Sup /cock/s

Sup /cock/s,

I have made a horrible mistake. Costco was out of "blade steaks", which are steaks that have a huge chunk of tendon running through the center. So, I bought "heel meat" thinking that the visible cartilage would just be more thoroughly distributed, rather than fundamentally different.

These shitnuggets are inedible. The cartilage cooks into a stringy chewy mass that cannot be broken down by chewing. They are less than 40% recoverable meat, the rest is stringy crappy cartilage.

In contrast, the blade steak cartilage remains soft as long as it isn't overcooked. It's like the cartilage that Vietnamese places put in their pho -- tender, soft, gelatinous.

Picrelated is blade steaks.

What the hell can I do with these heel chunks? Right now, about all I can think of is to throw them at feral dogs and hope the damn things choke to death on them.

Sell that stuff on craigslist

>I have made a horrible mistake.
I'd say you have, shopping at costco was a pretty horrible mistake.

Seriously though, when I have a piece of meat with a bunch of tough cartilage in it I marinate it in teriyaki sauce for 24-36 hours, flipping regularly. Seems to break down the cartilage.

you gotta stew that shit up, bro

Make chunk chili with it and cook it until it collapses.

Braise or stew that garbage

A slow cooker might work as well, with some potatoes and other veggies, make some gravy for it too.

Slow cook them, odds are they'll eventually break down.

this, a nice stew of heel meat is delicious, it becomes tender and moist.

'k, I'll try a stew, never made one before. Is an hour long enough to simmer, or does it need to be a slow-cooker? I have a soup recipe that I've been wanting to try, which involves a one-hour simmer time.

Might try a marinade, then. I'll look to see if Costco carries a teriyaki one. :-)

The meat department at Costco has always seemed pretty decent to me, nicht wahr? My other options here are pretty bad DESU.

You didn't goof, you're about to learn a very important technique any cook needs to know, how to turn shitty inedible beef into soft pillows of meaty goodness.

-> making a stew!
Time and low heat will transform almost anything into good stuff.

VERY basic stew recipe:
>brown meat on high heat in butter NOT COOKING IT THROUGH LIKE A STEAK! but just giving it a sear, then take it out of the pan
>put an onion or 2, diced, into the browned pan with a little extra bit of butter/oil with some garlic
>add the meat and any other veggies (broccoli, carrots, selery etc.) and cover in either stock (water + stock cubes work) or half stock and half red wine.
>add in herbs(thyme, rosemary, pepper, salt, bayleef)
> simmer, that means you're slightly on the verge of cooking, tiny bubble are forming, but not full on boil, for about 1.5 to 2 hours
> serve, or add in teaspoon of cornstarch with a teaspoon of water for binding, and boil for 2 minutes to see how thick it is.

You'll need well more than an hour

Jesus fuck, I can taste reddit in the air after seeing this godawful post.

I love it when somebody actually tries to be helpful instead of cynical and they get called reddit. I don't see your doing anything

Costco is great you fucking pleb. Good quality shit for low prices, and unlike the Walton family owned Sam's Club, they actually treat their employees well.

>awful post

Not the guy that posted it, but other than not cooking for a longer time he was spot on. Just wtf was so awful?

Oh I'll agree that Costco treats their employees very well, and I admire them for that. But I REFUSE to buy meat from ANY big box store. If the establishment doesn't have an actual butcher working on site, I'm not buying meat from it.

Thats a weird rule. Especially for things like chicken

Butchery is a dying art man. It used to be an actual career.

Don't buy much chicken, but I do buy a lot of steak and lamb, and having an actual butcher on site helps out a lot.

I know.

F

Costco has USDA prime beef for cheaper than any other store I can go to. That's good enough for me. If I want a specialty cut, I'll obviously go to a real butcher, but if I'm doing steaks, bbq, or a rib roast, Costco really can't be beat.

I LOVE blade steak. That tendon in the middle breaks down after a couple of hours. It's the first cut of meat where I learned what the "buttery" taste and texture chefs talk about comes from. It's fantastic. We don't talk about top blade enough.

And if I shop the sales at my local grocer I can get steaks for cheaper then Costco. How often does Costco sell porterhouse family packs for 6.99 a pound?

You should just stew that meat until it all falls apart. THat's what I with oxtail. Just stew it until the bone pops clean out. After enough stewing the meat should fall away from the tendon and cartilage.

Couple of hours?? I find that if I cook it to just barely out of blue-rare it's about right. If I let it roast for too long and get it up to medium-rare, the tendon in the middle is chewy as I described in my OP.

The thing with these inedible nuggets of heel meat is that even cooking that lightly still makes the tendons inedible. I could probably try 'em raw, but I don't think the meat is fresh enough to be safe that way.

LOL. Try life where I am. Those prices are unobtainable. Costco is a third the price of grocery stores on cheeses, and about two thirds the price of grocery stores on any sort of meat.

Nigga you could leave a steak in teriyaki for 14 days and it wouldn't break down the cartilage. It would rot before the sauce could even penetrate to the depth needed to break down the cartilage in any meaningful way.

If it's 6.99 a pound, it isn't prime.

I bought some chuck steaks with that cartilage in it. I grilled it and it disappeared.

Most of the places I know that have heel meat in their shop use it for grinding (and almost always refer to it by its item number rather than 'heel meat' on the floor when talking amongst coworkers making the grinding list). You can get ~85-88% beef from it if you get some decent pieces. The extreme conditions that the heel goes through during the life of the animal does change how the meat exits the grinder though (even through its second clearing it moves almost in a zig-zaging or pulsating pattern). I can only imagine what it does to the texture of the meat if it is further processed into patties... That being said, I haven't eaten any grinds made from heels myself- but I can speculate from grinding it and working with it.

You could use it for stew meat though like most other tough cuts (think about shank meat).