The trick is Sous-vide cooking.
We buy beef one half at a time from family. It allows us to be very choosy. The sex of the animal and the finish matter to me. The cuts are ours to choose.
"Respect the meat" is a kitchen motto. I wouldn't say we are Buddhist, but an animal did die for the meat we cook, and it deserves respect. It takes some skill to make a perfect steak or roast using conventional tools.
Thankfully, technology came up with a work around. A top rated machine is here: https://www.chefsteps.com/joule
The technique is slow cooking the meat at a temperature just over the temperature needed to kill bacteria, and cooking it for a long time. 36 hours for a roast, for example. It is hard to mess up. 34 or 38 hours are also going to be just fine. The slow cooking process melts the fat and collagen. One fellow cook made a cheap chuck roast into what he cleverly called "Prime Fib". Melt in your mouth meat for a fraction of the cost of Prime Rib.
The meat still needs to be seared for presentation after slow cooking. I use a dutch oven, hot oil and cooking tongs to put a nice sear on each side of the roast. It is actually very difficult to mess up a roast or steak with this technique. Round roast is still a challenge because it has so little fat, but almost any other cut of beef steak or roast works well.
Some people complain about the cost of cooking the meat so long with electric heat. This is because they do not insulate the container. We use an old styrofoam container around a 6 quart Rubbermaid polycarbonate container with a small hole we cut in the lid for the machine.
The styrofoam prevents radiant heat loss and the lid prevents evaporative heat loss. There is no reason to be wasteful.
Slow cooking meat has a long and storied past. Clay pots buried for a day in charcoals and other techniques yielded amazing, tender and delicious meat. The modern iteration is precise and optimized. Temperature variation is less than one degree. There is an app that will let you know when the cooking is complete.
For the price of a nice steak meal for two at a restaurant, you can set yourself up to make perfect steaks anytime you want at home.
© 2022 GaryNorth.com, Inc., 2005-2021 All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission prohibited.