Food and Nutrition

                                                           

Steak 101: Your Steak Too Bloody or Burnt? Know How You Like Your Steak Cooked.

By Odell Ramirez  

  Food + Drink

When ordering steak at a restaurant, your waiter will ask you, “How would you like your steak done?”

If you’re unsure of your answer, you might end up with a steak that’s too undercooked or too overcooked. You won’t enjoy eating the steak and you’ll end up unhappy.

We want to avoid this so let’s go over a steak’s different degrees of doneness:

 

Blue Rare

 

                                     

Top and bottom: Lightly charred.  

Sides: Browned.  

Center: Red throughout. Cold. Raw.

Blue rare is cooked enough just to heat up the center but not cook it, hence the “blue.” Also known as “Very Rare.” Basically eating a plate of raw meat. Yum. If you’re a polar bear.

 

Rare

 

                                    

Top and bottom: Lightly charred.  

Sides: Browned.  

Center: Cool red center. Kind of raw.

Recommended for werewolves and vampires since there’s a little bit more warmth than the blue rare.

 

Medium Rare

 

                                       

Top and bottom: Charred to a dark brown color.  

Sides: Browned.  

Center: Mostly pink with hint of red.

What most chefs will recommend since flavor is maximized without tasting blood.

 

Medium

 

                                   

Top and bottom: Charred to an even darker brown color.  

Sides: Rich brown color.  

Center: Pink throughout.

A good compromise. Not raw and not overcooked. The meat is still tender without you having to feel like a caveman before discovering fire. Some chefs will draw the line here and won’t cook a steak beyond medium.

 

Medium Well

 

                                       

Top and bottom: Dark brown color. But not black.  

Sides: Dark brown.  

Center: Slight traces of pink.

Practically a sin for experienced meat-eaters.

Well Done

 

                                      

Top and bottom: Browned throughout. But not burnt.  

Sides: Browned throughout. But not burnt.  

Center: Browned throughout.

Steak will be dry and bland. Have mercy on the cow. It died for your eating enjoyment. Please do not eat it like this.

 

Over Cooked!

 

                                       

Top and bottom: Black and burnt.  

Sides: Black and burnt.  

Center: Black-brown throughout. Hard.

Vociferously ask for a refund. Unless your waiter says it’s because a dragon spit fire on the steak. Then go ask to see the dragon in the back. No dragon? Never return to the restaurant.

Steaks 101: Not Sure What Kind of Steak to Order? Know the Popular Steak Cuts.

Food and Nutrition

                                                            

 

Steaks 101: Not Sure What Kind of Steak to Order? Know the Popular Steak Cuts.

By Odell Ramirez  

Food + Drink

http://insights.looloo.com 

If you’re a total noob at eating steaks, knowing what type of steak to order at fancy restaurants can be overwhelming or intimidating. Let’s beef up your knowledge so you’ll know how to order the perfect steak.

Meat quality is primarily based on two factors: the cut of the beef and the grade of the beef.

The first step to being able to order a steak is to know the cuts. (Knowing the different grades of beef will be covered in the next article.)

There are many types of steaks and you should at least become familiar with the popular ones.

A steak is a piece of muscle cut from different areas of the cow. Tenderness is affected by location of a particular cut. A general rule is that the less used a cow’s muscle is, the more tender that piece of meat is when cooked. Muscles located furthest from the neck, legs and rear will be more tender. The more tender the cut, the higher the price.

The type of steak cut you choose will determine the level of flavor and tenderness of steak, amount of marbling (streaks of fat within the meat), as well as the price you’ll pay.

 

 

Filet Mignon

 

 

Also known as: Tenderloin Steak

Description: The most tender beef cut. And the smallest. And the most expensive. Mild steak taste. Buttery texture. Not the most flavorful. The cut should be thick (1.5 to 2 inches). Very little fat so it’s a good option for those watching their weight or fat intake.

Fat content: Low

 

Strip Steak

 

                                

Also known as: Kansas City Steak, New York Strip, Strip Loin Steak, Shell Steak

Description: Juicy “steak” flavor. Available boneless and bone-in. Lean, moderately tender with strong beefy flavor.

The filet mignon might be the most tender cut, but what good is tenderness if there’s no flavor? With a strip steak, you sacrifice some tenderness but get a lot more flavor.

Fat content: Medium

 

T-bone Steak

 

Description: If you can’t decide between the filet mignon and strip steak, why not get both? A T-bone steak combines the two steaks. T-bone steak = tenderloin + strip steak connected by a T-shaped bone. If the width of the tenderloin is smaller than a golf ball (between ½ and 1.5 inches wide), it’s usually considered a T-bone.

