One Thing About Me (Beef Edition)

Ken — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:07:18 +0000

While I was doing the 25 Things About Me meme, it occurred to me that each item could almost have been its own blog post. So now, rather than posting another 25 things list, I'm just going to talk about one thing in excruciating detail. I'm an old-school bloggah, yo.

The One Thing for today is this: I know a lot about cuts of beef. This knowledge comes in handy in three situations:

one, when you're at a butcher or abattoir and you need to order beef;
two, if you're in the audience when David Letterman has his "Name Your Cuts of Meat" quiz; and
three, if you were on "Hell's Kitchen" last week and you had to correctly label the parts of a cow with the corresponding cut of beef.

For the uninitiated, here are a couple of tips. First, although a lot of restaurants seem to make a big deal about sirloin steaks, the typical bottom sirloin cut isn't all that great for steaks. It's a lean cut, meaning that it doesn't have a lot of fat marbling, and therefore it doesn't carry as much flavor (compared, say, to a ribeye). It's also somewhat tough. If you can find something specifically labeled top sirloin, that's a better cut than your standard sirloin. But it's also usually more expensive; you might as well get a ribeye or strip steak instead.

If you're looking for a less expensive but still flavorful steak, I'd recommend two things. One is the flank steak, which comes from around the belly area of a cow. It makes for a somewhat chewier steak than your top cuts, but it has great flavor, and if you slice it across the grain, it's easy to eat. It also takes marinades very well.

The other is the flat-iron steak, which comes from the blade (shoulder). Normally the blade has a tough piece of connective tissue running through it, but if you cut the meat lengthwise (like you're filleting a fish) and cut out that tissue, you end up with two tender, well-marbled steaks. You won't always find flat-iron steaks at your grocery store, but if you happen to find a "top blade" roast, you can fillet it yourself to make the steaks.