Cuts to try

I've been sharing posts on Facebook with new cuts to try and I wanted to put them all in one place to make them easier to find.

Every Steak has a Story

May is National Beef Month. I don’t know who decides these months or why, but I’m glad we have a whole month devoted to a protein that I love to eat and raise. I have been mulling on the idea for this post for a while and figured May would be a great time to put my thoughts on paper, or technically, computer screen.

I love to do farm tours. We take a group of ladies on our annual Moms on the Farm Tour here in Northwest Arkansas, but we also do tours with students and other groups. A few years ago, I had some friends from Dallas come to town and ask me for something fun to do with their kids and I said, “Want to go see a dairy?” And we did. We toured a local dairy and had a great time!

On these tours, everyone loves to hear the farm story; how long the farm has been in operation, how many generations of this family have operated the farm, what crops have been raised there over the years. We love to see those farm stories in the grocery store, too. Several food companies do a great job of sharing the stories of their farmers with their consumers. People love to go to the farmers market or see ‘locally grown’ on the food they buy. I think it’s great that so many consumers want to know about their food and the farmers that produce it.

But, here is what I think people are missing… every steak has a story.

There are about ¾ of a million beef farms and ranches in the US, and over 91% are family owned or individually operated. The average size of a cow herd is 40 cows.

That means that most of the beef bought in the US came from a farmer with a story, just like the one you would hear from our ranch. The calves from our ranch aren’t sold at the farmers market or to a special store with our name on it. They go from our place to a backgrounder (like the Peterson Farm Brothers) or a feedlot operation (like the Feedyard Foodie). I’ve written a post about the segments of the beef industry. Then they will be harvested in a commercial facility and processed into beef that may go to a fancy restaurant or a small grocery store.

Cows on snow on the plains, on green grass here in
Northwest Arkansas, or in the arid mountains in New Mexico.
They all raise beef.

When you buy a steak at the store or order one in a restaurant, it could have come from a farm in Florida or a ranch in Montana. We visited a farm in Hawaii where the cows ate Noni fruit and lived within view of the Pacific Ocean. That’s the great thing about beef. Cows can live in very diverse climates and under lots of different conditions, but they all produce beef.

If you are interested in hearing more stories about farmers who raise beef and others in the beef industry, check out these blogs:

Tales of a Kansas Farm Mom

Cows Kids and Grass

Faith, Family, and Beef

Bovidiva

Beef Runner

It turned to the DARK SIDE: Why did my meat turn brown?

Today is STAR WARS day. May the 4^th (be with you). I’ve had several questions lately about meat that has turned brown. Has it really turned to the DARK SIDE?

Everyone that has bought meat has seen this happen. Maybe you take you steaks out of the package, and a little bit of brown is under the sticker on the package. Maybe you open a package of ground beef, and a little bit of brown is on the bottom of the package. Maybe you are marinating some pork chops in the fridge and they were brown in the afternoon when you got them out to cook.

It happens, and you have questions. Is it still safe to eat? Did the butcher hide this little spot under the sticker? Why did it turn brown? As a meat scientist, this is one of the most popular questions I answer.

Is it safe? If it has been kept at a cold temperature and is not way past its best-by date, most likely, yes, it is safe to eat. Smell it. You can’t smell the bacteria that will make you sick, but smelly bacteria will let you know if the meat has been at stored unsafe temperatures. If it’s not smelly, cook it using a meat thermometer.

Now, about that color…

People ask me or tell me all the time about how the butcher was trying to fool them by putting the brown spot under the sticker or how they put the fresh meat on top of the old brown meat. I realize it looks suspect, but that’s not what’s happening. It’s actually the sticker or the package that makes the meat turn brown.

I’ve talked about the changes in meat color before. It was one of my first posts and is actually one of my favorite topics and the subject of many of my research projects.

Meat turns from red to brown due to OXIDATION. If you think way back to chemistry class, you might remember that oxidation is the loss of electrons from a molecule. Meat color is controlled by a protein called myoglobin, and in the middle of myoglobin, there is an Iron. When that iron loses an electron, the protein changes shape and looks brown. We call the brown protein metmyoglobin.

So, what causes the oxidation? The change in meat color from red to brown can be caused by several events.

You pull off the packaging, and there
is the brown spot! Why?