Fat content: Medium

 

Porterhouse Steak

 

Description: A bigger version of the T-bone steak. If the width of the tenderloin is larger than a golf ball (at least 1.5 inches wide), it’s generally considered a Porterhouse. Hai Chix and Mamou are good places to give this cut a try.

Fat content: Medium

 

Ribeye Steak

 

 

Also known as: Delmonico steak, Scotch fillet, Entrecôte

Description: The best all-around cut. The default choice of steak connoisseurs. Fine-grained steak. Rich, beefy flavorful. Considered the most juicy and flavorful of all steaks. The ribeye has more texture (not as tender) than the tenderloin. Price is usually more expensive than a strip steak, but cheaper than a filet mignon (when based on price/oz). Elbert’s Steak Room, Mamou, Prime 101 and Stockton Place are known to serve some delicious ribeyes.

Fat content: Very High

Bone in Meat vs Boneless Meat

Bones make cooked meat taste better. If you’ve eaten sinigang or bulalo, you know the meat between the bones is special. Same goes for steaks. When you cook meat on the bone, the marrow and other substances from the bones flavor the meat, adding succulence and a depth of taste that just does not exist with a boneless cut. The bones also help keep the meat moist, and help conduct heat throughout the meat so it cooks more evenly.

 

Tomahawk Steak

 

 

Also known as: Tomahawk Chop, Bone-In Ribeye, Cote du Boeuf (pronounced COAT duh BERF)

Description: The Tomahawk Steak is a bone-in ribeye steak cut with the entire rib bone intact. This long bone is frenched (trimmed of meat and fat), leaving a handle with the meat that looks like a Native American’s tomahawk.

This thing is a beauty when placed on the table and deserves its own selfie on Instagram. The Tomahawk has the largest amount of marbling, making it the most flavorful cut. It is cut based on the thickness of the bone and is typically two inches thick, weighing in between 30 and 45 ounces! Usually made for sharing due to its size. Places like l’entrecote and Chops Chicago Steakhouse offer this cut.

If you want to bond with your cavewoman (or caveman) on a date, share this piece of meat.

Fat content: Very High

 

Cowboy Steak

 

 

Also known as: Tomahawk, Bone-In Ribeye

Description: Sometimes also called a Tomahawk Steak since it’s basically the same thing. It might weigh a little less, usually around 32 ounces. The biggest difference is that a Cowboy Steak is meant to be eaten alone. Like a hungry cowboy.

The bone serves as a handle, so a cowboy can hold and eat this gigantic piece of meat without a plate or utensils.

If you want to impress your cavewoman (or caveman) on a date, completely finish this steak. Then order a filet mignon for dessert.

Fat content: Very High

 

Flat Iron

 

 

Also known as: Book Steak. Butler Steak, Lifter Steak, Petite Steak, Top Blade Steak

Description: Well-marbled, tender and juicy. Second in tenderness only to tenderloin and usually about half the cost. A boneless steak that has excellent beef flavor.

Fat content: High

 

Prime Rib

 

 

Also known as: Standing Rib Roast. Ribeye Roast

Description: Prime rib is a classic roast beef made from the rib cut, usually roasted with the bone in and served with its natural juices (au jus). Rich flavor, juicy, tender, with generous marbling throughout. Prince Albert Rotisserie is known to have a mean prime rib.

Fat content: High

 

Ground Beef

 

 

Also known as: Minced meat, Hamburger

Description: It’s not a steak cut but used to make burger patties. A combination of cuts from the chuck, round and sirloin chopped by a meat grinder.

Fat content: Low-Medium

 

Other Cuts

This wonderful infographic from the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and the National Cattleman’s Beef Association from the United States contains everything you need to know about all the beef cuts and how they should be cooked.

Food and Nutrition

                                                         

Steak 101: Fresh Beef Tastes Gross. Why You Want Steak That Has Aged.

By Odell Ramirez  

  Food + Drink

http://insights.looloo.com 

Unlike salads, bread, seafood, and baked chocolate chip cookies, steak that is fresh is a bad thing.

Fresh meat from a just butchered cow is so “fresh” that it’s tough and has no flavor.

That’s why beef must be aged.

Like art, burong mangga, cheese, wine and cheesy teenagers who whine, beef matures with age and improves over time.

Aging is a process that occurs when the muscle fibers in meat are slowly broken down. If you want to impress your fellow hot nerd, the scientific word is proteolysis.

Enzymes in the meat attack the structural proteins that make up the muscle fibers. The muscle fibers weaken and slowly break down making the beef more tender. All this enzyme action also helps improve and heighten the beef’s flavor.

The rate of aging decreases over time with most improvement in the first 21-28 days, although some restaurants age steaks even longer.

There are two ways to age steaks.

