Taking A Break From Steak

Roast duck and brown rice, with a pretty darned good red. The apples and onions were cooked in the bird in lieu of stuffing, and were a nice complement to the meal. Off screen was a bowl of chopped kale and onions, sauteed in duck fat.

Amazingly enough, this stuff is all on my diet. X minus 50 lbs. and counting...nearing my final goal of X minus 75. Solve for X.

Second Try At Perfect Steaks

No NY Strip roasts available, so another Costco ribeye roast, aged 10 days at 35F. No discernible changes, which makes me think it isn't aged at all before they put it out for sale. It used to be that beef was aged 7 days before being sold, but the pressures of commerce are evidently eliminating that step. As a result, steaks are tougher and less flavorful than they would have been in the old days. Buying in roast form and aging (under controlled conditions) is a way to restore the karmic balance.



Here they are after cooking. Ribeyes tend to flame up a lot when placed directly over an open flame, which doesn't so much cook the beef as carbonize it. So these were cooked on a griddle on the grill, which allows each side to sear nicely.



The finished product, with homemade au gratin potatoes and baked asparagus. There was also corn cooked on the grill, but it didn't make it into this photo to complete the tableau, unfortunately. Next time.

Home-Made Steaks

At Costco, they sell something called a ribeye roast. Buying one gives you the option of aging your own steaks a bit more, and then cutting them to the thickness you desire. I began this experiment based on an Alton Brown episode about standing rib roasts vs. prime rib, but since that time several other bloggers, notable among them Steve H., have tried similar experiments with similar results.

Update: I have also found that Costco sells a roast of NY Strip steaks, which means that I will be running this experiment again, next time with my favorite cut of beef.

These are shots of the last steak from my latest effort. Dry-aged for an additional four days, and about 1.75" thick.





Sorry there are no photos showing what it looked like when cooked. I, um, ate the evidence before remembering to document my achievement. Oh well, it's nice to have an excuse to do this again.

Open For Business

Here on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, we finally managed to connect to the Internet with some baling wire and a couple of D-cell batteries. So now we can voice our opinions without shouting over the fence at someone a couple of miles away.

Whether anyone else reads this or not, at least we won't get hoarse anymore. At least that's something.