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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Liberally salting your steak is a fine idea, but where is this person finding choice ribeye for $5? Choice isn't "cheap". The $15/lb ribeye at Whole Foods is choice, as is pretty much every other steak you buy outside a specialty store. There's nothing at all wrong with it.

This article never gets specific, but I get the impression the author doesn't really know what "prime" means: how well marbled the cut is with fat. Salt isn't going to change that (although, again, it will improve your steak).

If tenderness is all you're after, you can use a jaccard on the meat; Google it, they're cheap. They put tiny little cuts in the meat to break up the fibers.

When people say "cheap steak" they usually mean skirt or flank. Can you even get prime skirt steak?

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USDA beef grading is assigned to the whole carcass, so you can get any part of the cow in prime. Only cuts where USDA rating correlates with quality are typically marketed as prime/choice, typically just loin and rib-eye. You do see things like "prime skirt steak" but it's uncommon, because there won't be any difference in marbling or tenderness on that cut. For other cuts like chuck, prime is actually too fatty for many applications (e.g. try chuck @ Schaub's @ Stanford -- not good for moist cooking, could be good for hamburgers I guess).

Whole Food beef is select not choice. I can only speak for Bay Area definitively, I haven't checked out WF meat counter in Chicago. I doubt it's any different because Whole Foods has a nice high-margin gig going on what they call "natural" beef, which is USDA Select sold as a premium product on the strength of Whole Foods brand. It's a store brand with premium pricing, great gig if you can pull it off, good for Whole Foods.

When the steak in front of me is labelled "USDA Choice", it's choice. I would be surprised to find out that any of the steaks at Whole Foods are "select". I think you're just wrong about this.

Yep, you can probably get "prime skirt" at Schaub's. Someone fedex me a Fred Steak, please. I'll send italian beef back in reply.

Mmmm.... fred steak. Ping me via email and let me know where you want it sent :)

Forgot! I'm in San Francisco for the week in 2 weeks. I'll smuggle one out. =)

(I'm good for Chicago food fedexed any time. Alinea hot-potato-cold-potato coming right up!)

Interesting, must be a Chicago vs SF Bay thing, definitely no choice meat in Whole Foods here.

S H E N A N I G A N S. I just called Whole Foods SOMA, and they have not one but one hundred and three POUNDS of prime ribeye roast, and prime ribeye steaks cut on display. Yes, the rest is choice.

I usually just put a liberal coating of garlic salt on and grill at a low temperature, rotating every 2 minutes or so until the meat looks visibly moist. Turn the heat up to high at the end for the final 2 rotations and done.

I've had people fly cross-country (twice) for these steaks and it's really not all that hard. But it makes for an expensive summer season with lots of entertaining on my deck.

One guy was mystified as to why I wasn't using the popular Morton's method of high heat and turn once. Then he had one, came back the next weekend unannounced "just happened to be in the area" and tried to bribe me with a bottle of Santa Rita Reserva Cab (I know cheap wine, but good). Too bad I was out of steaks.

And yes, I usually get the on-sale cheap steak at the local grocery. So long as it's decently marbled it doesn't really seem to matter much what I get so long as it's not skirt or flank.

I cook steak in a vacuum-sealed bag submerged in a water bath held with a PID controller at precisely 131f, then sear them in a cast iron pan with just-barely-smoking peanut oil for about 30 seconds a side. Nobody has flown cross-country for my cooking, but the Chicago HN'ers should do a dinner sometime.

"Chicago HN'ers should do a dinner sometime"

Sounds like a good idea to me. I cooked a 15lbs kobe beef brisket last weekend and had more meat than people to share it with.

American Kobe is quite good. It's beef for people who think beef is blue collar and prefer shellfish, lamb, duck, etc.

Jappanese (true) Kobe is even better, and it's the only beef I've ever even considered eating "blue" (super rare). If you're ever in Japan, treat yourself. It's worth it.

I've heard of this technique before, but never tried the product of it yet. How do you control for food-borne diseases like Clostridium botulinum? (honest question). I'd be concerned that level of heat wouldn't kill it off.

It sounds to me like this technique would really help with a complete and consistent cooking of the entire steak -- something I strongly favor. It's why I start with a low heat grill then ramp up to hot at the end. But my technique is imprecise and requires lots of attention.

Does it also help the flavor by keeping the fats close to the meat in the bag? I'd think another side benefit is that the steaks would come out so tender a fork could cut them.

I'd be curious to try throwing in some butter and seasonings into the bag, or at least for the final searing. A browned coating of butter seems to make lots of meats taste really great in my opinion (as opposed to a plant derived oil). But some people don't like the heavy oily taste it can imbue in the food.

Sous vide cooking (what I just described) is effectively pasteurization. At 131f, by the time a steak is cooked through, you'll have a better than 10D reduction in botulism --- in the fantastically unlikely event that your meat is infected with it (botulism is extremely rare).

The sous vide guide (Google for it) will give you the math for this, but their numbers are keyed on salmonella, which is what you really need to look out for; botulism appears to be easier to kill.

As far as aromatics go, cooking sous vide works on the same principal as cooking in a pouch. It amplifies most flavors, which is a good thing with few exceptions (garlic, notably, doesn't work SV).

Thanks for the reply, found the book.

> As far as aromatics go, cooking sous vide works on the same principal as cooking in a pouch.

Ahh, now it suddenly clicks for me. Too bad about the garlic.

You use garlic powder to make up for it, and I tend to roast garlic on the side when I really need it. Also, you're saving all the liquid for pan sauces anyways, and you throw garlic into that. I don't find myself missing it.

Seriously, can you just please start a sous vide blog or something? I'm fascinated.

FTA: * And yes, I know what “Choice” and “Prime” means – it’s the marbling. The salting doesn’t affect fat content – I’m using those terms as a figure of speech.

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