1.  Very low levels of oxygen. That is what is happening underneath the sticker and in some packages of meat. We know that the oxygen in the air reacts with the myoglobin to make it turn red. However, when that oxygen is blocked by a sticker or part of the package, the level of oxygen is drastically lowered, causing oxidation and the brown color.

2. Time in storage. (Warning: nerdy meat scientist answer) This one is a little more complicated. When the meat turns red, the oxygen really only penetrates a little layer of the surface of the cut. So, you have a little red layer on top of a purple layer. Between those two layers of red and purple, there is a low oxygen environment and oxidation happens, so a little bit of brown, metmyoglobin forms. 

Luckily, the muscle has the ability to give the electrons back to the myoglobin (that’s called reduction, the opposite of oxidation), turning it back to purple. But, eventually, the ability of the meat to donate electrons runs out, and the brown color remains, creating a brown layer between the red and the purple. At first, you can’t see it, but with time, that brown layer will work its way to the surface that people can see. 

These steps are sped up in meat that has been on the shelf in the cooler longer (like aged meats) or by higher temperatures.

3. Salts and marinades. People love to add flavor to their meats in the form of marinades and rubs. I had a question about this just last week. Someone had bought some pork chops and placed them in the fridge to marinate all day. When they got them out to cook them, the chops had turned brown. Salt is actually a pro-oxidant. It causes oxidation. Some spices can cause oxidation, too. So it was probably the marinade that caused the meat to turn brown.

4. Freezing. Sometimes freezing meat can cause the color to change.

5. Bacteria. Yep, bacteria may produce sulfides, peroxides or other metabolites in the meat that cause it to turn brown. They also cause the meat to have a spoiled smell. We call these spoilage bacteria. They usually grow when meat has been stored at temperatures above 40°F, or stored for too long a time. When these bacteria grow, the meat turns brown, smelly, and maybe even slimy. Brown color with a putrid smell and slime are good indicators that pathogenic bacteria have also had a chance to grow and the meat may not be safe to eat. 

So, if your meat turns to the dark side, just give it a sniff. If it’s not smelly, you can probably still cook it. 

(Also, full disclosure, I'm really more of a Star Trek gal. Live long and prosper.)

Beef Quality Grading

What does ‘Quality’ mean to you?

Quality can mean lots of things. In regards to meat, some people may equate it with freshness or wholesomeness. Others may think the word ‘Quality’ indicates nutritional quality, in that a certain food is good for you. Still others may think ‘Quality’ means it tastes good, meaning that high quality meat it is tender, juicy, and full of flavor. All of these are true.

However, in the beef industry when we talk about Quality grading, we are talking about terms like Prime and Choice, and those terms help us know how tender, juicy, and flavorful a beef cut may be based on the age of the animal and the amount of marbling (the little flecks of fat found within the muscles in a cut of beef). These grades are used to help farmers and meat packers market their animals based on an indicator of eating satisfaction. Keep in mind that grading is different from Inspection, which determines whether or not the meat is safe and wholesome, and grading is voluntary whereas inspection is required.

At the turn of the 20^th century, someone in the USDA decided that farmers and meat producers needed a consistent way to determine if one beef carcass was superior to another, so they began to work on ways to differentiate carcasses based on their eating satisfaction. There is a very detailed history of meat grading on the Texas A&M meat science website.

How are cattle graded?

Today, cattle are graded in beef processing plants by USDA employees whose services are paid for by the beef packing companies. In some plants, grades are applied with the help of cameras and computers.

I am not a USDA grader, but I can estimate
grades. Here, I am grading some carcasses
for a small processor. You can see how the
carcass is cut for the grader to evaluate it.

First, the grader determines if the cattle are young. They look at specific bones along their backbone to make this call. A very large percentage of the cattle that are graded by USDA graders are young. Because the beef from older cattle can be significantly tougher, they are graded differently. It can get pretty complicated, but if it REALLY interests you, check it out on the Texas A&M meat science webpage.

Next, the grader looks at the marbling. That’s the important part. Each carcass will be cut so the USDA grader can look at the ribeye muscle at the 12^th rib. They compare the marbling in each ribeye to the marbling in a set of standardized cards to determine the Quality grade. The graders give the carcasses marbling scores that match up with the USDA quality grade.

