It seems like there are a thousand names for steaks, and it can be difficult sometimes to pinpoint what you got. It took me a little bit of searching to discover what a petite steak was. The petite steak as it names suggests is a small steak that is cut from the chuck primal (or the shoulder of the cow). The chuck is known for producing some of the most finger licking food you could imagine, but not normally a tender steak. But the petite steak is an exception. The only problem is that there is a laying of connective tissue that won’t go away even if you burn the thing into ashes. But around that connective tissue is come pretty flavorful meat, you just have to cut around it. Because of this “defect” you should be able to find the steak at a low price, thus it’s a great value. The Nibble.com ranked it as the best value steak. (Click here to see a list of their top 10 value cuts of beef).

Not finding a petite steak in your store? It might also be under the name blade steak or top blade steak. I think it depends on the size of the steak. The smaller version of a blade steak is a petite.

What is a tip sizzler steak? After much research online, I am still asking myself this question. I could not find anything with the exact name tip sizzler steak, except for the Meijer store web site, which is where I purchased this cut. So maybe they are the only ones using this name. With my research I believe I know about where this cut of beef comes from. By looking at pictures of other cuts, I believe that this steak is from the round area of the cow. It is from the area of the round that is close by to the tenderloin section of the animal. This mean that even thought it is a round steak, it may be one of the most tender round steaks. As you move towards the back of the cow, the meat gets tougher. Since it’s more tender, I can get away with using a dry cooking method (pan-searing), as long as I start off with a marinade.
Now when it comes down to fat. There isn’t a whole lot of marbling with this cut, but there was an area of fat that I found after pan-searing was hard to deal with, so I ended up with a little piece that I didn’t eat.

Click here for my recipe for pan-seared tip sizzler steak.

If you don’t know what a tip sizzler steak is, check out my post on that topic. Before you cook this steak, it’s best to marinade it first.

Ingredients
2 tip sizzler steaks
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
2 cloves garlic (minced)
kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper
canola oil

Start by combining the Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce into a plastic bag containing the two steaks. Add the minced garlic and place into the fridge for 2 hours. Make sure you put the bag into another container just in case the bag leaks. Remove your steak a half hour before cooking. A room temperature steak will cook better and quicker.

Preheat your oven to 475 degrees. Place a cast iron skillet over medium high heat. Rub a little bit of canola oil on both sides of the steak, then sprinkle some kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Once the skillet is ready. Place the steak on it. Cook until a nice brown sear has formed and then flip the steak over. This can take about 45-90 seconds per side. When both sides are brown, place the entire thing in the oven. In about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 minutes, flip the steaks over and cook another 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 minutes. The reason we are finishing it in the oven is that by the time the inside was done, the outside would be black. The oven will gently finish the steak without burning the outside. I learn this tip from watching Alton Brown’s first episode of Good Eats on how to cook a ribeye.

The best way to know if the steak is done is to do 2 things: use an instant read thermometer and learn what the meat feels like when it’s done. When you push the meat it will have some give depending on the temperature you want it. If you do this enough along with a thermometer you will be able to figure out how much give the steak should have when you push it in with a pair of tongs or a fork. If the steak has no give, then you have overcooked it.

It is a skill to learn how to properly cook a steak and a steak like a tip sizzler, is one that can quickly go from tender to tough. Be patient with yourself and learn through trial and error.

St. Patrick’s Day is fast approaching and the most commonly served meal on that day (at least in America) is corned beef. Where does corn beef come from? The answer is the brisket. The part of the cow brisket is located is in the front of the cow, toward the bottom, near the cow’s front legs. Since the cow uses that area a lot this is a tough cut of beef, so a slow cooking method must be used. Yet it is worth your time because it is a flavorful cut.

When choosing a brisket, unless you buy the entire brisket, you will have to choose between a flat cut and a point cut. It is very easy to tell the difference by just looking at the cuts.

Point Cut Brisket

A point cut comes to a point at one end. The point cut has a lot of fat running through it, so when you cook it, it comes out nice and juicy. This cut is rarely found in supermarkets, as it isn’t as attractive of a cut as the flat. This is a good choice if you plan on shredding the meat when finished cooking.

Flat Cut Brisket

The flat cut is a much leaner cut than the point. However it still has a layer of fat on the bottom, that will keep the meat moist. This is the cut you will most often find in supermarkets, as it looks more appealing the the point cut. If you are looking for brisket that will slice up nicely, this is your best bet. It is also the cut used most often when you buy packaged corned beef.

