Out Gettin' Chose: Choosing beef, getting happy

You can replicate great meals at home. Really, you can. However, you'll need a few skills to make it work. I'd like to teach you some of these skills, to help you get closer to making some awesome meals at home. So here's lesson #1 - Beef.




For any meal involving beef, you need to start with a good piece of meat. Even ground beef, at its best, starts with quality meat. So here's an easy guide to choosing beef, or as an amazingly charismatic woman I once met may say, picking the beef that "out here to get chose."

  • Always start with a properly graded beef. I try to be sure to choose Prime, as it is graded as the  best quality and most intramuscular fat. Generally, about 3% of beef is graded as Prime.
  • Don't be afraid of fat. Lean, fat-less meat may look like the proper choice, but it's not. A little fat enhances the texture and the flavor of your meat. Choosing a cut with a little marbling will greatly enhance your end-product. 
  • Rich, bright red is for cartoons, not your plate. Select a piece of meat that has a reddish brown color, more red than brown. This means that the beef has been exposed to a little oxygen. Why is this important, you ask? High-end steak houses often claim to have "dry-aged beef." This is a process of letting the connective tissue deteriorate, tenderizing the meat, and enhancing the flavor by concentrating/saturating the natural flavors. The slightly darker color comes from the oxygen, which ages the meat, somewhat mimicking the dry-aging process.
  • Now that you have the right piece of meat, don't rush to scarf it down. When you get ready to eat your wonderfully delicious cut of meat, let it sit out at room temperature for about 30 minutes. This way, the meat, at room temperature, is more receptive to seasoning and the often drastic temperature changes utilized in cooking some beef recipes.
 Once this selection process becomes habit, all of your beef-based dishes will benefit and you, your family, or whoever happens to be dining on your creations, will notice the better flavor that comes with proper beef selection. Enjoy!!

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