cook for myself, I’ve picked up a lot about cooking meat, and I want to share it,” said Jamie Irvine, president and co-founder of the club. “In upcoming meetings, I plan on going over pan-frying steaks, and also dry-aging in your refrigerator.”

Irvine, a fifth-year applied mathematics student, said the inspiration for the club came from a barbecue club he and Murlas participated in at their high school. The pair say they have been grilling for years, but have since expanded their interests into understanding the details of the industry.

“A lot of the time, you don’t really know what you’re buying – people will buy a prime rib and have no idea what it is,” Murlas said.

To gain a firsthand understanding of the differences between cuts of meat, club members plan to take a trip to a local butcher shop to watch the carving of a cow in the future.

The club also aims to delve into meat-related topics beyond preparation and enjoyment. Members are reading the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and discussing the issues it raises about the variety of food choices available to the modern consumer.

“Especially in California, there’s a lot of people who are vegetarians or who care about animal cruelty, so I think it’s good to expose ourselves to other points of view,” Waxer said.

The sustainability and health of various food choices, including the often misleading nature of the various labels placed on food, are among the issues the club plans to examine, Murlas said.

“A lot of people don’t really know the difference between types of meat: free range, grass-fed, corn-fed,” he said. “A lot of farmers actually grain-feed their cattle for the last two weeks, but they can still label it as grass-fed.”

The club hopes to bring this culinary education to a wider audience at UCLA through a variety of events, including a food fair where cultural clubs could teach customers about the specialty meats of their heritage.

“I go to Korean barbecue, and I eat this really good meat, but I don’t think I’ve ever learned even the names of the dishes around it,” said Murlas, who is looking into the food fair as a future fundraiser.

And while the club has several educational activities in the works, it is quick to insist that preparing and enjoying fine food doesn’t have to be a completely serious endeavor.

“We obviously want to learn and do well as a club, but we also want to keep it humorous,” Murlas said. “We are a real culinary club, but you really get people’s attention when you say, ‘Hey, we’re having a sausage fest.’”