My secret to a kickazz steak!
okay guys. In an effort to become part of the community I am going to reveal how I the great Zimix make the best steaks EVER. yes, I said it. E.V.E.R.
take your steaks. You can also use pork chops. tastes awesome but its pork.
2 cups of water
enough soya sauce to cover all the rice in china. I use about 2 ounces but it seems like more. you want your water dark black. not just black, but blackened darkly
throw in about 4 shakes of seasoning salt
2 shakes of garlic powder
take a shot of tequila
find something else in your fridge or cupboard that would go in the mix. any spices are good.
another shot of tequila
pour a bit of beer in your marinade
pour a bit of beer down your gullet
add your meat to the marinade. (you may need to shower after)
soak it for 30 minutes - 1 day
fire up the bbq
cook
enjoy
next up Zimix's cowboy potatoes!
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Ok i gotta disagree on ANY
Ok i gotta disagree on ANY steak marinade. The secret to a good steak is the steak itself. Maybe its just my profession but i see ANY steak or hamburger that requires any additional ingreedients as unfit for human consumption. The thing is that 95% of folks these days have 0 idea of what influences beefs properties(flavor, tenderness, etc)
I wouldn't go quite that far.
A good marinade can make a mediocre steak worth eating. I agree wholeheartedly, however, that the best steaks need nothing more than a chef who knows how to handle and cook beef properly, and that proper technique vastly outperforms any additions you could possibly make to the meat.
what about
London Broil's or Flanksteaks? We always marindate them. A marinaded London Broil is superb.
Also we marindate our shish kabob meat, which is usually Round Roast.
I don't tefhnicaly count
I don't tefhnicaly count those cuts as steaks. They are lower grade cuts and that's why there used as more of a utility role rather then a true "steak". Don't get me wrong I'm not thumbing my nose at them because there really good prepared right but they don't have the ability to stand alone like a filet or sirlion for example.
So I'm curious Moo
do you have a favorite cut of steak?
I'm rather partial to ribeye.
if its cooked right a
if its cooked right a porterhouse(which is basicaly a filet and a sirlion in one with a bone in the middle. The problem is getting one cooked right. They consist of two different muscles that have differnt densities so they dont cook at the same speed. The trick is they have to be very thick cut 20-30 oz and they have to be cooked extremely slowly and never more well done then the sirlion side being medium and the filet side being medium rare. If i cant find a porterhouse i go for the filet. Its the leanest cut of meat as far as trim fat but normaly has the highest Intermuscular fat (marbling)
Porterhouse
Filet
Gotcha!
You know you should open your own butcher, and you can advertise "Freshest steaks in Indy!"
How do you cook the sirloin
How do you cook the sirloin to medium with the filet being medium rare? The filet is smaller and cooks faster, so I always end up with a medium filet and a medium rare sirloin.
I would guess your cut isnt
I would guess your cut isnt think enough then. If you try to make sure it is at least 1.5 inches think the filet will cook slower because its denser and the bone sheilds it from alot of the heat where as the sirlion has much more surface area exposed to the heat. Personaly im more of a rare and medium rare guys so its not has hard for me.. the more you cook it the harder it is to balance the two.
Technique.
If you have to cook it longer, there are ways to get one side of a piece of meat more done than the other. One way is to make a foil ring in the bottom of your grill before you put the charcoal down, so you can make a hot central fire and a colder outer area, and just keep the piece of meat oriented so the part you want to be more done is in the center. (This technique is excellent for grilling chicken pieces you want all done at the same time.) Or you can always lay down a piece of aluminum foil, shiny side down, and use that to block some of the direct heat for the rarer piece.
Well here's the thing
There is really good beef out there, and it is way too expensive for most of us. Which is fine; it's expensive to raise cattle right. However, for those of us who occasionally buy beef at the grocery store, marinades are a lovely thing. If we can afford to buy meat at all, whatever they have at the grocery store will have to do. Which means rubs, marinades, etc.
Yeh the cost of steaks sucks
Yeh the cost of steaks sucks and like everything else its do to the middle men in there somewhere. Right now the market price live fat cattle is about 80 cents per lbs. That means that out of the $30 you pay for an 8 oz filet the guy that raised it for about 50 cents. It's a really messed up system.
question?
