Cattle have changed a great deal in the United States since ranchers in the last century began crossbreeding the Spanish immigrant longhorn, a lean animal with great endurance, with fatter cattle from England. Today’s calf probably is a genetically engineered Angus, Hereford, French Charolais, or a crossbreed. Hereford is popular with some steak house chains because it yields bigger steaks, but Angus is the best seller.
Making a steak may take up to two years and involve as many as half a dozen different stages. A calf is born in the spring weighing about 80 pounds. Most likely the locale is a farm in the Midwest, but it could be in Texas, Florida, California, or several other states that have beef cattle industries. The animal destined to provide high quality steaks spends about six months on the farm or ranch, being weaned to solid food. During that time, the steer will grow to more than four hundred pounds and become a steer by virtue of castration. In the fall it is either sold as a “feeder calf” or kept to graze until the following spring.
Once sold, the steer is placed in a feed lot. Most of these are located in grain-producing states such as Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Texas. Fed a diet of corn, sorghum, oats, barley, and vitamins, a steer’s weight increases to between one thousand and fifteen hundred pounds in three to six months. But today’s cattle do not become as fat as they once did. They have been redesigned genetically over several generations to produce meat that is leaner, yet still flavorful.
“Natural” beef can come from steers that are fed grain grown with pesticides, but the animals must not have received hormone implants, which are given to as much as 80 percent of the nation’s cattle. Held longer on the range, up to fourteen months, steers destined to provide natural beef eat a feed lot diet of alfalfa, corn silage, and fresh hay. Over four months they gain about four hundred pounds.
This steak on the hoof is composed of about 18 percent protein, 22 percent fat, and 60 percent water. But the cattle buyers employed by beef packing companies, who come regularly to the feed lots, are thinking about texture, fat content, and connective tissue, the qualities of meat that determine its tenderness and the way in which it should be cooked. The harder and more prevalent the connective tissue, the tougher that flesh is likely to be.
The muscle fibers of a young animal are smaller and have been used less, therefore it is less tough. More use, as with legs and neck, equal more toughness. An oft-quoted generality is the closer the meat is to a hoof or horn, the tougher it will be. Therefore there are variations in tenderness even within cuts.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association lists nine sub-primal cuts: chuck, fore shank, brisket, rib, short plate, short loin, sirloin, flank, and round. The least exercised of these is the short loin, in the middle of the back, followed by the sirloin and rib.
As for fat, even though younger animals, veal for example, are more tender, their meat seems drier because it has less fat. As fat develops in a steer, it makes the meat’s texture more moist, but also increases the level of calories and cholesterol.
Another element in this world of tradeoffs is that more activity tends to create more flavor. Less expensive leg and shoulder cuts have more flavor than more expensive loin cuts. Indeed, beef has more flavor than veal. The development of connective tissue tends to be cumulative. The animal’s exercise time adds up and tissue becomes firmer as the animal ages.
With all the above in mind, along with fluctuations in demand and price, the cattle buyers choose steers for their companies.
The packer is responsible for processing the animal and dividing, or “dressing,” about eight hundred pounds of meat into the primal cuts. Some of those are vacuum-packed and sent to wholesale butchers, others are cut further into sub-primal cuts. Most of these are vacuum-packed, too, and may be sent to wholesale butchers or directly to supermarket chains. An increasingly small percentage will be sent on without being vacuum-packed. In any event, the aging process has begun.
Aging beef is a chemical change that occurs slowly under a controlled temperature during the first ten days after slaughter, perhaps longer. It heightens flavor and tenderizes meat; on that everyone agrees.
While some aspects of aging still are a mystery to scientists, the dominant theory is that freed enzymes attack cell proteins, causing the meat to break down and become softer. Separately, proteins are reduced to strongly flavored amino acids. For beef, the ideal aging cycle is ten days to three weeks hanging unwrapped at a temperature in the mid to high 30°F with controlled humidity. A limiting factor on aging is the susceptibility of fat to oxidation, which, in turn, may lead to off-flavors and spoilage.
