A Better Way to Buy Beef Gifts and Stock the Freezer
Most people place two orders in December: one for other people and one, a fortnight later and slightly panicked, for themselves.
Cuts and Comparisons
Beef Cuts Explained: A Complete Guide
There are forty or fifty cuts on a beef and most people can name six. You do not need to memorize the rest.
Gifts and Giving
Beef Subscriptions as a Gift: What Arrives, and When
A subscription is the one gift that keeps introducing itself. It also asks more of the person receiving it than a single box does, so it is worth being honest about who it suits before you send one.
Cuts and Comparisons
Beef Tenderloin vs Filet Mignon: What Is the Difference?
This is a naming question rather than a beef question, and it has a clean answer. The tenderloin is a long muscle that runs along the spine. Filet mignon is a steak cut from it.
Cuts and Comparisons
Best Beef Cuts for Slow Cooking
Slow cooking is not a way of rescuing cheap beef. It is the correct method for the cuts that did the most work, and it is where the best flavor on the animal lives.
Cuts and Comparisons
Best Beef Cuts for Smoking
Smoking rewards exactly the cuts that a hot pan ruins. Hours of low heat and smoke do something no other method does, and the cuts that suit it are the ones that worked hardest.
Cuts and Comparisons
Best Beef Cuts for Steak Sandwiches
A steak sandwich fails in one of two ways: the beef pulls out of the bread in a single strip, or it is so lean it tastes of nothing.
Cuts and Comparisons
Best Beef Cuts for Stir-Fry
A stir-fry cooks in about ninety seconds, which rules out anything that needs time and makes the knife more important than the cut. Thin, across the grain, and a pan hotter than feels sensible.
Cuts and Comparisons
Best Beef Cuts for Tacos
Tacos are forgiving, which is why they are the dish most people cook on a Tuesday. The cut you choose decides how long it takes and almost nothing else, so pick by the time you actually have.
Gifts and Giving
Best Beef Gifts
The best beef gift is the one that gets eaten. That sounds obvious until you look at what most gifts do, which is sit somewhere waiting to be dealt with.
Cuts and Comparisons
Best Cuts of Beef for Grilling
A grill is hot, uneven and hard to take back. That favors cuts with fat to spare and penalizes lean ones. Here is what to put over the fire depending on whether you are cooking for two or for twenty.
Gifts and Giving
Best Gifts for Meat Lovers
Buying for someone who knows food is harder than buying for someone who does not, because the obvious gifts are things they already have opinions about. The way through is not to spend more.
Gifts and Giving
Best Gifts for People Who Love to Grill
Everyone who grills has been given a spatula set.
Gifts and Giving
Best Meat Gift Boxes
A meat gift box is a good gift and an easy one to oversize. The two things that decide whether it lands are what is in it and whether the person has anywhere to put it.
Cuts and Comparisons
Best Steak Cuts for Pan-Searing
A pan is the most controllable heat most people have and the most limited. It is small, it is flat, and it loses temperature the moment something cold lands on it.
Gifts and Giving
Best Steak Gift Boxes
A steak box is an easy gift to send and a surprisingly easy one to get wrong, because the instinct is to send the most expensive thing in the shop.
Cuts and Comparisons
Brisket vs Chuck Roast: Which Should You Cook?
Brisket has the reputation and chuck has the better odds. Both are hard-working muscles that reward hours of low heat, and one of them will forgive you if you get distracted.
Cooking Techniques
Can You Cook Steak From Frozen?
We ship frozen, so this question comes up a lot.
Cuts and Comparisons
Chuck Roast vs Pot Roast: What Is the Difference?
This is one of the most common points of confusion at a meat counter and it clears up in a sentence. Chuck roast is a cut of beef. Pot roast is what you do to it.
Ground Beef and Everyday Cooking
Classic Beef Chili
Chili is forgiving in every way except one: it punishes a rushed start. Brown the beef properly, take your time with the base, and the rest is waiting.
