Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
I grew up in a small town where the local butcher raised his own beef and pork, so he knew everything there was to know about the meat he was selling.
Then when we were first married and living in Chicago, there was Fine's on Morse Ave, where you'd tell the butcher what you wanted to make and he'd tell you what cut to get and how to cook it. (There was also an excellent kosher butcher a block away.)
When we moved to Lincoln, there were two stores with good meat departments. I think their quality declined over the years. (One store burned down a few years ago, the other is still there but I almost never buy meat from them.) Recently Fareway opened a meat market in Lincoln and several of their countermen appear to know their product fairly well, so I've been buying much of my meat there, even though it's much further away. And I've been experimenting with a few cuts I hadn't previously tried.
I know there are people who love Whole Foods, but I have not been all that impressed by their meat department, either at the Whole Foods in Lincoln or the one in Pittsburgh. One of the best meat sections I've seen in decades is at McGinnis Sisters in Monroeville PA. When I was in Columbus OH a year ago, the meat, poultry and fish markets at the North Market all made me wish I lived nearby. (The poultry market had more kinds of duck than I've ever seen at one time, and I grew up in Hanover IL, the Mallard duck capital of the United States.)
The advent of boxed beef operations has meant that most stores may have a few meat cutters, but none with the expertise I was accustomed to. And if you shop in the evening or on weekends, there might not be anyone in the meat department at all, much less an expert on cuts and how to prepare them. I have been known to ask the countermen at the meat departments of the stores I frequent a question I already know the answer to, just to see how they answer it.
I have been misled by the sirloin tip cut and a few others myself, and that's why I started studying meat cuts and meat cutting. Not that I'm likely to buy my own side of beef and butcher it, or even 10-20 pound sub-primals very often, but I want to be able to recognize the cuts by their appearance rather than from the label, and know what to do with one before I buy it.
Some of the best information out there can be found by searching for 'FFA Meat Judging', those high school students need to know the major retail cuts and how to cook them. That's not the same thing as a meat cookbook, but I haven't looked at what's available to have an opinion on recent books on cooking meat. I know I still have a lot to learn, I think the average FFA meat judging competitor would run circles around me.
We had tomato soup and cheese sandwiches tonight. I've got a pork loin roast I'm probably making tomorrow, but today kind of got away from me.
Sirloin tip is a misnamed cut, because it does not come from the sirloin primal but from the round primal. (The round is the largest primal, so there's lots of cuts that come from it.)
It's the triangular end of the top round, near the sirloin, which is, I guess, where it gets its name from.
Here's some more information on it: Sirloin Tip Roast
Although it is considered one of the leaner cuts, there's a cap on it that isn't always taken off. There are also a couple of veins of fat and gristle present, sometimes fairly thick ones. I don't buy it very often, but when I do I usually cut it into smaller steaks or stewing beef pieces. Thick pieces of lean beef tend to be harder to get tender than thinner or smaller ones.
If cooking it whole, it does best with lower heat and a longer cook time, but it also does well if braised. Slicing it across the grain means that every slice has some of that fat/gristle in it. Slicing it with the grain is harder to do, but you can rotate it and get something closer to a cross-grain cut.
I've got a couple of books on meat identification and meat cutting on my shelf, this is one that the FFA has on its list of material students use in preparing for meat grading exams: Meat book I think it is a print-on-demand book, and used copies don't show up very often.
Sirloin Tip is the IMPS 167 cut (parts A-F), additional information can be found here:
USDA IMPSI did some looking around and didn't find any recipes that looked like the met your criteria. (I don't do curry dishes because of allergy issues.)
I never buy 'tenderized' meats, because they're usually made from a cut or grade that they couldn't sell without the tenderizing process, and I think the tenderizing process shortens the shelf life of the meat.
Chicken fried steak is always a possibility, or you can cut them up into smaller pieces and use them for stews, ragouts, stroganoff, etc.
If I'm going to make something that requires pounding the meat flat, like Steak Diane, I want a good piece of meat to start with.
I used to buy these frozen tenderized veal cutlets, because it was the only veal available locally, but they would nearly fall apart when cutting them up for something like Veal Zurich (veal in a white wine cream sauce). Fortunately, I can get good veal at the Fareway Meat Market that opened last fall.
I tend to buy 'family pack' sized cuts and trim them down. I'd buy primal or sub-primal cuts but they're so big you have to freeze most of the meat after cutting it. Recently I've been buying the 'thick cut' sirloin. I can get 2-3 days worth of meals from a 1.5 to 1.75 pound steak, plus a bag of trim for my next batch of stock.
Well, this was in the 50's and early 60's. It wasn't a large operation, I think they only tapped a few hundred trees. Although I grew up in Hanover, I think the maple tree farm was closer to Galena.
I think we'll have steak for supper here, I did buy some turkey tenders (the store actually had the ones that haven't been saturated with a salty broth, so they're about 90mg of sodium per serving, compared to as high as 600mg for some of the turkey breasts or whole turkeys.) I have been roasting those for lunch sandwiches.
Yesterday they were calling for 2-3 inches of snow, possibly up to 5 inches, but it didn't really start snowing until about 6AM and is supposed to taper down around noon, so I'm guessing it'll be more like an inch, maybe two.
There was a small area of sugar maples in NW Illinois where I grew up that the owner tapped every spring, we went out to the sugar shack a couple of times, you could smell it a half mile away.
We had spaghetti and meatballs tonight. I looked at some ham at the store this afternoon, but even the 'low sodium' one had 590 mg of sodium in a 2 ounce serving. :sigh:
Joan, maybe you just haven't found the right type of bread yet.
The challenge with the Clonmel recipe is that it's huge, 5-6 cups of flour. It just barely fits in my 4 1/2 quart KA. But that's actually somewhat of an advantage when teaching kneading by hand, you can really get into it.
It's nearly a no-fail recipe and you can adapt it a lot of different ways, substitute butter for oil, bake the bread in a loaf pan or free form, add some whole wheat or rye flour, substitute honey for the sugar, etc, and they all should come out just fine.
I've cut the salt in that recipe by half or more lately, can't say I've noticed much difference in taste, it is a bit more airy.
We had a simple stir fry and some rice. Still have one plate of hot cross buns to give away, two of our neighbors don't appear to be home. Maybe I'll take it 2 doors down in the morning, I don't really know that family, it's a fairly new house built 2-3 years ago, it was the last open lot on the block.
The gluten-free ones went over well, there are two people at my wife's office who can't eat wheat, they don't get to share in the office treats very often.
Here's the GF recipe I used: GF Hot Cross Buns
If I make these next year, which seems quite likely, I may cut back on or leave out the cardamom and substitute nutmeg for the allspice.
Today I'm making Vienna Bread and a batch-and-a-half of Hot Cross Buns (a total of 48 1.5 ounce rolls, one 16 and four 8's.) I"m putting a cream cheese frosting cross on them.
My newest neighbor will get the 16 rolls one, and I think one of the Vienna Breads, she's got family in town for Easter.
Today I made one batch of gluten-free Hot Cross Buns and a batch of whole wheat Hot Cross Buns for my wife's office. I'll make more batches tomorrow for neighbors.
-
AuthorPosts