In the rush of modern life, it seems butchers no longer can afford the luxury of giving beef some time to just hang out. Citing the shortage of meat locker storage space, the cost of holding the beef back from market, and so-called consumer preference for the less pronounced taste of unaged or barely aged beef, the industry allows most beef to age for only the period of time needed to transport it from the packer to the supermarket. This may be as short as four days. What arrives at perhaps 90 percent of America’s supermarkets and restaurants is not sides or quarters, but precut, vacuum-packed “boxed beef.” The meat has been wrapped and hermetically sealed in polyethylene bags that promote the aging effect. Since some juice coats and moistens the surface of the meat, this process is known as “wet-aging.” As with Kleenex and facial tissue, the brand name of the company that developed the process, Cryovac, has become synonymous with vacuum-packing meat.
NOT AGING STEAK AT HOME
A warning! Do not try to dry-age steak in your home. Only large primal and sub-primal cuts are suitable to the process. The bacteria that will collect on a single steak could cause illness. Keep fresh steak in the refrigerator, well wrapped, for no more than four days. If you choose to freeze uncooked steak, do it under the coldest temperature possible because the faster it freezes the less fluid loss there will be when you thaw it.
Boxed beef was introduced in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a service for restaurants and hotels that couldn’t justify buying a half-carcass. Supermarket chains soon demanded this service, too, and when a firm called Iowa Beef Processors was founded in the early 1970s specifically to produce boxed beef, the old, dry-aging method was doomed. In time, Iowa Beef became the nation’s dominant meat-packer and the old-line firms that didn’t adapt went out of business.
Beef intended for retail sale goes directly from the processor to the supermarket company. A restaurant’s beef may go from the processor to a middle man, a wholesale packer, where it will be portion cut, repackaged, and aged before being delivered to the restaurant.
These days, dry-aged beef is more talked about than seen. Once no great restaurant or hotel, especially in New York City, would sell a prime steak that hadn’t spent time hanging in a meat locker. And visitors to Manhattan’s theater district still stop to peer through a window at Gallagher’s on West 52 Street, into a refrigerated aging room containing fresh meat being aged.
Dry-aged beef lovers insist that the meat has a better texture and that its flavor is complex and fascinating. While both dry- and wet-aged beef are mild and soft to the tooth, a dry-aged steak will have an earthy, slightly musty aroma and may be a little drier and firmer. Dry-aging also deepens the red color of the flesh and causes shrinkage, which, some experts believe, is the reason dry-aged beef seems to have a more intense flavor.
There is, however, considerably less yield from dry-aged meat. Dry-aging a two hundred pound cut for fourteen days will result in as much as 20 percent loss due to evaporation and shaving mold from the meat’s surface. (In wet-aging there is little moisture loss because the bag adheres so tightly to the meat.)
A restaurant such as Gallagher’s may choose to age its own meat and recoup the investment by pricing prime steaks at prime prices. But rare is the retail butcher with the courage to charge $20 a pound for raw meat.
In response, advocates of “wet-aging” say their method is easier to control, costs far less, and wins taste test after taste test. Wet-aging in Cryovac produces less aging effect, but also less shrinkage, and some aging does occur to meat in transit. However, the retailer is unlikely to hold the meat any longer than the time it takes to tray it and put it on display. Advocates cite the advantages of standardized cuts, consistency of product, and better quality control.
The science of wet-aging has not changed much over the years, but the packaging and strength of the vacuum has improved. So has the distribution system. It promises the retailer that he can buy specific cuts according to his needs, promoting broader selection, more efficient inventory control, and—we hope—a better price for the consumer.
As for the great debate over dry- versus wet-aged steak, a Cryovac official sums it up with all the magnanimity of a winner: “It’s what you’re used to that tastes best,” he says, “and fewer and fewer Americans have an opportunity to become used to dry-aged beef.”
Most of us buy our steak from a supermarket self-serve counter. Usually, there’s a butcher within call. While there has been considerable wringing of hands in recent years that true butchers are disappearing—along with all manner of skilled craftspeople in other disciplines—that butcher is all you have in a supermarket to provide information and an assurance of quality. Try to get to know him by showing interest and by praising when praise is due.
