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Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

steamykitchen.com

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Re: Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

#21

Post by wooster »

This is basically the method I use when cooking steaks.

Also see this post which discusses the effects of flip intervals on cooking time and evenness of steaks: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1117296

Also, some other simple tips:

1) In general, the more marbling the better. You want lots of veins of fat in the muscle of the cut. Big chunks of fat don't count, and leaner meat won't have as much flavor.

2) Hard white fat is good, spongy yellow fat is not.

3) Don't overcook your meat.

Re: Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

#22

Post by ars »

dzlobin wrote: post #16
garply wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good does local sourcing do? Is it freshness? I'm not a meat expert, but I would guess that a big company with an economy of scale would be able to produce higher quality meat for a lower cost. Also, if you're sourcing locally from non-big brand names, don't you have concerns about their cold chain?

Locally sourced meat tends to be grass-fed or at least grass finished. It also tends to have WAY better living conditions than any commercial plant. A happy animal is a tasty animal. I highly suggest you watch Food inc. :-)

What if I live near a "commercial" plant, so it's local to me?

Local is nonsense. If you want grass finished say so. Don't say local. And calling it commercial is misleading too, since grass finished is also commercial.

Re: Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

#23

Post by ErrantX »

ars wrote: post #22
dzlobin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locally sourced meat tends to be grass-fed or at least grass finished. It also tends to have WAY better living conditions than any commercial plant. A happy animal is a tasty animal. I highly suggest you watch Food inc. :-)

What if I live near a "commercial" plant, so it's local to me? Local is nonsense. If you want grass finished say so. Don't say local. And calling it commercial is misleading too, since grass finished is also commercial.

you wont find the "commercial plant" selling locally.

You could go further afield for your meat (I do myself actually) but a "local producer" is certainly the style your after.

Re: Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

#24

Post by ErrantX »

garply wrote: post #19
ErrantX wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think so. But I have found you get better quality for very little premium. And even the cheap stuff is better than supermarket schmuck. My aunt rears poultry for several markets. Her supermarket produce is usually additionally processed in a variety of ways by an intermediate to increase it's sale value (with poultry it is usually water plumped). It might take a while but there is sure to be a local butcher or…

I had no idea about plumping. Do you know what percent of the revenue her supermarkets take?

Not sure but it's a fair whack. She makes a little more on direct & local sales but mostly that is because she also gets some of the retail markup too (which the supermarkets soak up).

EDIT: here is some info on plumping. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/all-we-can-eat/food-politic...

My Aunt's produce isn't modified all that much (because it is marketed as premium and local produce by the supermarket - they buy from numerous small producers in local regions and distribute to that region). However most of the generic chicken you see in stores will be plumped in this way. Im not sure of the exact water content but I recall watching a TV show once about it that suggested 70% water content (including what was already there)

Re: Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

#25

Post by ars »

dzlobin wrote: post #12
weaksauce wrote: post #9

OK. Sous Vide looks more interesting to me that overly salting a piece of meat. tptacek care to weigh in? I am about 23 hours away from buying a rice cooker + pid controller to make this happen. I do the pid part at work so it is interesting to me from a work point of view too. Edit: If you have not seen sous vide cooking: http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html It looks amazing to me.

I was cooking at a two Michelin star restaurant last year where a large majority of proteins and vegetables were cooked sous vide. Don't underestimate the importance of a good salting, but sous vide will make everything you cook perfect, and consistent. There is a better home option now than the rice cooker + pid timer( which does not circulate water and leads to uneven cooking. http://www.sousvidesupreme.com/ This i…

Aren't you worried about the plasticizers from the bags?

Re: Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

#26

Post by ecuzzillo »

weaksauce wrote: post #9

OK. Sous Vide looks more interesting to me that overly salting a piece of meat. tptacek care to weigh in? I am about 23 hours away from buying a rice cooker + pid controller to make this happen. I do the pid part at work so it is interesting to me from a work point of view too. Edit: If you have not seen sous vide cooking: http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html It looks amazing to me.

