From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: OT Playing with Fire
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 17:14:51 -0400
Message-ID: <5gspd2d044kcga4pfflk3qq2kf4g3q0sjh@4ax.com>

On Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:46:53 -0500, Bob Giddings <bobg@escapees.com>
wrote:


>This will be a longer day than usual, because of the pork loin.
>It should last quite a while, frozen in chunks.   And in the
>afternoon I'm going to experiment with some thick cut chuck
>steaks.  They were cheap, but fresh cut and marbled.
>
>Remember marbled meat?
>
>Hard to find since the health police got in cahoots with the beef
>industry.  Which means the traditional cuts like T-bone and rib
>eye are so lean that they turn out tough and stringy more often
>than not.  At one time I wouldn't mess with chuck, but these look
>pretty good, at 2 bucks a pound.

Man, that sounds good.  I'll echo your comments on Sam's meats.  They
sell IBP Choice plus meats, IMO, the best on the market.  Since I
closed the restaurant it has become challenging to buy USDA Prime meat
(minimum one case, 8 ribeyes and $1200) so I've been buying the Sam's
meat.  After aging for a month, it's only fractionally less good than
the prime.  Choice Plus is essentially the low end of prime anyway.

I highly recommend aging.  Just put the unopened cryropacked whole
ribeye (or strip or whatever) in the fridge and leave it there for 5-6
weeks.  Then open it, butcher it and freeze what you can't eat at once
:-)  This isn't the same as traditional dry aging but it is very close
and is something you can do at home with no extra equipment.

John, who has a ribeye coming out of the 'fridge this weekend.  My
heart'll be sludge-pumping but I'll be grinnin'.

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: RV Cooking
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:58:26 -0400
Message-ID: <07l793hmr38klv5278v94j7i6al2dnm3dk@4ax.com>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:24:56 -0400, GBinNC <GBinNC@xgmailx.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:14:17 -0400, "Cliff" <cliffclingan@hotmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Yep, beer can chicken ... love it.  Take a really cheap beer (no need to
>>burn a premium,) and drink half, set the chicken up on the can and place on
>>the grill.
>
>In other words, you ram the can up the chicken's rear end. Right?

yep.  You gotta REALLY like the taste of beer though, cuz it gets really beery.  I
don't so that's not a cooking method I use.

I have, however, put vinegar and spices in a coke can, rammed it up the chicken's
rear and cooked that way.  The vinegar does a tremendous job of tenderizing and the
spices infuse the meat from the inside out.

BTW, speaking of chicken, last week, at great risk to personal health and well-being,
I did an experiment in the furtherance of gustatory excellence.  Or I should say,
ended an experiment.  I wanted to see if aging chicken helped it as much as it does
beef.

I got me a cryropacked Tysons whole fryer and put it in the cold part (~35 deg) of
the fridge and left it there for 3 weeks.  Then I took it out, washed it well and put
it on the pit and gave it a good smoking.  When the popper came out, I ate.

Absolutely remarkable.  So tender the breast just fell apart.  I couldn't get the
legs off intact, the meat was so tender.  The smoke probably hid most of the flavor
change but it was at least as good as "fresh".

I would NOT try this on a non-cryropacked bird, one packed in a meat market tray, for
instance.  One that has been opened and repackaged is likely to be contaminated by
atmospheric bacteria and would surely spoil.  Cryropacking appears to be a sterile
process so the aging can progress without bacteria growth.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Time to Winterize
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:22:16 -0500
Message-ID: <66nui35q9pdeqdbnoj42f8g0ukeqvavad6@4ax.com>

On Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:40:32 -0800, Pegleg <Pegleg@usnavyret.mil> wrote:

>On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:52:20 -0600, williamboyd
><williamboyd@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>>Gonna let the T bones age just a little more, wonder how long steak has
>>been aged when you buy it in a market, does the sell by date have any
>>thing to do with it?
>
>It is very difficult to find "aged" meat in a grocery store.  Grocery
>stores don't have the capacity to hold meats long enough and
>distributors pretty much send all "aged" meat to restaurants that can
>afford it.  Just as difficult to find "prime" meat...most goes to
>restaurants.
>
>For meat that I buy from the local grocery I watch for meat (BEEF) that
>has been price reduced due to the sell-by date and especially if it has
>started to turn color and darken a little.

The dark colored meat has a foul taste so it's not very practical to age already-cut
meat.

I served USDA prime aged steaks in my restaurant.  The whole pieces (ribeye, loin and
strips) were aged between 30 and 45 days in a cooler I had especially for the
purpose.  They were packaged in Cryropak vacuum shrink-wrap to minimize the formation
of the brown layer.  After aging I opened the cryropak, removed the dark meat,
butchered the remainder and cryropaked the pieces until time to serve.  I used
ultraviolet sterilization of the butchered pieces after cryropaking so that they
would hold for another 2 weeks or so.  I still age meat for friends and family so I
have a couple hundred pounds in the aging fridge at any given time.

Properly aged meat is dark ruby red, is completely compliant to the touch (a finger
dent doesn't rebound) and is fork-tender when cooked.  The flavor is out of this
world!

I once gave a friend about $75 worth of aged porterhouse steaks.  He called me the
next Monday and said that those steaks were spoiled and that he'd had to throw them
away.  Aged meat has an odor (aging is basically controlled enzyme-based spoilage)
but is NOT bad.  I 'bout had a cow!  I dragged his butt UP to my restaurant, COOKED
him some identical steaks and EDUCATED him about fine eatin'!  Sheesh, what some
people don't know!

John