The steaks in the supermarket or in the butcher’s display case are precut for convenience. Ideally, there are flecks of fat throughout the meat and the fat around the border is close-trimmed and white—unless the meat is from free-range lean beef. Then it should be slightly yellow. Avoid steaks with clumps of fat because the fat will only be cut away and discarded. If you want a steak you don’t see or one cut to a specific diameter or a tenderloin cut to a specific weight, ask for it. In addition, it’s good to develop a contact at a butcher shop for special purchases while continuing to use the supermarket for everyday needs.
Wherever I shop, two decisions that I have to make are: What steak should I buy and how much of it do I need? It’s worthwhile educating yourself to some degree about the configuration of cuts of beef. Recognizing the shape and bone structure of a steak will reassure you that it is labeled properly. And you will know, for example, that since sirloin steaks with a small pin bone are cut nearer to the loin, they are more tender than sirloins with a long, flat bone that are cut nearer to the round. Choice is by far the most common of the quality grades. If a steak is graded “select,” be prepared for quicker-cooking but less-tender meat. If it is super-rich prime, both the butcher or label and the price will let you know.
James Beard, a large man with a lusty appetite, recommended some years ago that for the “average appetite, one-half to one pound of steak is not too much to allow.” Contemporary appetites and sensibilities dictate something less except at steak house feasts. In my house, a boneless strip or sirloin steak of twelve ounces provides enough meat for two, and even three, if it is sliced thin. An inch-thick T-bone or porterhouse weighing a pound serves the same, and a filet for one need not weigh more than five to six ounces.
Once you arrive home with your purchase, refrigerate it. A well-wrapped steak should be fine up to four days. If you plan to freeze it, do so immediately. Remove the steak from the butcher paper, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap, and seal it in a heavy-duty freezer bag labeled with the cut and date. It should be fine for six months, but the meat gradually loses flavor and in time will be flabby when thawed.
I renamed this section when I realized that you and I can play no role in “making” a perfect steak. That process culminates at the meat packer or in an aging locker. At best, we can only hope to pick one up or point one out at the meat counter.
But when it comes to cooking, everything is up to us. The chef-philosopher Wolfgang Puck once told me his job as chef “is to buy the best ingredients I can, then try not to screw them up.”
So it is with cooking steak. If you or I screw up, everyone will notice. Furthermore, the steak or steaks represent a sizable investment in food. But the real reason we want this to come out right is the pleasure a perfectly cooked steak brings to those who eat it.
There are those who insist the only place to find a perfect steak cooked perfectly is in a steak house. My answer is that while you cannot duplicate the intense heat of a restaurant grill, 800°F or more, you can prepare steak at home that is just as enjoyable. As for the meat, if you enjoy prime beef and are willing to pay the price, you can mail order great restaurant steaks (see page 232).
Why do we cook meat in the first place? To make it taste better and easier to eat and digest. We respond to cooked meat because heat actually creates flavor in meat. First, by damaging the cell membranes, it helps create a gazpacho of fat, water-soluble compounds, enzymes, sugars, minerals, and free amino acids. Second, the high temperatures cause browning on the surface of the meat and that crust is very intensely flavored and aromatic.
THE TOUCH METHOD
It will take some practice to turn the following ritual into a practical skill, but soon the touch system will be your number-one guide to judging doneness.
For Rare
Let one hand hang limp. With the index finger of the other hand push gently into the soft triangle of flesh between the thumb and index finger of the hanging hand. It will offer very little resistance, give way very easily, and feel soft and spongy. That is the feel of rare steak.
For Medium-rare
Extend the hand in front of you and spread the fingers. Press the same spot with the index finger of the other hand. The flesh will be firmer but not hard, springy, and slightly resistant. This is the feel of medium-rare steak.
For Medium
Make a fist and press the spot. It will feel firm and snap back quickly, offering only a minimum of give, as does meat cooked to medium.
No need for a further comparison. Cook your steak any more and it will be a lost cause.
The most critical point in preparing a great steak isn’t when you start cooking, it’s when you stop. The degree of doneness is absolutely essential to a steak’s success.
As soon as you cut into a steak, well before you’ve tasted it, your eyes are flashing “go at it!” or “caution” signals to the brain. This early warning system is reacting to the color of the meat. The red pigment in raw meat is myoglobin. At 135°F (rare) it is still mostly red; at 145°F (medium rare) it is pink in the center, but the color is noticeably brown toward the surface; at 155°F (medium) there is only a trace of pink at the center, and while the meat still should be moist, the grain will be more apparent; and at 160°F (well done), the fiber proteins will be hard, dense, and the surface an unappetizing brown.