What do the different grades mean?

USDA Prime.

Prime, the highest grade classification, has the greatest amount of marbling (an Abundant, Moderately Abundant or Slightly Abundant marbling score). Only about 4% of carcasses will grade Prime. These cuts are sold in expensive restaurants and fancy hotels because they are the most tender and juicy.

USDA Choice

Carcasses that qualify for Choice are considered high quality, and having a high percentage of beef that grade Choice has always been a goal of cattle producers. Today, about 2/3 of the beef carcasses graded in the US qualify for Choice. All of the quality grades are divided into high, average and low, but within Choice, those divisions are priced and marketed separately.

Upper 2/3 Choice

Carcasses from the top two divisions in the Choice grade will often qualify for one of many USDA Certified programs, such as Certified Angus Beef, Sterling Silver Beef, or Chairman’s Reserve. These marketing programs incorporate quality grade with other carcass standards to set themselves apart. Having more marbling than low Choice beef (Modest or Moderate marbling scores), these cuts are very tender and juicy and are often found in nice restaurants and fancy grocery stores.

Low Choice

When beef is labeled as USDA Choice, it is mostly likely low Choice beef. Still high quality cuts, low Choice is found in many stores and restaurants. They have less marbling (a Small marbling score) and are less expensive, but can still be tender and juicy if prepared correctly.

  

USDA Select

Cuts that qualify for the Select grade have less marbling than Choice (a Slight marbling score), but these cuts are lean and full of protein. The Select grade is very uniform and these cuts can be quite tender, juicy and flavorful, especially if braised or prepared with marinades and cooked to lower degrees of doneness (medium rare). They are the least expensive of the grades we have discussed.

There are other grade classifications for carcasses that don’t have enough marbling to even grade Select (USDA Standard) or carcasses from older animals (USDA Commercial and Utility). You probably won’t see those advertised in a store or a restaurant. There is also a whole different type of grading (Yield grading) that evaluates the percentage of edible beef each carcass will produce based on how much muscle and fat is in it, but those grades are largely used within the industry for pricing, and not really marketed to consumers.  

Quality grades are not perfect indicators of beef tenderness. You may still find tough steaks that were graded Prime, and you can probably find tender ones that were graded Select. Meat scientists are always working on ways to improve our ability to predict tenderness. (That was actually my Master’s project.)

Hopefully, the next time you go to the store or to a fancy steak restaurant, you’ll have a better understanding of what these USDA Quality Grades mean. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Transformation Tuesday: from a steer to steaks

Last week, this picture came across my Facebook page.

It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, meant to be kinda funny, but it’s true.

Cattle start out as cute little calves and end up as steaks, but I think this picture does a disservice to that calf and all the cattle that are harvested for beef production.

They really become much more than one steak.

I don’t want to minimize the contribution one calf has to the food supply. If that calf grows into a steer that weighs about 1,200 lbs, it has the potential to contribute to more than 850 individual meals.

One 1,200 lb steer may produce as many as:

·         24 ribeye steaks
·         24 Kansas City strip steaks
·         12 filet mignon steaks
·         30 sirloin steaks
·         12 flat-iron steaks
·         12 pot roasts
·         4 brisket roasts
·         10 round roasts
·         12 lbs. of back ribs
·         2 flank steaks and 2 skirt steaks, which could make fajitas enough for 35 people
·         200 lbs. of ground beef, which would make 600 1/3-pound hamburgers

** You must realize that not every animal is cut up the same. Sometimes meat cutters prefer to cut T-bone steaks rather than KC strips and filets. In my scenario, I ground up a lot of steaks and roasts that some butchers might have left whole because the demand for ground beef is high right now.

Beef meals are not only tasty and filling, they are also very nutrient dense. One 3-oz serving of lean beef, provides 48% of your daily needs of protein, 44% of B₁₂, 40% of Selenium, and several other nutrients including Zinc, Niacin, B6, Phosphorus, Choline, Iron and Riboflavin.

Any way you cut it, one steer will produce A LOT more than one steak.

Last May, I wrote a post about the enormity of the US meat industry. Each week, over 500,000 cattle are harvested for beef and demand for beef is high which means that the beef industry is producing over 425 million meals of beef each week. Crazy!

How would you like that cooked?