Do you get your steaks for 'free' (free for all relative values of free, not including cost of feed, vet bills, and other costs associated with the rearing and butchering of the meat)? I mean, do you reserve a cow or two for yourself, butchered by you or a friend?
Also, how much bartering and trade actualy occurs in modern farming and ranching? Do you actualy trade cows or beef for goods and services, or do you rely soley on the acution income from your cows?
I hope I am not asking anything to 'personal' here. I am just curious about how things work, sometimes to curious.
free steaks
if you live in an area where theres a lot of hunting or have friends who hunt you can always ask around, it wont be beef, but wild game is even better in my opinion
Venison
I hate a roommate for about 6 months who did a lot of bow hunting. he kept or freezer stocked all season. When he moved out he made sure to fill the freezer for me before he left. That was some good meat!
wait
Is that 80 cents per lb for the whole cow? If so how many pounds of meat come off the whole thing? Like what's that work out to in cents per lb of meat?
'bout 1/2 is good meat, a lot
'bout 1/2 is good meat, a lot more can go into hamburger and sausage - kinda depends on how you are for organ meat, fat and some good stew bones. But maybe 1/10 of the live weight is what actually becomes steaks.
I haven't tried since joining the Army in '02, but it always used to be much more economical to get your beef (or any groceries of any kind) straight from a rancher. We used to get a 1/2 cow every year for the family. I seem to recall that being like $800-$1000, but that was like 10 years ago too. On a per pound basis we figured it came out to 1/2 the price of getting it fresh at the butcher. A couple of years we worked a deal where we'd take the whole cow, then split it out amoung aunts/uncles and cousins. The only real downside is that buying in bulk you have to freeze most of it, but the butcher knew that too and he'd get almost all of it wrapped up for freezing for us.
A steer finishes between 1200
A steer finishes between 1200 and 1300 lbs.. and the market price is set just like a stock is except instead of the DOW its traded on the Chicago board of trade noramly. Out of the there is 750 to 850 lbs of meat.
Little more cowboy economic
Little more cowboy economic facts. Feeder cattle are weaned off the cow at between 500-750 lbs and go on a feed ration designed to get them to gain 2-3 lbs per day. The feed costs are on average about $2-$3 per head per day until they hit there harvest weight depending on how many head the feedlot has to spread the cost across. The big feedlots that feed 90% of the cattle to harvest out there don't actually raise the cattle. They buy them at weaning from ranchers that run cow calf opperations( these are the real cowboy types) at around $1:10 per lbs. Those cow calf operations buy there bulls from seed stock producers (this is me) who focus on raising genetically superior animals. Those bulls are a serious investment to the cow calf guys because a good bull versus a crapy bull can mean a difference of 100-200 lbs on a calfs weaning weight across herds of several thousand cows. The reason cattle are fed on large feed lots like that are 1 there simple isn't enough room to feed that many steers any other way and 2 operating ay peanuts efficiency with 50,000 head to spread costs across they only make about $25 per animal and noramly have staffs of 10 or so people to pay as well.
Free Range FTW!!! My
Free Range FTW!!!
My borther-in-law still has about 2,000 acres in central SD. Grass fed always tastes better too. But in the big scheme of things I don't think he gets any more/less for his cattle than feed fed stock.
For hamburger I will agree
For hamburger I will agree with you. For steaks not a chance. Tenderness and flavor correlates directly to marbling .. grass fed = 25% marbling of a silage base fed animal. Grass fed burger are awesome but steaks ate about like eating an old shoe.
correlates != causation. I'd
correlates != causation. I'd agree with you that more marbeling is better, but at certain point the falvor of the lean meat comes into play too - otherwise we'd all be eating the fattiest bacon available. I'll take a free range steak over feed fed any day. Hambuger too!