 

Dry-Aged Steak

For the steak connoisseur, there is no substitute for a dry-aged steak.

Dry aging is a process where unwrapped cuts of beef are hung or stored out in the open of a climate controlled environment, which breaks down the fibers in the meat, tenderizes them and allows the natural flavor to intensify.

Dry aging rooms maintain strict levels of temperature and humidity, need lots of airflow and usually use UV lights for bacteria control. The beef is never frozen but kept at low temperatures just above freezing, generally between 1-3°C (33-37°F) while the humidity is maintained between 50% and 60%.

Due to the low humidity, the beef “dries” up on the outside and loses a great deal of its moisture. About 20% to 25% of its weight is lost during the aging process which allows the flavor to become more concentrated. This is how the flavor intensifies.

Check out this video to see an example of a dry age room:

                                         

Talk about getting older, losing weight, and tasting great!

Over time, as the beef ages openly, it is exposed to air inside the coolers and ages from the outside in, forming a hard “crust.” Think of it as a controlled decomposition.

At the end of the process, the “crust” is carefully removed, leaving meat that is very tender and with a distinctive “beefy” flavor.

The downside is that you lose quite a bit of the meat due to moisture loss and the removal of the “crust.” This makes the meat more expensive by weight.

Let’s say a 16 oz. ribeye costs P2,000 (~$45). After it’s dry aged, it’s now 12 oz. and you still pay the same price.

Since dry aged beef requires unique storage requirements like a specially constructed room that must be monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, this also increases its price.

 

Wet-Aged Steak

Most restaurants usually just serve wet-aged steaks. Unless the steak is specifically labeled as dry-aged on the menu, it’s been wet-aged.

              

Instead of aging in an open-air chiller, the meat ages in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag. This seals the moisture in, which intensifies the beef taste and tenderizes it.

With wet aging, the meat retains its weight so the flavor doesn’t intensify as much as dry aging. And since the meat is aging in its own juices (hence the name wet-aged), it tends to develop an acidic taste.

The plus side is that wet-aged beef costs less to make since the meat doesn’t need to be stored or monitored. So the price for wet-aged steak on the menu will be cheaper.

 

Which is Better?

I think it’s a matter of preference and how much you’re willing to spend. But if I had to really choose, I’d prefer that my steak spends its last days as a piece of raw meat aging in an open-air chiller than in a sealed plastic bag.

The biggest difference between the two is the flavor.

Dry-aged beef has that more intense beef flavor. Wet-aged can taste slightly acidic and the flavor doesn’t pack the same level of punch.

I’d definitely recommend trying dry-aged steaks. It’ll cost more but it’s usually worth it.

 

Not Every Steak Should Be Dry-Aged

Lastly, if you’re going to order a filet mignon, skip the dry-aged version.

The tenderloin, the part where filet mignons come from, doesn’t have any protective tissue and the dry aging process is too harsh for this cut of meat. Even if the filet is dry-aged, the difference of flavor is negligible, so save your money.

Food and Nutrition

Steak 101: What is Angus Beef?

By Odell Ramirez  

May 8, 2014 

 Food + Drink

Angus beef is touted a lot at restaurants these days.

While Angus steaks are pretty obvious. You’ll also find Angus burgers.

And Angus tapa…and Angus pizza.

And Angus sisig, Angus skewers, Angus ravioli, Angus barbecue, Angus short ribs, Angus bistek, Angus tapsilog, Angus salpicao, Angus sinigang and Angus kare-kare.

That’s a lot of Angus dishes!

What exactly is Angus? How is it different from regular beef? And is it worth paying extra for it?

Angus beef comes from Angus cattle. They were developed from cattle native to the counties of Aberdeenshire and Angus in Scotland and are also known as Aberdeen Angus.

While Angus cattle comes in two types, Black and Red, it’s the Black Angus that’s the most popular beef cattle in the world. Cattle farmers love them because they are adaptable, easy to raise, and they grow (deliciously) fast.

Black Angus beef is known for their higher level of marbling relative to other cattle breeds. Marbling is the fat mixed in with the muscles that creates a tender texture that feels like each bite is melting in your mouth.

Beef is graded based on marbling with the highest degree of marbling reserved for the USDA Prime grade (which represents less than 2% of all beef produced in the US).

Not all Angus beef is USDA Prime grade.

TIP: If you’re not familiar with how the quality of beef is evaluated, please read my previous article on Beef Grading first.

While Angus cattle is known for better marbling, just because a piece of meat is labeled “Angus” doesn’t automatically mean every piece of Angus beef is highly graded.

 

Simply put, Angus doesn’t necessarily imply quality.

 
Angus just means the meat is from an Angus cow.

 

Just like Bangus simply means the meat is from a Bangus fish.