You order steak or a burger at a restaurant and the waiter or waitress asks, “how would you like that cooked?” What is your response? Well, if you are ordering a steak, there is no wrong answer to that question. HOWEVER, you should ALWAYS order hamburgers or any other ground meat dish cooked to medium, medium well, or well done. I always order mine medium well.

Why should hamburgers be cooked to medium well, but steaks can be cooked to rare?

Today, I visited a Family and Consumer Science Class and demonstrated to them the answer to this question with play-doh. (I had to fight the little Daughter at the Meat Counter off the play doh.) I took some pictures to share on my blog.

When steaks are cut, there is a possibility that bacteria (disease-causing germs) could be on the surface of the steak. Steaks (and roasts, too) are whole-muscle cuts, meaning that they have been cut into serving- or cooking-size pieces, but the internal portion of the cut is still undisturbed. So, those bacteria are going to only be on the surface of the steak, and when you cook it, the surface will be the first to get hot and it will get the hottest. Any bacteria on the surface are going to be killed in the cooking process. The internal part of the meat does not have to get hot enough to kill any bacteria. So cooking steaks to rare or medium-rare is perfectly safe.

Do you like my little play-doh steaks? The green dots are the bacteria (only on the surface). The Daughter at the Meat Counter thought they were peas.

Ground beef is made from smaller cuts of beef that are trimmed away from the steaks and roasts. They are not lower quality or inferior in anyway other than they are too small or too tough to make good steaks are roasts. (Actually, which parts are cut into steaks and roasts and which parts are ground into hamburger is largely driven by ground beef demand. People like hamburgers.) These parts and pieces (trim) are kept in large containers and transported to the grinding room in the plant. All of these little pieces could have bacteria on their surfaces just like the steaks above. Several companies have researched different ways to treat the trim pieces to lower the bacterial count on the surface.

Here is my play-doh trim. It’s smaller and cut into irregular pieces. The bacteria are still only on the surface.

Here is where the difference is. The trim is ground. When meat is ground, it is pushed through a metal plate with small holes. Behind the plate, is a rotating knife that cuts the meat and allows it to be pushed through the plate.

This is not play-doh. I actually have pictures of real meat! Yay! You can see the round strands of ground beef coming through the plate.

Now, any of those bacteria that were on the surface of the meat are mixed up and spread all throughout the ground beef. When we make patties out of the ground beef, the bacteria could be on the surface or anywhere inside the patty.

These are some patties we made for a research project. Real bacteria don’t have color and you can’t see them on or in your patties.

It is easier to see the green, play-doh, bacteria mixed in with the red in my play-doh patty.

When I tore open my little play-doh patty, the students could see the green bacteria all throughout the patty.

So, when you cook patties, you should always cook them to 160 °F. USE A MEAT THERMOMETER. Make sure the thermometer is inserted into the middle of the patty.

When you order hamburgers at a restaurant, ALWAYS order them to medium or greater.

If you have other questions about food safety, I wrote a blog post about food safety in September.

A common conversation over steak dinners with meat scientists is how we order our steaks. I order my steaks cooked to medium-rare. Why, you ask? Well, there are two main types of protein in meat that affect tenderness, connective tissue (holds it all together) and myofibrillar (causes the muscle to contract). These two proteins react differently to exposure to heat. Connective tissue (collagen) protein dissolves to gelatin when it is heated, so it becomes more tender. The myofibrillar proteins harden as they are heated and become tougher. The optimum combination of collagen dissolving and myofibrillar hardening happens at about the temperature of medium-rare. Yum.

Some people don’t like the serumy (bloody) flavor associated with medium-rare and they want their steaks cooked longer (my mom). I guess that’s ok. If you like more well done steaks, I suggest you buy steaks with more marbling (USDA Choice, Prime, and Certified Angus Beef). The extra marbling protects the tenderness of those steaks when you cook them more.

Like I said, there is really no wrong answer to the question, “how would you like your steak cooked?”

However, you must cook hamburgers to medium (160°F) or greater.

What is this cut of meat? Steaks

I guess most high school and college curriculums don’t require beef or pork anatomy. I don’t really know why that is, but as a result, most of the general public doesn’t have any idea where their cuts come from or why they taste the way they do.

Steaks we see at a steak house restaurant.

