Beef Tips vs Stew Meat: What Is the Difference?

Two bags of cubed beef on the same shelf, similar price, completely different instructions. This one is worth getting right because the failure mode is total.

Beef tips

Tips are the trimmings from tender cuts: the tapered ends of a tenderloin, offcuts from sirloin and strip. They are already tender, which means they want high heat and a very short time in the pan. Treat them like small steaks.

Stew meat

Stew meat is tough cuts cubed, usually chuck or round. It is full of connective tissue, which is a liability for twenty minutes and an asset after three hours. It wants low, slow, moist heat so that collagen can turn to gelatin.

“Well, growing a great carrot has an awful lot that goes into it. And so, you know, specialization just allows you to get really good at parts of things, especially on a small scale.”

Gray Shipley

What goes wrong

• Stew meat cooked fast is rubber. The connective tissue never gets the chance to break down.
• Beef tips cooked slow fall apart into dry, stringy threads. There was no collagen to melt, so the long cook just drives the moisture out.
• Both failures look like you bought bad beef. Neither is.

That second failure is the same mechanism as a dry roast, and it catches people constantly.

How to tell them apart

Stew meat is usually larger cubes, visibly seamed with silver connective tissue, and darker. Tips are smaller, cleaner and leaner. If the package does not say and you cannot tell, ask. We will tell you which cut it came off.

“And so the local food system, one, allows you to know directly where your food's coming from. And two, it's consistently raised and handled and invested in and cared for more responsibly than the industrial system ever could.”

Gray Shipley

“Yeah, no shortcuts just means, you know, it's a mindset, the mindset of looking for a shortcut. You know, it doesn't mean that we don't look for improvement. It doesn't mean we don't look for ways to do things better.”

Gray Shipley