Its not an issue of excess
Its not an issue of excess fat like in bacon its of quality grade. Steaks need to be of Moderate Choice or Prime on the USDA quality grading scale to even be considered as steak material. Moderate choice requires at least 7.7% intermuscular fat. No animal consuming only grass which has a rough protien content of 4% will ever be able to attain that lvl. Im an ultrasound tech for carcus quality in cattle, meaning i use an ultrasound machine to gather the meat quality and quantaty of living animals so ive seen a large amount of data. From that data i can tell you that an animal that has had nothing but grass rarely has an intermuscular fat above 3%. On the grading scale 3% IMF below what is considered acceptable for human consumption and normaly ends up in dog food. The other problem is that to get an animal to kill weight on only grass you have to feed them for 2x the amount of time. This brings in to play the USDA quality grade as well because the older and animal is the tougher the meat is which kocks the animal down the quality grade scale as well.. Check out these two links they will give you some info.
http://www.uspremiumbeef.com/DocumentItem.aspx?ID=21
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Pages/ansci/beefreports/asl-1529.pdf
Intersting - I never knew the
Intersting - I never knew the technical difference between Prime, Choice and Select. I do know they typically sell at 36 mo old. Everyone in SD useing pure grass, maybe some alphafa hay in the winter months if the snow coverage is greater than normal. That could well put them into the Choice-Select category with only their outliers going as Prime. I'll have to ask. Corn or "feed" fed is stricktly a no-no though.
Feed does not mean corn..
Feed does not mean corn.. contrary to popular beleif corn is not used that much as a feed source.. silage is the main feed ingredient out there along with oats or Sogram
i aslo disagree with what
i aslo disagree with what you say is SD primary feed source.. you are talking about cow calf or comercial cow opperations.. NOT.. finishing opperations which is where the meat inevitably comes from. i know alot of folks in SD and as far as those first two types of operations are concerned you are correct.. but in the end cattle are finished on a feed lot even in SD and on a feed lot there is no grass other then what is ground and fed in the feed ration.
Trying my first Brisket...
So a couple weeks ago I picked up a Char-Griller Super Pro with the side fire box. I have never used one of those before, but I have heard they are a must-have if you are going to really get into BBQ. Pic of the grill sans-firebox.
The side fire-box
Going to try and cook my first Beef Brisket. So last night I injected it with a beer/beef broth mixture then rubbed it with a peper, salt, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder mixture. I let it sit over night in the frisge and am about to go out and throw it on the grill for 8 to 10 hours. We will see how that comes out!
Similar to what I have
I don't have the side fire box, though I could get it and put it on, it's built to have it. I lov emine though. Works great.
Nice - can't beat a good
Nice - can't beat a good charcoal/wood grill. I'm actually going to commit heresey later tonight though and cook on a gas grill for the first time. We just picked up one as an early birthday present yesterday.
Gas is convenient
If I had the budget I'd have gotten the big one that is both charcoal, with a gas grill on the end, sot hat you can do a good charcoal grill, but if you don't ahve the time youc an fire up the gas grill quick.
I still prefer charcoal
but my gas grill cooks some awesome tasting steaks (as will as pork ribs).
Have fun tonight with your new toy :)
Oh a fire box
*Drool*
I wonder how a turkey would taste if it was cooked that way :)
Best turkey I've ever had
was done on the BBQ. Sooo good. Much better than deep fried.
Brisket
I just pulled the brisket off the grill and put it in a towel lined ice chest to let it cure for an hour or so. I think I need a better thermometer because when I used an acutal meat probe it read 210 degrees. It was done in far less time than I thought it would take, so i think the actual cooking temperature was higher than what the thermometer on the grill was reading.
Pulling the Brisket it out it was starting to fall appart, so at least it should be cooked all the way through and the connective tissues rendered down! We will see after it is cut and served later. I found a recipe on a web site for a real tasty sounding sauce, so I made some of that to drizzle over.
http://www.amazingribs.com/recipes/BBQ_sauces/texas_BBQ_mop-sauce.html
This site seems to have a lot of good recipes and advice, Bookmarked and I think I'll be referencing it a lot over the summer.
Keep in mind the temp reading
Keep in mind the temp reading on the grill in 8"-12" above the actual heat souce.
But that brisket does sound excellent. Enjoy!
Yes
I have been keeping that in mind, but I guess my estimates haven't been all that great. I just haven't gotten around to buying some nice, acurate, thermometers.
Roasted herb potatoes are almost done, so serving dinner shortly!
wild card charlie...
living in Colorado, buffalo trumps all comers. But Moo is spot on that the good cut needs little else to enjoy the steak.
Buffalo is great for
Buffalo is great for hamburger and stew, but it just doesn't have the fat content for steaks - its actually too lean. Even in hamburger, a lot of the time they add in beef fat to get it up to 90% at least.