Ribeye. This is undoubtedly my favorite cut of meat. Beef, pork, chicken, whatever! I would never turn down a ribeye. Very juicy and tender, the ribeye is the muscle attached to the ribs, close to the back bone. Technically, ribeye steaks are boneless, but lots of restaurants offer bone-in ribeyes. I like them boneless because they are cooked more evenly.

Most ribeye steaks will have an oval-shaped muscle and a smaller, crescent-shaped muscle circling it. That smaller muscle is called the spinalis and is extra tasty. So, if you are splitting your ribeye steak, be sure to offer the half without it to your friend. And, what they don’t know, can improve your eating experience.

New York Strip/ Kansas City Strip. I’ve only been to NYC once, but I’ve been to Kansas City several times, and I can tell you from my visits and from watching countless episodes of Law and Order that those two cities are not a whole lot alike. On the other hand, New York Strips and Kansas City Strips are exactly the same, technically a Top Loin steak.  It doesn’t matter which geographical locale associated with it.

Strips are the same muscle as that found in the ribeye, but the steaks are cut from further down the animal’s backbone, further away from the head (from the Short loin, where the lumbar vertebrae are). Usually boneless, strips are also relatively tender, but they don’t have the tasty spinalis attached. Sometimes they are narrower and have more connective tissue (gristle) than ribeyes. Because they are usually just one muscle, they are a leaner than the ribeyes (well, it’s easier to avoid the fa… not-lean parts).

Filet mignon or tenderloin. As the price tag indicates, this is THE MOST tender cut of meat on the animal. It lies under the backbone along the lumbar vertebrae. As a muscle in the live animal, it must not have had much to do because it is very tender. Sometimes it has some off-flavor problems. Filets are also rather small, so if you don’t have a large appetite, it could be a good choice.

T-bone. This is a favorite of lots of men. It’s BIG and it has a bone. Basically, the T-bone is the Strip and the Filet still stuck together with a bone in the middle. It’s a good one for sharing, especially if you and whoever you are sharing with don’t like your steaks cooked to the same degree of doneness. Generally, steaks are less done closer to the bone.

Sirloin. If I’m not in the mood (I don’t have enough money) for a ribeye, I usually order a sirloin. The story goes that an English king liked the steak so much that he knighted it, hence ‘sir’ loin. According to Wikipedia and Snopes.com, that’s not true. (It doesn’t mean you can’t pass the time telling the story to your kids while waiting on your meals at the steakhouse.)

The sirloin steaks are the very last steaks cut from the loin. Made from two large muscles, full-size sirloin steaks are very large, but are usually cut into smaller steaks for restaurants. At some places, you can order a sirloin steak as small as 6 oz. That’s uncooked weight, so the cooked weight should be between 3 and 4 oz (close to the suggested serving size).

Sirloin steaks are often marinated or flavored, which makes them tastier, but can it also add calories (like I care). Sirloin tips are from the same area, just cut up before they were cooked. Sirloin steaks are generally lean, but can be inconsistent in tenderness. When I cook them at home, I try to make sure I don’t overcook them.

Flat-iron. I love it when people say that the Flat-iron is a ‘new cut of beef’. Like cattle just suddenly started growing a new muscle. Really what happened was that some researchers decided that they would test the tenderness of every muscle in the animal, just to see. And SURPRISE! SURPRISE! There was a muscle in the shoulder (Chuck) that was really tender (2^nd most tender in the animal, only one that beat it was the Filet). The scientific name for the Flat-iron is the Infraspinatus, and it is found right next to the shoulder blade. It has a big hunk of connective tissue (gristle) that runs right through the middle…problem.  The folks at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) worked on a new way to cut it to remove the connective tissue and so that it was a nice portion size, renamed it the ‘Flat-iron’, and started teaching the rest of us in the industry how to cut and prepare it. And POOF! a new steak!

The Flat-iron is always tender and juicy. Sometimes, if it isn’t cut correctly, some of the gristle gets left on it.
 

That’s pretty much it for ‘grillin’ steaks’ or steaks you will commonly find at restaurants. Several of these steaks are among the 29-cuts of lean beef that qualify for the USDA definition on ‘lean’. Those include the strip, the tenderloin, the T-bone, and sirloin steaks. So, go out and enjoy a good steak tonight.