I really want to do sous vide, but basically everything I've read says you get bad results unless you have a serious-dude vacuum chamber packer sealer $4000 thing, which seems mildly impractical.

Especially, you can't do the spectacular compressed stuff without one of those.

You can get sous-vide-like results sometimes without said equipment, though; Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home book contains a lot of unstated backports from sous vide techniques. For instance, he has you blowtorch a big prime rib roast and then cook it at very low temperature in the oven (275 F) for two hours. It reliably comes out with the uniform-pink-almost-all-the-way-to-the-edges effect. Presumably not quite as close.

Re: Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

#27

Post by ecuzzillo »

ars wrote: post #22
dzlobin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locally sourced meat tends to be grass-fed or at least grass finished. It also tends to have WAY better living conditions than any commercial plant. A happy animal is a tasty animal. I highly suggest you watch Food inc. :-)

What if I live near a "commercial" plant, so it's local to me? Local is nonsense. If you want grass finished say so. Don't say local. And calling it commercial is misleading too, since grass finished is also commercial.

Empirically, Giant Eagle (the crap chain supermarket in PA) beef tastes like crap, and local butcher beef tastes really good. Locality is a good proxy for people caring about food tasting good, and for not going through enormous horrible disease-ridden meat-packing plants. The latter tends to produce meat that tastes bad and periodically makes you sick.

Re: Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

#28

Post by drtse4 »

wooster wrote: post #20
ecuzzillo wrote: post #15

Salting things a while beforehand so the salt penetrates it is a good idea in general. You're supposed to do that to basically any savory food, including chicken, meat, eggs. For big things, like prime rib roasts, you salt it a whole day ahead. So, this guy compared wrongly-salted expensive steak to correctly-but-very-heavily-salted cheap steak. Unfair. Also, in general, expensive steak isn't expensive because it's a…

The difference between prime and choice is not aging, it's marbling. Marbling will also usually be the difference between pricing of different cuts of meat from the same animal, as more often-used muscles will tend to be leaner and tougher.

Right, marbling is what really makes a difference (just look at kobe beef, what is its key characteristic?). Btw, the linked article presents nothing new, over salting+removing is an approach already seen in many other places(even cooking show). As the advice of drying it, essential. @ecuzillo, the salt crust method is perfect for fish, salt encrusted seabass is pretty popular here.

Re: Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

#29

Post by wooster »

ecuzzillo wrote: post #27
ars wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I live near a "commercial" plant, so it's local to me? Local is nonsense. If you want grass finished say so. Don't say local. And calling it commercial is misleading too, since grass finished is also commercial.

Empirically, Giant Eagle (the crap chain supermarket in PA) beef tastes like crap, and local butcher beef tastes really good. Locality is a good proxy for people caring about food tasting good, and for not going through enormous horrible disease-ridden meat-packing plants. The latter tends to produce meat that tastes bad and periodically makes you sick.

AFAIK, there are only 4 cattle slaughterhouses in PA: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/downloads/slaughter_...

Only one of the 4 is not owned by Cargill or JBS.

Unless your beef vendor is taking delivery on whole carcasses and then packing it themselves, the beef is probably packed at the slaughterhouse, as well.

Re: Turn $5 steak to $50 steak with salt

#30

Post by garply »

ErrantX wrote: post #24
garply wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no idea about plumping. Do you know what percent of the revenue her supermarkets take?

Not sure but it's a fair whack. She makes a little more on direct & local sales but mostly that is because she also gets some of the retail markup too (which the supermarkets soak up). EDIT: here is some info on plumping. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/all-we-can-eat/food-politic... My Aunt's produce isn't modified all that much (because it is marketed as premium and local produce by the supermarket - they buy from…

The bakeries here usually blend their cheesecakes (which are sold by weight) with flour to boost their margins. This sounds like exactly the same sort of process. I wonder how frequent this is in the food industry.
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