 

It can be low quality Angus beef. Or it can be high quality Angus beef.

 

There are two ways to help you tell the difference.

Ask for the USDA Grade

Most Angus beef in the Philippines are imported from the United States, so ask for the USDA grade.

 

All US beef is inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and graded for quality and consistency.

 

The higher the marbling, the higher the grade. Prime is the best grade of beef, then Choice, and then Select.

 

Look for Angus beef that’s graded at least USDA Choice, if not USDA Prime.

 

Anything lower and it’s probably not worth paying extra for because you’re simply paying for the Angus name rather than quality of the meat.

 

Look for the “Certified Angus Beef” Logo

 

Certified Angus Beef is a beef brand.

 

To help increase awareness of Angus beef and influence higher prices for their members, the American Angus Association created the Certified Angus Beef (or CAB) brand in the late 1970’s.

 

Keep in mind that while the USDA is a government entity, the American Angus Association is a private company. Specifically, a marketing company.

 

Any cattle ranch farmer can grow and sell Angus cattle, so how do you differentiate your Angus beef from all the other Angus beef to customers?

 

You sell yours as “Certified Angus Beef.”

 

But you can’t just slap a CAB logo on any Angus cow.

Certified Angus Beef is first graded by the USDA and must be in the top two grades (Prime and Choice) and then must pass the American Angus Association’s “10 science-based specifications for marbling, size and uniformity” to be labeled Certified Angus Beef.

 

                        

Certified Angus Beef is simply “branded beef.” It carries a specific brand name on the beef label and meets the unique set of specifications set by the branding company. There are many beef brands in the US aside from Certified Angus Beef. Sterling Silver and Creekstone Farms are other examples.

 

It’s important to point out that not only does Certified Angus Beef have more marbling than your average beef, it’s also distributed more evenly. This is what gives the beef the “melt-in-your-mouth” quality.

 

If you want to go straight baller status, look for Certified Angus Beef® brand Prime.

 

  

 

This beef must not only be graded USDA Prime and pass all ten of the brand’s quality standards. Less than 1.5% of US beef achieves the high standards of Certified Angus Beef ® brand Prime.

 

And only 1.5% of your bank account will be left after you pay for it.

In the United States, CAB aggressively markets so well that Americans associate the word “Angus” instead of “Certified Angus Beef” with high-quality meat. Even fast food restaurants market “Angus Beef” and consumers assume it’s the premium stuff when it’s not. They get suckered paying twice as much as for an Angus burger when it tastes the same as a regular burger.

Because the brand is marketed as a premium brand, it’s highly unlikely that Angus beef sold outside of higher-end restaurants is actually Certified Angus Beef.

All Certified Angus Beef are made from Angus cattle, but not all Angus cattle are “Certified Angus Beef.”

That said, that doesn’t automatically mean non-CAB Angus is inferior to CAB meat.

A steak graded USDA Prime is already considered a high-quality steak.

If the steak has a CAB label, will it really taste better? Or is it just marketing?

Unbranded beef is USDA-approved and simply carries the grade of the beef the label like “USDA Choice” vs. “Creekstone Farms Premium Black Angus Beef.”

Brands like to use words like “Premium Angus” or “Premier Angus” or “Gourmet Angus” or “Signature Angus” on their labels to make their beef sound fancy. But just like any commodity product, it’s mainly to help them differentiate themselves against other Angus beef suppliers.

I’d put more weight on the USDA grade rather than the beef brand label.

For example, if I had to choose between an unbranded USDA Prime steak versus a Certified Angus Beef® Choice steak at the same price, I’d choose the unbranded steak.

The main benefit of choosing a beef brand like Certified Angus Beef is more rigorous quality control.

Certified Angus Beef is more likely to taste better than unbranded beef at the same USDA grade, but it’s not guaranteed.

 

It’s the Grade That Counts

 

Angus is a breed of cattle. It is not the overall quality of beef nor a specific grade of beef.

 

Beef labeled as Angus can still be crappy even if it comes from Angus cattle.

 

If you want Angus beef, look for the USDA grade not just something labeled Angus.

 

If you’re lazy, look for the Certified Angus Beef label then. At least you’ll be certain that the beef is graded either USDA Prime or Choice.

 

But because there’s still a big difference between the two USDA grades, you might still end up not enjoying your steak because you ate the lower grade, USDA Choice, but were expecting USDA Prime.

 

So ask for the USDA grade anyway.

 

Be a smart consumer and know what you are buying.

 

Don’t be deceived by Angus beef labeling. Restaurants may sell Angus steaks or burgers and while it’s technically Angus beef, it might be made from lower grade or even ungraded Angus beef and not worth paying extra for.