Beef - Intro

The recipes in this chapter are intended to demonstrate the variety of cooking methods that I have used to prepare different beef cuts rather than detail entire meal menus.

Beef Cuts and Cooking Methods

You need to know which cuts to choose for what you want to make. You don’t want to end up boiling tenderloin or roasting a brisket.

For tender cuts, use dry cooking techniques such as: broiling, grilling, sautéing, roasting.
For less tender cuts, use long, slow, moist heat cooking methods: braising, stewing, boiling

First, let's see where the different cuts come from and how they should be cooked.

Pic1: smaller picture, easier to read
Pic2: more detailed
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internet picture

These are the most tender cuts.

The asterisks show the most popular cuts.
For tender cuts, use dry cooking techniques such as: broiling, grilling, sautéing, roasting.

These are the less tender cuts

but they still will be delicious if prepared right. The less tender portions of the cow can be tougher, so one rule of thumb to keep in mind is when cooking less tender pieces of beef, use long, slow, moist heat cooking methods: braising, stewing, boiling

cutting against the grain

To serve the tenderest possible meat, you should cut the meat 'against the grain' whenever possible. When you look at a piece of meat, you can see the direction of the muscle fibers.

Each muscle fiber is encased in a collagen sheet that holds it together, muscle fiber bundles are encased in bigger sheets, each muscle is encased in an even thicker sheet, and the entire limb is cased in the thickest sheet.

Collagen is a tough non-elastic fiber. If you leave long pieces of it, the meat will be tough and chewy. If on the other hand, you cut these fibers in short little pieces—which happens by 'cutting against the grain'—then they won't be nearly as bothersome.

 

Not included in the above:

Low-temperature cooking—as low as 132 ºF—is my preferred method for thicker cuts, in combination with searing before and also after the cooking for roasts and steaks. The initial searing seals and sterilizes the meat surface and adds extra flavor. The finishing searing adds more color and flavor.

The prolonged low-temperature cooking ensures that the meat is cooked and pasteurized evenly throughout the cut but avoids the loss of color and moisture that is seen with high-temperature cooking. In other words: the meat remains pink and juicy as long as the temperature is kept low enough.

 

Same-level links

recipe page links

Chapter 2.3. beef