Mmmmm … USDA Utility grade beef …
I thought “chevron” meant horse. Wouldn’t that make a “Chevron Burger” a horse burger, not a goat burger?
Actually, that Utility grade beef can be absolutely wonderful, if cooked properly. You can’t get away with incompetently tossing it onto a grill. The “good” cuts of beef should really be called the “more idiot-proof” cuts of beef. They require no special cooking skill to make palatable. However, that Utility grade makes for some marvelously tasty dishes if prepared properly.
“Cheval” means horse.
Oops! “Cheval” would be horse. Never mind!
You haven’t been to the market lately, have you?
USDA: Record High Beef Prices Here to Stay
Consumers chew on soaring beef prices
Still, beef is cheaper than anything else.
I would still say that beef is “insanely cheap” in the US these days - just as gasoline was still pretty bloody cheap during the energy crises of the 70s, and definitely insanely cheap during the widely reported 'price spikes" of the most recent war
In the 70s, we in the US were reeling from paying more than $1.50/gal at the pump during the first and second major OPEC embargos (respectively) - but that was cheaper than the pre-embargo prices in most other developed nations. This fact was reported in the media, but we didn’t want to hear it, and the video bites weren’t cooperating:
e.g. I was in Germany just after the second embargo, and the exchange rate was DM1,71/US$1 (That rate is just a snapshot. Currencies were volatile then: a year later I went back, and the rate was 2,71/US$1) Since gasoline is sold by the liter in Europe, a pump sign might read 1.00 [vs. the 1.30 US buyers were used to seeing then) An announcer might tell us that was $2.30 a gallon, but such facts have less impact than images, so the point was oftn forgotten. (Today, the US still has basically the same gas prices as 1973 -30 years ago!-, when you could buy a new entry model car for $2000. Insanely cheap! and still much cheaper than other comparably developing nations)
To return to steak:
My favorite cut is NY Sirloin. Though I live in the Boston area, which is fairly expensive, a major local chain sells it for $4.29/lb, (ca 1 hour of minimum wage) and it goes on sale one week a month for $1 less.
Since most people eat 4-6oz (precooked wt) as a normal entree [not the way we often stuff ourselves at steakhouses), 1lb is 3-4 meals. It’d take almost any employed American longer to eat a NY sirloin for dinner than to earn the money to buy it! I’d call that pretty cheap.
I’m not trying to make any particular political point. I’m just noting that despite all the scares in the media, beef is, and will probably remain, far ‘cheap’ [relative to the local economy] in the US by any practical standard I can think of .
I cooked in a “cheap” steakhouse for a few years, and I can tell you the difference:
A lot of “cheap” steakhouses are primarily bars. The place I worked in made all of its money on booze and pulltabs (gambling). Because of that, it could afford to sell a porterhouse steak for $9.99.
And as to the quality of the meat… one evening I cooked rare porterhouse steaks for a table of six. When they finished eating, the waitress told me, “They said that was better than the Windmill!” The Windmill being the premeire steakhouse in my town.
In my kitchen, we used no tenderizers, but we used a “secret recipe” seasoning on the steaks. The seasoning was prepared on-site by the owner, and I watched him make it several times - no tenderizers.
One reason for flavor differences: the top-of-the-line steakhouses almost exclusively cook the steaks on a flame broiler (which is responsible for the dark crosshatch pattern you see on the cooked steak.) Cheaper places tend to use a flat grill, or electric broiler. A flame-broiled steak will taste different from a grilled or electric-broiled steak.
Cheap is a relative term, especially when comparing prices with other countries.
However, and to use your example, the price you currently pay for that NY sirloin in the Boston area is what I used to pay a year ago.
It’s now more than $9.00/lb now, and going up. That’s not cheap compared to what the price was a year ago, and in line with news reports of skyrocketing beef prices mentioned earlier.
Until reeading this thread last night I really hadn’t thought much about what my friend the chemist told me those many years ago. But I did find the following in INTERPRETIVE SUMMARY COMPARATIVE RISK ASSESSMENT FOR INTACT (NON-TENDERIZED)AND NON-INTACT (TENDERIZED)BEEF (requires Acrobat).