Marlys Bielunski, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s astute test kitchens director and the reigning authority on how consumers cook steak at home, says: “The most common mistake when preparing steak at home is to overcook it. Unlike chefs, home cooks do not work with steak every day and they play it safe. Even if a meat thermometer is used, the cook tends to wait until the reading hits medium-rare or medium, but the meat goes on cooking. Steaks are usually at their most flavorful cooked to no more than medium doneness.”
Nothing in the process is more given to variables than cooking a steak to a specific point of doneness. These include thickness, cut, whether the oven or pan has been preheated, and the internal temperature of the meat when cooking begins. The Beef Association recommends cooking steak directly from the refrigerator, and you can also cook them straight from the freezer (see page 90). I prefer to allow steak to come to room temperature before cooking. Not surprisingly, my steaks cook more quickly. While I will suggest cooking times in each steak recipe that should give you a medium-rare or medium steak, these can be no more than approximations. To do yourself, and your steak, justice, I insist—and I’m not really an insistent guy on most subjects—you learn and practice the touch method of judging doneness (see page 7).
Another way to see how far a steak has progressed on the doneness scale when grilling or panbroiling, is to keep an eye out for the first blood-red tears that appear on the top. They are a sign that the steak, with the heat coming from underneath, has reached the medium-rare stage on one side. When the drops are pink, the steak has reached medium. Turn it at once, depending on your preference.
Do I hear someone say, “What about using a thermometer?” A standard meat thermometer, with its bulky probe and its need to be in the meat throughout the cooking process, is impractical for steaks. Even with an instant-read thermometer in hand, the thinner a steak, the more difficult it becomes.
Steak can be cooked by dry heat or by moist heat.
The dry-heat cooking methods are broiling, panbroiling, panfrying, roasting, and grilling. Dry heat is just dandy for the tender uptown, more expensive cuts, so in the pages ahead you’ll find I broil porterhouse and strip steaks, panfry filets and T-bones, and grill just about anything that comes to hand. The moist-heat cooking methods, good for softening the connective tissue in the tougher downtown cuts, are boiling, steaming, braising, and stewing. Flank steak, though it has that downtown address, is best cooked by dry heat—broiling or grilling—and now costs as much as some of the uptown cuts. Searing, a technique that often is used with steaks cooked by either method, rates a separate description (see page 24). So does grilling (see page 26).
When it comes to keeping track of the beef supply, inspection is mandatory while grading is voluntary. To complicate matters at the very beginning, there are two programs of grading beef, not one. The program familiar to very few of us not in the industry is called yield grading, that is, “an estimate of the relative amount of lean, edible meat” a steer will provide. The wholesale trade pays a lot of attention to yield grades. Quality grading, on the other hand, is something consumers hear a lot about.
When an inspector from the U.S. Department of Agriculture grades a steer at a packing plant, he provides a reality check for the buyer and at least the promise that beef graded prime or choice will provide steaks that are tender and flavorful. The factors the inspector looks for are: “ample marbling, white fat, bright fresh flesh color and firm, fine flesh texture.” The grade is also a signpost as to how much the butcher can charge and the customer might expect to pay.
Standards have eroded over the years, most notably in new grading regulations issued in 1976, though consumer activists and a good many nutritionists will say that the less fatty beef now sold as prime and choice is not a sign of lowering quality standards once the term “quality” is broadened to encompass more than fat.
Of the eight quality grades, only “choice” and “select” are used for retail steaks in mainstream markets with nearly 70 percent carrying the “choice” designation. Packers and retailers who do not use the grading system may use their own brand names, such as Excel Sterling Silver or Safeway Lean. Lesser grades disappear into ground beef and processed meat products.
“Prime” beef does not play a large part in this book because it does not play a large part in our lives. Only about 5 percent of America’s beef is graded prime and that percentage is not expected to increase. Prime steaks are offered in some specialty markets, but the overwhelming majority of the meat of this grade is directed to restaurants, hotels, and private clubs.