Where to get nice steaks from?

Droolinggimp said:
Being a butcher since I was 18 I really never used to eat steak much when I was younger. If I did it was always rump. After I started to cook for my self I always had to do it for ages in the pan or grill so it would be pink but not runny. Once I was told to leave it out before cooking it took far less time to cook to my preference. Obviously since all this learning stuff I always have ribsteak now. Have done for 16 or so years. I have had fillet twice, first time tasteless second time it was hung for 6 weeks in the fridge at the butchers i worked at the time. By the time the customer came back to buy it it was covered in crust, furry in places but once he told us to cut a steak of to keep for ourselves and we cooked it , the taste was immense. They are the only two occasions I have had fillet and will never try it again. Waste of money imo.

For the record I leave my steaks out on the kitchen work top for hours. Sometimes over night. When I cook them they take literally 2-3 mins and put on plate cover loosely in foil and the drained juices back in the pan to reduce and seasoned and poured onto the steak on the plate before chomping on.
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All of the above! :)
 
For the record if you fancy rump steak make sure you get the bottom bit. If you see a full rump you will notice it is heart shaped. The first longer cuts will consists of two muscles. The top muscle will eventually get smaller as the steaks are cut from the primal. Once the top bit is gone the rest of the rump is called 'D' cut and is the tender part of the rump . It will be a solid muscle unlike the first half off the rump.

thats the bit you want.
 
tom_e said:
To be fair for a steak thread it's taken a long time for it to get to the "No you're cooking it wrong!!!" chat to start :D
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I always suggest to customers (well, I did, I no longer working in retail) to leave it out for as long as they can and make sure they rest it after, before eating it. I have never had a bad steak doing that method. Any other way of preparing it turns out crap in comparison in my experience anyway. Now I just ignore other peoples suggestions and don't recommend any either. Leave 'em to it I say :P
 
Droolinggimp said:
For the record I leave my steaks out on the kitchen work top for hours. Sometimes over night. When I cook them they take literally 2-3 mins and put on plate cover loosely in foil and the drained juices back in the pan to reduce and seasoned and poured onto the steak on the plate before chomping on.
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And get the same cooking times when doing a dry brine and cooking straight out of the fridge. In fact, the first few times I did it, I overcooked the steaks as I didn't realise how little time I would need to cook now that the outer layer of the steak was free of any moisture.

So much heat energy is wasted evaporating the moisture in the outer layer, and that is what I find results more in the grey layer of doom, regardless of the starting temperature of the meat.
 
Tone1979 said:
I disagree. maybe with thin steaks the difference is not so much but for thicker bits of meat it's a game changer when you're aiming to get your steak cooked evenly.

Take a 2" thick fillet and cook it straight from the fridge. by the time the middle has got to say 50 degrees for rare, you would have had the outside of the steak on the heat for a longer time so you will get a much thicker grey second of meat.

We can agree to disagree however I have seen far more evidence and topics from chefs I respect with regards to not cooking a steak straight from the fridge than web articles that disagree with this.
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You are talking nonsense. I too was taught to leave the steak out for hours to get to room temperature and did that for years and years without thinking about. As soon as tried cooking straight form the fridge I quickly found it made absolutely zero difference what so ever. I then spent months doing side by side comparisons and if anything straight form the fridge actually seems to work better in keeping a nice juicy steak. IF the center of the steak is colder it will hold on to the juices longer leaving the outside drier, when cooking on a high heat the outside will crust and as the inside warms up the juices start flowing.
 
D.P. said:
You are talking nonsense. I too was taught to leave the steak out for hours to get to room temperature and did that for years and years without thinking about. As soon as tried cooking straight form the fridge I quickly found it made absolutely zero difference what so ever. I then spent months doing side by side comparisons and if anything straight form the fridge actually seems to work better in keeping a nice juicy steak. IF the center of the steak is colder it will hold on to the juices longer leaving the outside drier, when cooking on a high heat the outside will crust and as the inside warms up the juices start flowing.
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like I said, I agree to disagree.
 
I always find beef ribs a bit of a let down, always go for pork ribs now. A few hours in the slow cooker and half an hour on the BBQ and perfect.

I'm willing to suggest *dons flame suit* that the taking out of fridge/not taking out of fridge argument probably depends on how it's cooked (both rare-well done and BBQ vs griddle/frying pan). I've found that leaving the steak out for a while before helps get a decent finish (nice crust on the outside and blue on the inside). Otherwise, especially with thicker steaks by the time the inside is not chilled the outside layer is way over done. If you want something more medium rare then maybe it won't make as much of a difference.
 
Amp34 said:
I always find beef ribs a bit of a let down, always go for pork ribs now. A few hours in the slow cooker and half an hour on the BBQ and perfect.

I'm willing to suggest *dons flame suit* that the taking out of fridge/not taking out of fridge argument probably depends on how it's cooked (both rare-well done and BBQ vs griddle/frying pan). I've found that leaving the steak out for a while before helps get a decent finish (nice crust on the outside and blue on the inside). Otherwise, especially with thicker steaks by the time the inside is not chilled the outside layer is way over done. If you want something more medium rare then maybe it won't make as much of a difference.
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Sacrilege to put ribs in a slow cooker:mad:. 3-4 hours in the smoker, hmmmmm. Might have to do that this weekend. I find beef ribs vary hit and miss, more miss than hit though. I have yet to try them myself but when I've tried them else where they are some variant of really tough like leather, really fatty and gelatinous, tasteless.


Taking out the steak form the fridge really makes no difference. The center might be 4*C in the fridge, even if you left it out for say 12 hours it will hit about 20*C, but you are cooking it until 65*C or more. As alluded to above, the crust formation is due to moisture so unless you try and dry the surface of the steak out it doesn't really change.



In most steak restaurants when cooking a decent thick steak, if someone wants a a medium of medium well done steak then once the outside is appropriately cooked if the inside is not up to temperature then its put in a hot oven for 2-3 minutes before resting.You can also lower the temperature of the griddle/BBQ once you have a crust and keep flipping the steak every 30 seconds or so.
 
Glaucus said:
well it's just about warmed up, and well lets just say so many in here overate aldi meat, its perfectly fine, amazing it is not.
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I don't think anyone is saying it compares to decent steak from a good butcher but for something you can pick up cheaply in a supermarket it's surprisingly good.
 
FrenchTart said:
The SeriousEats one? The one that exposes lots of myths as being exactly that...myths? I'm not sure any of that can realistically be described as macho.
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I was referring to the articles language not the whole site.

Just because the site is known for exposing 'myths' doesn't mean it is 100% right all the time.

Either way, I know what I do to steaks and it works, all the time.
 
Tone1979 said:
I was referring to the articles language not the whole site.

Just because the site is known for exposing 'myths' doesn't mean it is 100% right all the time.

Either way, I know what I do to steaks and it works, all the time.
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I was referring to the article too. What exactly about it is "macho"? You can disagree with the findings (though disagreeing with the results of experimentation is a little silly unless you can point out the flaw in the method) but I really don't know where you've got macho from.
 
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