The Lemon Fool

We cooked up a steak tonight, with a 17 August 21 use by date, and it was harder than pickled shoe leather.

Previously, we have enjoyed Tesco steaks although somewhat thick on occasion and needing a lot of cooking.

What makes some steaks inedible in contrast with other steaks please?

feder1 wrote:We cooked up a steak tonight, with a 17 August 21 use by date...

I recommend making your way to A&E straight away ...

feder1 wrote:We cooked up a steak tonight, with a 17 August 21 use by date, and it was harder than pickled shoe leather.

Previously, we have enjoyed Tesco steaks although somewhat thick on occasion and needing a lot of cooking.

What makes some steaks inedible in contrast with other steaks please?

The use by date for a start but also and for all I know more important, how long it has been hung, how the beast was looked after in life and so on. I have never found supermarket beef all that great but then I do have a very good local butcher and I also know the farmer from whom he gets much of the beef in his shop.

Dod

Fao mac2fool,

The steak had been in the freezer...

and before you ask, yes, we did thaw it out first!

aldi steak is usually good.

There are different cuts for one - which one was yours?

And as mentioned how it was raised, slaughtered, managed and matured.

How did you cook it? Did you let it rest?

jackdaww wrote:aldi steak is usually good.

I have to 'second' this. Aldi steak is much better. Haven't been able to get a decent steak from Tesco for years and when forced to buy there it never fails to disappoint. Sorry if this seems harsh but it is my experience.

If it was frozen then some of the moisture would have bled out when defrosted but it really does depend upon the cut, marbling (the amount of fat embedded in the tissue), how long it was hung, the breed and more. Did you rest it long enough? We bought a couple of 35 day aged Aberdeen Angus rib eyes from Lidl recently and they were as good as any I have eaten or cooked in my 50 year career in the industry and that includes the top USDA grade
of corn fed beef which takes some beating.

john

I bought my usual steak from Tesco last Friday wwek and it was tougher than normal
Same steak cooked the same way, skipped it this week, and bought a different cut

feder1 wrote:Fao mac2fool,

The steak had been in the freezer...

There's no mac here ...

I'm puzzled then as to the reason for the explicit mention of the use by date in your OP ... but in any case, there was a very recent thread about cooking steaks on this board, see viewtopic.php?p=413570#p413570.

After some comments in that thread I decided to experiment with my last Aldi steak (and yes, Lidl do good ones too), and, as they in effect come vacuum packed, I put the pack into a roasting tin (just happened to be the right size) and covered it totally with boiling water.

I left it for 40 minutes and then gave it a quick sizzle each side in hot oil and I was pretty impressed, it was a nice cooked brown round the outside couple of millimetres and a uniform medium-just-pinkish all the rest of the way through. Next time I'll try for rare, maybe 25 minutes under water....

mc2fool wrote: After some comments in that thread I decided to experiment with my last Aldi steak (and yes, Lidl do good ones too), and, as they in effect come vacuum packed, I put the pack into a roasting tin (just happened to be the right size) and covered it totally with boiling water.

I do mine in the slow cooker, If not vacuum packed a good wrapping in cling film will do - pour over the hot water and hold warm at about 60C then sear on the griddlepan about 1 minute a side flipping in 2 planes twice for criss-cross charring. Oil the meat not the pan especially using the griddle.

mc2fool wrote:

feder1 wrote:Fao mac2fool,

The steak had been in the freezer...

There's no mac here ...

I'm puzzled then as to the reason for the explicit mention of the use by date in your OP ... but in any case, there was a very recent thread about cooking steaks on this board, see viewtopic.php?p=413570#p413570.

After some comments in that thread I decided to experiment with my last Aldi steak (and yes, Lidl do good ones too), and, as they in effect come vacuum packed, I put the pack into a roasting tin (just happened to be the right size) and covered it totally with boiling water.

I left it for 40 minutes and then gave it a quick sizzle each side in hot oil and I was pretty impressed, it was a nice cooked brown round the outside couple of millimetres and a uniform medium-just-pinkish all the rest of the way through. Next time I'll try for rare, maybe 25 minutes under water....

Welcome to the wonderful world of sous vide or 'under vacuum' cooking. The baking tray sounds like a great simplification of 'the beer cooler method'.

If you want to play around with the technique as well as the timings you might try using an insulated container if you have one handy to give you better temperature stability, which might allow you to play around with water temp, which offers better control over 'doneness' than timing since a steak can never achieve a temperature higher than that of the water it is being cooked in, although your technique has the considerable benefit of simplicity without added equipment.

This improved my meat and fish cooking https://thermapen.co.uk/thermapen-profe ... meter.html


dead handy for the BBQ.

kempiejon wrote:This improved my meat and fish cooking https://thermapen.co.uk/thermapen-profe ... meter.html


dead handy for the BBQ.

...and available at a discount as they are taking a surprisingly long time to shift the remnants of the old model.

Although the green ones are best!

No need to spend a fortune - I use a Brifit meat thermometer £7.99 from Amazon.

Tricia

6Tricia wrote:No need to spend a fortune - I use a Brifit meat thermometer £7.99 from Amazon.

Tricia

Obviously needs (and budgets) differ but thermapen is a great piece of kit. It's IP66/67 which is always handy in a kitchen, rugged, pleasant to hold, has an accuracy of 0.4°c compared to 2°f for the Brifit, the quickest seek time on the market, has an easy to read auto-rotating display with automatic backlight, each one is individually calibrated by hand before leaving the factory, and they'll repair out of warranty units for considerably less than the cost of a replacement. More like than need in most cases, but a lot easier to like at the current discount than at full price!