Category: Thoughts About Food

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Confused by Beef

http://www.amazingribs.com/recipes/beef/zen_of_beef_cuts.html

Confused by beef?  Don’t feel bad.  I get confused constantly in the meat aisle.  For example, I came across a Top Blade Roast this past week and immediately got confused.  Top Blade Roast?  Not a clue what it was.  But the roast was on sale so I bought it.  Now what do I do with it?  After some determined internet research I learned Top Blade is Chuck.

Pot roast.

During the course of my research I stumbled upon a great website run by a guy named Meathead.

Yes, Meathead.

Check it out and learn what a Denver Steak is.

 

 

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Was Your Chicken Nugget Made In China?

That’s a pretty disturbing thought for anyone who’s followed the slew of stories regarding food safety failures in China in recent years. As we’ve on The Salt, this year alone, thousands of dead pigs turned up in the waters of Shanghai, rat meat was passed off as mutton and — perhaps most disconcerting for U.S. consumers — there was an outbreak of the H7N9 bird flu virus among live fowl in fresh meat markets.

via Was Your Chicken Nugget Made In China? It’ll Soon Be Hard To Know : The Salt : NPR.

North Carolina Researchers Find Formaldehyde in Imported Fish | Food Poisoning Bulletin.

The second link is not about nuggets.  Watch your fish too.

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Ramen Burger (not in my house)

The Ramen Burger, which you can see on its official Facebook page, consists of a beef patty sandwiched between two pan-fried discs of ramen noodles, then topped with an arugula, green onions, and a “secret” Shoyu sauce (a type of soy sauce). Shimamoto got the idea while traveling abroad in Japan, where ramen bun sandwiches are common but not with beef, which is prohibitively expensive there.

via Ramen burger: Is the ramen patty or bun? Explained. – CSMonitor.com.

Really?

 

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Tri Tip Too

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The good news is the tri tip steak I made a while ago was deemed very good.

The bad news is I didn’t get to have any.  The steaks were smaller than I thought so I didn’t get a piece.  Same as when I was growing up, Dad would serve dinner family style and let everyone else pick their protein first.  Dad got the pieces everyone else didn’t want.  The last time I grilled tri tip steaks I got chicken.

I had to buy more.  This time I bought the entire roast and carved it into steaks myself.  At roughly a pound and a half I saved $1.50.

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The triangle pieces are small and the first cut had a pretty thick cap of fat making the “steak” even smaller.  I now understand why butchers turned this muscle into stew meat.

Tonight I am marinating the steaks in a lemon soy bath.  We’ll see how they turn out.

Update 6:00 PM

The steaks turned out great.  I froze the strip steak like pieces and grilled the smaller chunks.  I managed to cook the meat until it was medium and it wasn’t tough or chewy.  Don’t cook tri tip past medium or you will end up with chewy odd shaped hockey pucks.  The marinade turned out decent for a throw together bath.

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Tri Tip Steak

The Tri-Tip roast/steak is a 1.5 to 2.5 pound triangular-shaped cut from the beef sirloin…

For years, the Tri Tip found itself as part of the bone-in sirloin steak, hanging off the end as an odd shaped strip that usually got cut off and made into kabob meat or cube steaks.  With a mere 4-5 LBS or so per animal, nobody really missed it.

via Supper is Ready!: Tri Tip: Good Eat’n, Great Price!.

Image courtesy of Supper is Ready! blog

As a kid growing up, steak was a rare treat.  Dad would pick up Top Sirloin from the local King’s Market, pop them under the broiler, and serve with baked potatoes and a vegetable.  For health reasons I don’t eat as much steak as I did when I was younger.  But every now and then I enjoy a nice steak.  My first experience with a Tri Tip was in a local restaurant and I felt this particular cut possessed extremely good beefy flavor.  At the store I found some Tri Tip steaks, grass-fed and drug free.  Tonight, we’ll be trying this cut marinated and grilled.