Where`s The Beef ?

[PhilipDT]

In Canada & US you don`t have to go out of your way to find a surf & turf with prime rib roast with gravy & all the trimmings with lobster and Alaska king crab with garlic butter. Many normal places will do (no need for the Waldorf Astoria). When I buy prime rib roast, I always get prime rib roast, (never ever I got what I paid for). Here the restaurants are magnificent with 100 / 200 tables spiffy with white table cloth and 3 / 5 customers (if any) tied up in knots and suits eating pizza with fork & knife. This is the norm here.

Here when I put meat in the oven, WATER comes out, (no drippings to make gravy). It is as if I am boiling it. It comes out "torsida" twisted as if it just had epilepsy fit.
Here garlic is disgusting, and spices are no no.

Also, I have been told that they wash meat with Clorex "Lavandina" for 2 reasons:
1. Make the grease look whiter.
2. To remove the natural taste of the meat.
Is this true?

1. Shell fish and red meat is such a horrible combination of flavors to be on the same plate that you'll rarely find it outside of North America, and in north america at hardly any of the top restaurants.

2. In BA I've never ordered a prime rib roast "bife ancho" and not gotten one. But considering this is argentina and they sell ferrets as poodles, I wouldn't be shocked.

3. There was a scandal about that I heard about a while ago, it was from a poor part of the the provincia and they got caught and fined. They had done it because the meat had spoiled and they used the bleach to get rid of the smell. I doubt any large carneceria or supermarket in capital would dare to do that.

What??????? Who cooks meat in the oven? A nice steak should be cooked on a plancha on top of the stove. No wonder you have water running out. Turn the temperature of the stove to high, heat up the plancha, throw the meat on and let the outside brown slightly, then turn it over and take the plancha off the stove and it will keep cooking and instead of water running out you'll get lots of red juice. I dip my bread in it as if were pasta sauce.

Thank you. Unless you're fairly skilled long cooking carne in the oven is usually going to give you some dry chewy flavorlessness. Not to mentioned you have to be a freaking genius to get anywhere near the performance of the average US oven from the POS average Argentine oven.

nlarucia....!! there is nothing better than a, marinated overnight, lomo al horno medium, with russet roasted potatoes and plenty of thick gravy !! Meat a las brasas under high heat, evaporates most of good juices and flavor...!

I hope you mean horno medium temp but not medium done tenderloin! Medium done tenderloin is just a crime. Even so, you're marinating it overnight! For me thats about right for vacio, maybe, but a hell of a long time for lomo, you're loosing all that delicious flavor just so your meat won't dry out as a result of your decision to cook in the oven. Now there is nothing wrong with that, with using the meat as a delivery system for the flavor of your marinade, but don't be suprised that you can't taste much difference between various types of tenderloin.

Also meat at high heat doesn't evaporate any good juices or flavor!!! You're nuts!


One thing I think a lot of people overlook here is that almost all the meat you buy here is veal or at the very least from cows much younger and smaller than those in the USA. If you go to a store in the states a tenderloin with the head and the chain will usually weigh in between 3-4 kg here it usually weighs between 1 - 1.5. Don't expect your veal to be able to be cooked the same way as a cow.

 

[Travelbug0601]

I tried very hot plancha :
3 minutes each side if cold from the fridge.
2 minutes each side if at room temperature.

Never tried just one side stove ON, second side stove OFF. I`ll try that.

Always cook meat at room temperature! If its cold it over cooks the edges before you cook the inside.

 

[PhilipDT]

Always cook meat at room temperature! If its cold it over cooks the edges before you cook the inside.

Also worth noting, a nice thick steak doesn't come to room temperature nearly as fast as most people think. I always pull mine out of the fridge an hour before hand, before even starting the coals.

 

[nlaruccia]

I used to do that, but then read that it accumulates bacteria when it's left out of the fridge to cool down. It's a pity.

 

[nlaruccia]

http://thejetpacker.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Cabana-Las-Lilas-Steak.jpg

 

[ghost]

Here's an est from an agro magazine. Ap[prox 80% is said to be feedlot beef. My est these days is closer to 95%


But in Argentina, conservationists argue that raising beef on natural grasslands is a sustainable tradition, and much better suited to the biodiversity of the grassland, called “the Pampas,” than industrial row-crop agriculture and feedlots.
Just 20 years ago, virtually all of Argentina’s cows still grazed freely. But as global agriculture markets boomed, it became harder for cattle farmers to resist the quick profit from soy, wheat, and corn. Hastened by a major financial crisis in 2001, many cattle ranchers sold their cows and turned over their land. Whereas grass-fed cows may take three to five years to be ready to sell, a farmer can turn around a soy or corn crop in a matter of months.
“Basically, cow production got pushed out of the Argentine Pampas,” says Ricardo Sager, director of scientific and technological development at Argentina’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA).
To keep beef prices low on less land, the Argentine government developed legislation in the late 1990s that provided subsidies for the corn-fed to feedlot cows. Both INTA and the Argentine Beef Promotion Institute touted use of the feedlot for quick, effective production. Now, much of the country’s beef — up to 80 percent by some estimates — has been through a feedlot.

 

[PhilipDT]

I used to do that, but then read that it accumulates bacteria when it's left out of the fridge to cool down. It's a pity.

I'm sure it acumultes more bacteria on the way home in your shopping bag than warming up for an hour. Don't worry about it, if you eat a steak in a nice restaurant they've probably left it out as well.

 

[rrptownley]

I used to do that, but then read that it accumulates bacteria when it's left out of the fridge to cool down. It's a pity.

That it may, but then you burn the &#$% out of that bacteria over the coals. It should be fine sitting in a clean bowl covered with cling film or grease paper.

 

[robwerwe]

I have noticed a dramatic reduction in the quality of beef in the parrillas. Gone are the times when you could go to any local parrilla and get amazing steak.
There are a few places left that are really good and not all expensive too!

Most of the time I feel like I'm chasing the dragon/cow. Its never going to be as good as that first BsAs beef hit all those years ago ;(

 

[syngirl]

I used to do that, but then read that it accumulates bacteria when it's left out of the fridge to cool down. It's a pity.

People are WAY too over panicked about bacteria. They are overly cautious with expiration dates, with time out of the fridge, even keeping one cutting board for meat and for veg -- if you have glass or marble cutting boards and are cleaning them properly after using meat on the surface, you are going to be fine. My 96 year old grandmother has managed to survive to that ripe old age without double cutting boards, and her meat growing up certainly wasn't sitting in a fridge all day.

Your steak can sit on your granite counter top (in a dish) and be perfectly fine for at least an hour out of the fridge and you are not going to get sick. Now ground beef, it's a bit of a different story -- it's made from all the off-cuts of the animal and yes, there is a higher chance of bad bacteria contained in the meat, so no I woudn't recommend letting ground beef sit and warm up -- unless you are then going to cook it until black, at which point it will be horribly dry and will have not only killed off all bacteria but all enjoyment as well.

I guess we fly by the seat of our pants in my household, but we don't own a microwave -- and I regularly forget to take something out of the freezer the night before for dinner, so a frozen piece of meat sits on the counter in a pyrex for a good couple of hours at least, in our house, if not longer. And how many times have we gotten sick? Never.

I am fully aware that after posting this probably not a single one of you will want to eat at my house, thinking we have filthy meat hygiene... Too bad you'll miss out on the 5hr slow cooked lamb roasts, bbq ribs, and full traditional asados...