Cooking 101: Steak

How often does this happen to you? You go to pick up a steak at the supermarket and you see Strip, Porterhouse, Sirloin, Skirt, Flank, Chuck Roast, Top Round, Bottom Round, Ribs, Short Ribs, Loin on and on. What do you pick? How do you cook it?

Here's a diagram where the cuts of beef come from on a cow.

Basically, the farther the cut of meat is from the cow's head or hoof, the more tender it will be. This is because the muscles closer to those areas do the most work and thus build up the most connective tissue making for a tougher piece of meat.

Connective tissue in the muscle, called collagen, will break down and turn into gelatin at 160°F and continue to break down through 180°F. When the collagen has all turned to gelatin, that's when you get that great bite of melt-in-your-mouth, fall-off-the-bone meaty goodness.

So why can't we just cook every piece of beef to 160° and enjoy the succulence? Well, for a rare steak, you want it to only reach 120°-130°F. Well done is 150°-160°F. Most people enjoy a steak somewhere in between. You start losing moisture once you breach 130°F. The key is to cook those tougher cuts low and slow in some sort of liquid, like the braising method, so you can achieve optimum collagen to gelatin exchange without losing it's juiciness.

For a go-to cut of meat to pan sear or grill up, go with a Rib Eye. It has a good amount of marbling which will melt while cooking thus giving you a tender, juicy steak to enjoy.

Here is another view of cuts of beef with their optimal cooking method.

Braised Short Ribs Beef Stew

I love Alton Brown's program Good Eats. Recently I watched an episode and he made some beef stew and it looked so good I had to try it myself.  I mean, just look at this? Doesn't it make your mouth water?

So let's get down to business.

You can find the original recipe here

Ingredients:

1/4 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons dried herbs, any combination of thyme, oregano and rosemary
3 pounds English-cut short ribs
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 pound red potatoes, unpeeled and diced small
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley leaves

Gather the first 5 items. I was out of tomato paste so I used some diced tomatoes in their juices. 

Mix everything together in a bowl and set aside.

Pat dry your short ribs and salt them well. 

Sear the short ribs on a hot griddle and brown each side.

Make sure you get a nice deep brown - this is the only browning the meat will get during it's cooking time.

Add the meat to the marinade and then place everything onto a sheet of tin foil and seal up the edges.

Place in a cold oven with a pan underneath to catch any spill over. Now preheat the oven to 250 and set the timer for 4 hours.

Tick...Tock...Tick...Tock...

Ding!

Look how the meat turns out! Tender, shreds easily with a fork and melts in your mouth.

As an aside, the meat turns out like this because the original piece had a lot of connective tissue called collagen. Cooking low and slow causes the collagen to break down into gelatin, turning a relatively tough piece of meat into the sumptuous morsel you see in front of you.

Pour the juices into a glass and refrigerate to separate the fat.

Fast forward to day two.

Put one tablespoon of the separated beef fat into a pan to roast the vegetables in. You can keep the rest of the fat in the fridge to use in cooking later in the week.

Saute mirpoix in the beef fat and add the diced red potatoes.

Add the remaining beef juices.

Cover and simmer on low for 30 minutes until the potatoes soften.

Add the short ribs and warm through for another 10 minutes.

Enjoy!