Are You Buying Low Grade Beef?
April 16, 2010, By Greg Paeth 0 comments
If you’re going to be doing any cooking around the house, it’s important to have at least a rudimentary understanding of Beef Basics for any cuts that you might be preparing in the kitchen or on the backyard grill.
As might be expected, the largest animal that is routinely consumed in the U.S. is, by virtue of sheer size, the most complicated animal to master because of the wide variety of cuts that can be produced from a single animal. Beef is tightly regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for inspecting and grading beef, which are two distinctly different functions. Government inspections of beef cattle for wholesomeness are mandatory and paid for by tax dollars in an effort to ensure that today’s T-bone doesn’t lead to tomorrow’s emergency-room visit. Government grading focuses primarily on determining the quality of the meat and is paid for by the industry, which means that it’s built into the price of the product. The government also grades for yield, which is defined as the amount of usable beef on a carcass. Yield is not important to the average consumer unless he or she happens to own 6,000 head that he or she plans to process next month in Amarillo.
The US Department of Agriculture lists four “primal cuts” of beef: chuck, loin, rib and round, while other sources provide a more refined list that breaks down the four cuts further by adding flank, brisket, short loin, sirloin, plate and foreshank. Things get sliced and diced – both literally and figuratively – from there. There is an abundance of cattle diagrams on the Internet and many of these are available for sale as posters, which could prove to be a kind of campy way to add color to the kitchen. However, most vegetarians and virtually every member of PETA will fail to grasp the ironic humor.
Generally speaking, some of the most desirable, expensive and juicy cuts of beef are on the upper side of the animal, starting at the ribs just behind the shoulder and running back to the rump. The standing rib roast, as well as the porterhouse, sirloin, rib-eye, strip and club steaks and the fillet/tenderloin are all carved out of that part of the carcass. These better cuts can be cooked with dry heat – grilling, roasting, frying or broiling – while a number of beef-cooking sources say that cuts from other parts of the animal should be cooked with added liquid so that the meat doesn’t dry out. Generally speaking, the list of liquids that can be used excludes Tang and any of the Gatorade flavors.
The USDA also points out that beef nomenclature varies from region to region. Depending on where you’re located, what the USDA calls a boneless top loin steak may be sold as a strip steak, Kansas City steak, New York strip, hotel cut strip, ambassador steak or club sirloin. The once-popular “Love Canal Strip” is no longer readily available.
There are eight grades that are used to indicate the quality of the cut. At the top of the quality/price scale is beef graded “prime” – about two percent of the US production. It’s distinguished by what’s called marbling, the presence of white flecks of fat that run through the muscle, creating the most coveted flavor, texture, tenderness and juiciness.
Most supermarkets don’t offer prime beef and typically sell meat that’s graded “choice,” the second highest grade, or “select,” the third. The USDA says that the next two grades – “standard” and “commercial” – are sometimes sold as house brands by some grocers. The bottom three grades – “utility,” “canner” and “cutter” – are sometimes available from a guy in the neighborhood who has a Coleman cooler in his trunk.
The USDA limits the amount of fat in hamburger and ground beef to no more than 30 percent. Hamburger and ground beef are rarely graded and typically come from the less expensive cuts of the steer.
