Back to Meat

Some weeks ago I posted a recipe for marinated tri-tip steaks, and promised that the next time we made the dish, I'd do a better explanation of how to cut the tri-tip into steaks.

The red arrow is the point where you want to begin slicing.

Working in cuts of about an inch or so wide, you work back from that point, which allows steaks cut against the grain of the muscle -- the first step in tenderizing a cheap cut of meat.

Kind of an aside from the topic, it's not a budget-breaker to get a good knife. I bought a Victorinox 6-inch chef's knife, perfect for my rather arthritic little hand, and I use the bejabbers out of it. Worth every penny, and it just glides through the meat.

There -- that's the first cut of steak. Tiny, but that's okay. They get bigger. You can kind of see the grain of the meat running from bottom right to top left at a 45 degree angle.

As the strips get wider, you just cut them in half when you're done with each strip. Don't peel that fat off (except for the fibrous top layer, which looks like skin and is nasty) because the marinade turns the fat into a seasoning bomb.

The part of this roast that had me a bit peeved was the area where you can see the grain, where the butcher had trimmed the fat away. Dangit, when I buy an "untrimmed tri-tip" I want my fatty goodies.

So there you have them, lovely little fat-marbled steaks that will soak in that marinade and make your eyes roll up in your head as you eat them, beautifully caramelized on your charcoal grill.

I'm still loving turkey leftovers from Christmas dinner, but just looking at these pictures again makes me want to rummage in the freezer for a tri-tip. Maybe for New Year's ... can I substitute a tri-tip for pork and sauerkraut and still have New Year Luck?

In other meat news, Bernie rolled out his LEM sausage stuffer (his Christmas present) yesterday and made up a batch of his excellent sausage mixture. It went smoothly and easily, and we ended up with nine pounds of gorgeous, delicious sausage.

Looks just like Peachey's Farmers' Market back in Amish country in Pennsylvania in the early 80s. Yum.