As a side note, in the Good Eats episode “Pickled Pink”, Alton Brown choose a flat cut to make his own corned beef.

Have you ever seen a chuck arm steak in a store and wonder what to do with it? Or even what it is? Well I have that answer for you. The chuck arm comes from the chuck primal on the cow. The chuck primal is located towards the head of the cow. The muscles in this area get a lot of work, so the meat tends to be tough. The positive thing is that cuts from this area are plentiful thus cheap. The arm cut is located in the bottom half of the chuck primal. This cut doesn’t have as much fat in it than other cuts of chuck like the chuck eye which is perfect for pot roasts and can be made into a grilled steak. But the arm wouldn’t work as well for either. I definitely would never grill it, as it will be really tough. The only way to cook it is by braising it (which is cooking in a small amount of liquid). Braising the meat low and slow will give the connective tissues time to break down so that when you eat the meat, it won’t be so tough.

Here is how I cooked my chuck arm steak.

1 pound chuck arm steak

2 cups Beef or mushroom broth

4 oz. tomato paste

1 teaspoon dried thyme

kosher salt

canola (or vegetable) oil

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Before you begin to braise your meat you have the chance to add some additional flavoring by searing it. Heat up a grill pan (cast iron would be great) over high heat with a little bit of oil in the bottom, just enough to cover. While doing that season both sides of the meat with kosher salt. When the pan is hot in about 4-5 minutes, place the steak on the pan. Wait about 1 minute and then flip and cook for 1 more minute. Since this is a steak cut, so it’s a thinner piece than a roast, we just want to cook it quickly to give it a good sear to add additional flavor. We definitely do not want to cook the steak entirely now. Once the steak is done searing, remove it to a plate.

Now it’s time to prepare the braising liquid. Take the 2 cups of mushroom or beef broth and mix in the 4 oz of tomato paste until combined (the acids in the tomato will help break down connective tissue). Then add 1 teaspoon of dried thyme, mix to combine. Place your steak onto some heavy duty aluminum foil. You will want to completely cover the steak in foil so make sure you have enough. The reason for this is to make the best braise the meat needs to be completely surrounded in the liquid. With the foil you can accomplish that. Just make to place the entire thing in some kind of pan because no matter how good you seal it, there is still a good chance some liquid will escape. Better for it escape into a pan than onto the bottom of your oven.

Place in the oven and cook for about 1 hr 30 minutes to 1 hr 45 minutes. This should give the connective tissues enough time to break down so that the meat will be tender and not long enough to dry out the meat. Alton Brown said in one of his book that meat in the oven acts like a sponge that is being rung out. It’s liquid escapes to the outer surroundings. Since the arm steak has less fat than other chuck cuts, there is a greater chance for the meat to dry out, even though it is surrounded by liquid.

When your meat is done, give it at least 5-10 minutes to rest before cutting into.

So now, next time you see an arm steak in the store you will know what to do with it. It is possible to turn this cheap, tough cut into something to enjoy!

Before you begin I recommend you read my post on “How to Cook a Flavorful Pot Roast“.

For this recipe you will need the following ingredients:

7-bone chuck roast

canola oil

Better then Bouillon Mushroom Base (or any other mushroom soup base)

3-4 cloves of garlic

1 onion (your choice of type)

kosher salt

freshly ground cumin

flour, corn starch, or arrowroot (if you wish to make gravy)

A couple notes about these ingredients.

1.Better than Bouillon makes a wide range of soup bases. I use them all of time whenever a recipe calls for a broth. For this pot roast, I am using their mushroom base. You can use another brand if you want, but I think Better than Bouillon is better than the rest.

2. Buying whole cumin and grinding it yourself (check out my post on spice grinders) will provide you with the best flavor possible. Spices lose flavor over time, so who knows how long ago that pre-ground cumin was ground.

3. You may be wonder where are the carrots? Well I think if you cook the carrots along with the roast you just end up with carrot mush. But if you have to have the carrots, feel free to add as much as you want. I will cook my carrots separately.

To begin, I recommend using a 4-5 quart cast iron dutch oven. The best part about the dutch oven is that you will be able to brown the meat in it, cook the meat in it, and prepare gravy in it. That will save you some time doing dishes afterward.

