Loading...You invest a lot of time and money into the steaks for a special occasion and when dinner time comes, they are tough. What happened? How can you cook steaks as tender as your favourite restaurant?
The first step to cooking a good steak is to choose the right grade of steak. The top quality beef is graded USDA Prime and commands top prices.
USDA Prime grade meats are sold to the restaurant industry and speciality markets and are not as likely to be found at your local grocery chain. The next grade of beef is USDA Choice. USDA
The choice is tender, flavorful and only slightly lower in quality than USDA Prime. The meat is well marbled with fat and will be tender and juicy when properly prepared.
USDA Choice makes up about 70% of all graded beef and is readily available in your supermarket. USDA Good graded beef is an acceptable grade of beef that has only minimal marbling of fat.
It is leaner, but may not be as tender as USDA Prime or Choice.
Next, look at the colour and texture of the meat. A good steak should be firm to the touch, moist, and bright in colour.
It should be well-marbled with thin streaks of white fat throughout and a thin crust of steak on the outside.
In our fat-conscious society, we tend to look for lean cuts of meat, but the thin streaks of white fat marbled throughout the meat are the key to a tender juicy steak.
The most tender and juicy steaks come from the sirloin, the short loin, and the rib.
These steaks include sirloin steaks, porterhouse steaks, t-bone steaks, rib steaks, Delmonico steaks, and filet mignons. Steaks containing bone will weigh more than those without, but the bone adds flavor to the steak.
Ageing is a desirable process that intensifies the theflavourss and makes the meat more tender.
Aged steaks are more expensive and usually only found in high-end supermarkets and speciality markets. An aged steak is recognizable by its darker color.
Once you have purchased your steak, you can further increase the tenderness and juiciness by marinating it.
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