During a recent biz trip, I ate at a steakhouse in San Francisco and couldn’t believe how tender my Porterhouse was. I’ve tried shopping for good beef locally, but the stuff I find in grocery stores doesn’t touch what’s available in the better steak and chop houses across the nation.
It also amazes me how expensive quality beef is in a grocery store and makes me wonder whether the restaurants get deep discounts.
What’s the secret to their success? Do the grocery stores tend to get the lesser cuts?
They certainly can get better meat than what’s on offer in most grocery stores, though not all of them do. But you can generally get that meat, too, you just need to shop at better grocery stores or better yet, better butchers. You need to be prepared to pay extra for it, though.
Another big difference, though, is in how the meat is cooked, as well. Unless you’re grilling on an industrial grill top, you’re likely cooking your meat more slowly than the restaurant and that’ll change things, as well.
I sure don’t. It’s actually kinda ironic I was the first to answer that question since I’m a veg. But I had recently researched the subject in preparation for a trip to Bern’s. But the link above suggests trying real butcher shops and avoiding grocery stores. Also, I’ve never checked out the meat department at the new Whole Foods but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some top-if-the-line stuff too.
Actually, you might be gettign lower qualirt. Beef in the US is graded as either Prime, Choice, or Select. Prime is the top o the top, nicely marbled, that sort of this. Select, while not bottom of the barrel, is pretty much only suitable for long, slow cooking, like stews and braises. In my experience, the average grocwery stores meet is choice. I don’t recall ever seeing any prime, and maybe just a few pieces of select (like stew meat.)
I have long wondered this very thought. The stuff I get from the grocery store is always average to yeeeh. It’s turned me to chicken more than anything else. With chicken it is almost always consistant.
I did find (and paid through the nose) the most excellent, superb, outstandingly perfect chuck o’ steak ( forget which slab of the cow it came from…sorry) fromWhole Food Markets.
It was organic and all the healthy livestyle bu$$word$.
Did I mention it was out-freaking-standing?
So, maybe there is something to be said for the no-hormones, daily massaged & masterbated cattle.
Prime is hard to find for the general consumer. Better restaurants, especially steakhouses, snap it up fast. If you can find prime at a butcher, expect to pay through the nose.
A good butcher will also age beef, especially the better cuts. Plus, good butchers get better cuts of the choice beef. If I look at a Porterhouse in the supermarket, it has a very small filet portion. At the butcher, I get a more substantial filet, a piece worth eating.
I’m going to head by Whole Foods at lunch and see if I can’t find something tasty. I have always found good beef at Central Market, but my new house isn’t anywhere near one. My old place was about 5 minutes away - sigh.
A Porterhouse isn’t necessarily supposed to be tender. It’s made up of 2 cuts of beef, the strip and the tenderloin (filet). The tenderloin should be tender as hell even when you get it from the grocery store. Mine is.
Also, some people might not be preparing their home steaks properly. Restaurants use WAY more salt on meat than the typical homeowner. They grill over very high heat (which I can only achieve with my stove top’s “power burner” or my charcoal grill) and they might be giving you a 1.75-2" cut of steak that was brought to room temperature before cooking it medium rare. Some people are afraid of leaving their own meat rare enough, but trust a restaurant to do it.
Beef I’ve bought from the regular supermarket, the butcher, and the Whole Foods. I haven’t found tremendous variation.
Now, fish on the other hand. . .the stuff I get at Whole Foods (wild coho salmon, e.g.) doesn’t even taste like the same species as the stuff from the regular grocery store. As a matter of fact, it’s spoiled grocery-store fish for me, totally, where I can’t buy fish from them anymore. Of course the price is about $17/lb compared to $10/lb.
I lot of the perceived quality of beef also centers on where that cow was raised, what it was fed etc. Here in the midwest, specifically Iowa, we are able to go to the farm, pick the cow and have it butchered for us with little effort. In doing so, one can pick the finest organic beef, corn fed, no BSE or other antibiotics used, and just tastier.
Many restaurants will have their beef flown in from other locations insuring that theirs tastes better than what their patrons are able to get at the local grocery or butcher shops. I always got a kick out of the restaurants on the East Cost being “Black Angus Certified” whatever that was supposed to mean. Here, you go get a steak and its good. No certification required.
Further, there are 2 Quality Grades starting with Standard, and 3 Quality Grades for Select and higher.
The steak packaged as “Prime” you get in the fancy beef section of your upmarket supermarket might be a Prime minus (8%-9.5% intramuscular fat) while the “Prime” steak you get from a restaurant might be a Prime+ (11% and higher intramuscular fat).
Tell me about it. I’m very fussy about fish - I only want very fresh fish, bought and prepared on the same day. Whole Foods around here has recently expanded their fish department, and the big variety I can buy nowadays makes my brain hurt with indecision.
An alternative is to shop Asian supermarkets, if any are in your area. There you can find very fresh, whole-body fish, in a dizzying quantity of species. Usually it’s less than half the price of filleted fish. If you like to fillet the fish yourself and save the bones and head for stock, like I do, it’s a great bargain. In the bay area, the Asian Ranch 99 market chain is the place to go.
As far as the beef question, I’m fussy about that too, but it gets expensive. The solution for us is to eat less beef, but to buy top quality.
Again, they aren’t really convienent for my current condition. I did go to Whole Foods and bought 2 nice rib-eyes (boneless). They are natural beef, aged (didn’t say dry or wet aged) and was $14.99/LBS. So I won’t be eating much this weekend, but I will be eating well.
Here in Minneapolis, we pay between $9.00 and $10.00 lb for USDA Choice T-bone. Sometimes less on sale. Porterhouse is about $1 per lb more. New York strip or filet mignon is out of our price range. The lesser cuts of meat usually aren’t that great; top sirloin is only so-so, and round might as well be reserved for making beef jerky. For a $1 lb premium you can get Black Angus, which is a little better. And our upscale markets have Prime for double the price per lb. of Choice. I swear beef used to be better than this. My wife says that the best steak she ever had was in Texas where the markets had locally raised and slaughtered beef, that restaurants get the pick of what’s shipped and the supermarkets what’s left over.
Best butcher in town is The Meat Shop (first listing- the link goes to an Austin Chronicle review, the shop’s website is down). If I need great steaks (beyond regular good quality), I go there- it’s worth the trip.