First, you will want to season your meat. Liberally season your meat with kosher salt and cumin on both sides. Second, place a small amount of oil in the bottom of the dutch oven, just enough to cover the surface. Third, set your burner to it’s highest setting. Once it has heated up, place the roast in the dutch oven and let it cook for 4-5 minutes. Then flip over and let that side cook 4-5 minutes. Take your roast out and set it aside. You should have some nice brown color on each side.

Now you will want to soften up your onion and garlic. Chop up your onion and garlic cloves and place them in the dutch oven (turn the burner down to medium) and cook them for a couple minutes, just to soften and bring out some flavor. Be very careful not to burn them as burning will only add bad flavors to your final dish. Remove them from the pot and set aside.

Set your oven to 200 degrees. Place the meat back in the dutch oven. Add enough water to come about half way up the pot roast and then add in your mushroom base (if you use an already made mushroom broth, then just pour that it until your half way up the roast). Add the garlic and onion on top of the roast.

Place the lid on your dutch oven and set it in the center of your oven. Let is cook for about 3 1/2 – 4 1/2 hours. You will know it’s done when it is fork tender.

Now if you wish to make a gravy, take your meat out of your dutch oven, set the dutch oven on a burner that is set to  high heat. In order to help the liquid thicken, you can use either corn starch, flour, or arrowroot. Just make sure you mix whatever you are using with some water first, so that you don’t end up with lumpy gravy. Cook your liquid until it thickens to your desire consistency.

For a side dish, mashed potatoes are the obvious choice (you have gravy ready to make for them). Read my post on how to make mashed potatoes.

Pot Roast is a classic American dish. Problem is a lot of Americans don’t know how to properly cook one. Most of the time the problem is the meat is so flavorless that you need to pile on tons of gravy in order to shallow it down. Good news there are many ways to make a flavorful pot roast.

First thing you need to know is what cut of beef makes the best pot roast. This is the perfect opportunity to turn a cheap cut of beef into a flavorful one. You want to choose a chuck roast, which is as cheap as they get, as the chuck primal is where we get the most meat from the cow. The chuck is found at the top front of the cow, near the neck. It contains the shoulder blade of the animal. To get the best chuck roast, you want to get part of the bone from the shoulder blade. For that you need a 7 bone roast. No, there isn’t 7 bones in that cut of meat, but there is a bone shaped like a 7. The bone will add tenderness and hopefully leak out some gelatin to make a finger licking good pot roast.

To cook your pot roast, you want to go low and slow. This cut of beef has a lot of connective tissue in it that needs to be broken down so that you have a tender result, not a tough one. You also want a low temperature for even cooking. Also you will be performing what’s called a braise, which involves cooking with a small amount of liquid. If your temperature is too high than your liquid will boil and that’s not something you want. It is also important to use a flavorful liquid like tomato juice or beef broth as water alone doesn’t add any flavor.

Before you begin braising your beef, you will want to brown it. The reason is not to keep juices inside the meat, like so many people tend to believe, but to add flavor. To brown the meat you will cook it over high heat with a little oil for about 4-5 minutes per side. When you do this the Maillard Reaction takes place. The high heat causes proteins and sugars to react to produce new flavors on the surface of the meat (thank you, Alton Brown for teaching me this!). This same reaction is what gives grilled meats their flavor. So you need to do this first before you braise the meat. Skipping this stage is cheating yourself out of additional flavor.

Now that you have given some knowledge how to create a flavorful pot roast, check out this recipe below to get started on a delicious, finger-licking good dinner.

Mushroom Base Pot Roast

Beef tenderloin steaks (some people call them filet mignon) sound like an expensive luxury. Stores sell them for $16.99 a pound. But you don’t need to pay that much to enjoy beef tenderloin. If you buy an entire tenderloin, (also called a pismo) you can have a tenderloin steak as low as for $4.99 a pound. You can cut your tenderloin into 1 1/2 inch steaks. Below is my recipe for cooking those steaks.

Ingredients

beef tenderloin steak (1 1/2 inch thick)

kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

ground cumin (optional)

1 tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon canola or olive (not extra virgin) oil

Take your steaks out of the fridge and bring them to room temperature before cooking. Then melt the butter in a wide saute or frying pan over. You want something wide so you can flip your steaks easily. Add your oil. The reason for the oil is to raise the smoke point of the butter so that it won’t burn. Season your steaks with salt, pepper, and cumin (optional). If you really like a lot of pepper you can crack some into a pie pan and completely cover each steak by placing each side down into the pan. This is what Alton Brown did in the Good Eats episode, Tender is the Loin.

