You ask ten people what their favorite cut of beef is and you could get ten different answers.
There is such a variety available that you can fulfil almost any desire from somewhere on a beef. Except the veggie or sushi crowd I suppose.
Do you prefer the lean cuts?
Top sirloin as either a steak or a roast is quite good. Tri-tip is a fine choice. London Broil is good to go. There are differences in these but they have similar characteristics and pitfalls. I am intentionally leaving out the New York Strip, T-Bone, and Porter House cuts because they have a higher fat content and have quite a bit of marbling. Much of what I am posting here can be used for these cuts but the cuts themselves are of higher flavor, higher fat content and in general tenderer and more forgiving than the others mentioned here.
Biggest problem, over cooking and drying them out. Either-or turns these into a chore rather than a pleasure to eat. Because they are from the hind-quarters, they have less marbling, and less flavor. Drying them out will cause them to turn uncharacteristically tough, at least in relation to their great potential. The flavor is also reduced by the fact that they are boneless. The tendency of people to like their meat well done combined with a desire to BBQ the steaks is one of several ways people ruin what should be a good time. In my not so expert opinion these steaks are excellent candidates for marinades. Preferably hours before cooking or even the night before the BBQ. BBQing tends to dry meat out anyway. The juices are lost to the flame rather than being caught by the pan. Also adding moisture to the meat on any lean cut will make the final product juicier and more flavorful. Any marinade will do, BBQ sauce or any flavor you like. Teriyaki for example. It’s not about tenderizing the meat but moisturizing it. When marinading a tougher piece of meat acids are useful and time is a necessity. Here, however, it is about moisture and flavor. Steak sauce will work too. Find a flavor you like and go for it. I often use dry rubs for BBQs but in this case it will not be helpful for maintaining the moisture we need.
Another point about lean cuts, it is sometimes easier to keep the juices in if you cook them as a roast instead of cooking steaks. It does take longer, maybe three or four times longer depending on the thickness and size of the roast but it will give you more variety of done-ness to serve. If most of you party prefers well done meat then make sure you don’t cook a huge slab, cut it down to two or three smaller roasts. In order to make sure you don’t have a huge piece of shoe leather I recommend using a meat thermometer to check the progress. For a roast 1 1/2″ thick or thicker 325 is the target temperature for cooking. This will keep the outside from being inediblly hard. For thin cuts like London Broil, higher temps are used, 425 or even higher. The bigger the roast, the slower you want to cook it. Unless you like your roast to have a skin of dry course meat. The target temp for the meat ranges from 120 for rare to 160 degrees for well-done. After removing the meat from the oven or grill, it will continue to cook for as long as 20 minutes.
What ever you decide to cook, have fun with it. Brushing your marinade in during cooking now and then will help the moister content and keep the outside from being crusty.
I could not list all the spices that are good on beef but here are a few I like. Garlic, Basil, Crushed Red Chili or Cajun Pepper, and of course horseradish. By the way I’m not saying these should be combined together, just a list of options. I use several dry rubs and specific brands of spices I will post later in a kind of ’spice blogroll’.
For more specific info on cuts and cooking times I found this link.
Have a good one and enjoy the fruits of your labor,
Brutus
paddio
seriouswriter
ecolumn