Now set your burner to medium to medium high and using tongs place each steak into the pan. Cook about 4-5 minutes and then flip them and cook them another 4-5 minutes. You can use a instant read thermometer to test if your steak are done to your liking. It may take a few times to determine how many minutes for each side for you as the conditions of your kitchen, your stove top, and pan can all affect how long it takes to finish your steak. Let your steaks rest for 5 minutes before cutting and enjoying your luxury.

Last time I bought an entire eye of round roast from the supermarket, I divided it into 1 roast (see my post on cooking an eye of round roast), and 6 steaks. I thought that I would need all six steak to perfect my recipe, but the first time was the charm. The problem I faced when cooking these steaks is that they are not the most tender steak on the cow. They come from the round section. It also a pretty lean steak. So overcooking the steak was my number one concern. I decided that I need to cook this thing as fast as possible with as much firepower as possible (at least possible in my kitchen). Here is what I did.

Instructions

First I took two eye of round steak and marinade them in some worchestershire sauce for about 2 hours. Then I remove the steaks from the marinade, patted them dry with a paper towel, added some a couple heavy pinches of kosher salt and let them reach room temperature. As that was going on, I set my oven to broil and placed inside my cast iron grill pan (see picture at the bottom). I felt this was the best way to cook the steak as quickly as I could.

Once the steak was at room temperature and the oven was ready, I placed the steaks on the cast iron grill pan, shut the door, waited for 2 1/2 minutes, flipped the steaks, waited another 2 1/2 minutes and let my meat rest. This resulted in a nice medium steak (anything beyond with this teak would be just too tough). Times will vary with the oven used and the size of the steak. Trial and error is the only real way to figure out what time works best for you (fortunately I didn’t have any error!). You can always use a instant read thermometer to test if your steak is done to your liking.

One last thing: Do your mouth a favor and don’t forget to cut against the grain!

If you are looking for how to cook an eye of round steak, check out this post.

Last week I found an entire boneless eye of round roast at a local grocery store. So this week, I had to decide what to do with it. But first I needed some more information. What I found is that the eye of round of course comes from the round portion of the cow (yes that’s the backside!). This area also contains the top round and bottom round. The eye of round is a cylinder shaped cut of beef. It is lean in that there is only some fat on the outside and very little marbling on the inside. It is not the most tender piece of meat because that part of the cow does get a workout. So keeping in mind all this knowledge and after cutting my whole eye of round into about a 3-lb roast for that night’s dinner, I came up with the following recipe:

Instructions

Set your oven to 200 degrees. We are going to start low, so that the outside doesn’t become leather before the inside is done. Take your roast and liberally season it with kosher salt. Then to make a flavorful crust, use the following spice rub.

Ingredients for Spice Rub

1 teaspoon coriander seed

1 teaspoon celery seed

1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon ground mustard

Place all of these in your spice grinder (coffee grinder) and grind them for 10-15 seconds. (To learn more about using a coffee grinder to grind spices, read this post). Take this spice rub and rub it into the meat, all over the entire roast. If you wish to make more of the rub just keep the portions the same.

How to Cook It

Now that your meat is ready to meet the heat, place it on a roasting pan. Then stick a probe thermometer into the center of the meat on an angle. If you don’t have one it will be hard to determine your roast is done. Some will try to tell you to cook it for 7 minutes per pound but I don’t buy into that, as there is no way those kind of calculations can take into effect the shape of the roast. Now once your thermometer is in place, stick your roast into the pre-heated 200 degree oven. Keep in in there until the temperature is about 15-20 degrees away from your desire doneness (medium rare is 130-145, medium is 145-155, ff you want it above medium, than you also want to look like your a cow chewing its cud). Remove the roast from the oven and cover it with foil. Then raise the temperature to 500 degrees, this will help give your roast a nice crust. Keep in mind that while the roast is sitting out it will continue to cook or “carry over”. When the oven hits 500, put your roast back in and keep it in there until your 5 degrees away from your final desire temperature.

Serving

It’s best to serve this roast, carved thinly with an electric knife. But before you do that give time for the roast to rest, at least 10 minutes, 20 would be better. Use foil to keep it warm. When you eat it make sure to cut it against the grain so that it will be easiest to chew.

This one went a few degrees beyond what I would have liked it to be cooked to.