Utopia Talk / Politics / Kobe and TC

williamthebastard Member	Wed Aug 25 12:09:15 Ok, so I just did 300gr of Kobe (not Kobee the cheap Chinese catfood brand) at eur 380 kg. So this one portion cost me 115 euro to cook up at home :p Ive done various classes of wagyu etc., but they havent really impressed compared to the 60 days matured black angus I usually do at half the price. Theyre good, but not amazing. I'll admit, hands down, however, that this kobe, though ridiculously priced, is hands down the most tender beef Ive ever eaten. Anyone else done kobe (not the catfood brand, TC)?
Paramount Member	Wed Aug 25 15:01:31 I have eaten it at a restaurant one time. It was good.
Dukhat Member	Wed Aug 25 23:01:43 Too much dilution of the brand. AMerican Kobe is not nearly as good.
smart dude Member	Thu Aug 26 00:14:32 Had it in Kobe.
williamthebastard Member	Thu Aug 26 01:48:05 Yeah but thats why american kobe isnt allowe to be called kobe, its wagyu
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Aug 26 02:27:40 I have thought about this, but I can't get over the feeling that we have taken the cultivation of meat too far! And besides I am trying to pull myself in the other direction, more game meat and grass fed organic stuff. Will have to try it at least once.
Habebe Member	Thu Aug 26 03:09:52 I have also eaten at a restaurant one time, it was good. I never ate a dead basketball player though, I mean mabey just a little.
Habebe Member	Thu Aug 26 03:12:54 Am I the only one who envisions TC as the Japanese kid from.the goonies? Voice and all.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Aug 26 03:17:08 I imagine TC as a small and angry chinese man speaking broken english. That guy in hang over comes to mind.
williamthebastard Member	Thu Aug 26 05:35:57 If you're eating genuine kobe beef, its about as tender as, say, tuna, or a ripe but firm banana
TheChildren Member	Thu Aug 26 06:55:28 tc wasnt aware kobe was known worldwide 4 being muricas famous special delicacy. oh wait i just googled it, it called kobe not becoz it named after some basketballer, but becoz it comes from japan... rofl owned
williamthebastard Member	Thu Aug 26 12:54:08 Doing it today too, wasnt quite satisfied with my cooking last night. Nailed it tonight: https://ibb.co/Y2SHqkD
williamthebastard Member	Thu Aug 26 12:54:29 http://ibb.co/Y2SHqkD
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Aug 26 13:43:35 Are you suppose to cook it in a pan or can you grill it on fire as well?
williamthebastard Member	Thu Aug 26 14:06:36 The best way, as with all steaks, is to fry it up on all sides in the pan on high heat and finish off on low heat in the oven. My oven is currently over the kitchen appliances rainbow. Here's the conundrum: You want to sear the outsides because they should be crispy and attractive. At the same time, you want as little of that heat to penetrate the meat as possible. On top of that, with kobe meat you need to fry the meat for around 10 mins at very low heat until all the fat marbling has melted while still keeping it rare. This is all fine and dandy if youve got a 1" steak but unless youre prepared to buy at least 600gr, you're looking at roughly 1.2cm steaks, so the margins of error are fine. The way I did this today was to stand the steak up on its fatty back end on medium high for about 7 minutes until that started to crisp up while all the meat remained raw. Although the meat didnt change colour, the fat pockets did start to melt, which is great. Then I removed it to a cool pan and fried it in lots of butter on the very lowest heat, remving it every ten seconds and basting in butter all the time. I did that for about 6 mins at which point I deduced the steak was ready and removed it to a plate again. Now to finish of the crispy outsides. Get your hot plate and pan absolutely smoking. Now, roughly 30 to 45 seconds each side. You want to blacken it as much as possible while raising the internal heat as little as possible. Let rest 5 mins. Enjoy. P.s. Dont do various wagyus. Theyre just overpriced good/very good steaks. Kobe is something different.
williamthebastard Member	Thu Aug 26 14:07:41 You could do it on a fire but would be hard to get perfect. Its good enough to be eaten raw so if I did it over a fire I'd blacken it just enough and not even bother to try to get it medium-rare
williamthebastard Member	Thu Aug 26 14:38:07 TC, how would you cook Kobee?
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Aug 26 14:39:56 Holy shit, how far down the meat rabbit hole are you? Fatty stuff on a grill, that will get you flames! You can blacken it pretty good. You know there are these pellet grills http://www.traeger.com/ Will given you an even eat, you can even set the temperature. I don't like gas, it just isn't the same taste, but this is really perfect! Even connect to Wifi You can start the grill from work :) Definitely worth a shot!
williamthebastard Member	Thu Aug 26 14:58:36 Just doing that shit roughly at basic Gordon Ramsay level. The difference between guys like him and average chefs are attention he pays to detail. You wont get it as good if youre not as careful. And it each plate costs 100 euro to fry up and is sensational if you get it just right and ruined if you dont, well, the choice is yours
williamthebastard Member	Thu Aug 26 15:02:11 Its not the flames you want, its the heat, to evaporate moisture from the outer layers, thus crisping them up. Conversely, the slower and lower heat you fry the actual rest of the meat on, the more tender it will be (thus italian nonnas who cook meat stews overnight etc). So you have to use techniques to combine that
smart dude Member	Fri Aug 27 00:33:33 WTB obviously became insufferable to his IRL acquaintances and is coming here to brag about his grill and his steak because everyone else is sick of it.
TheChildren Member	Fri Aug 27 02:12:08 tc wuldnt know. i admit i never have eaten it be4. so what. it just beef.
Seb Member	Fri Aug 27 03:53:02 WtB: "The best way, as with all steaks, is to fry it up on all sides in the pan on high heat and finish off on low heat in the oven. My oven is currently over the kitchen appliances rainbow." Some may regard this as cheating, but since I started using sous-vide (in beef dripping and salt) and finishing it off with a quick sear in a cast iron skillet, I've basically discovered it is so trivially easy to make perfect steak at home, I rarely order it in restaurants anymore*. It lets you get absolutely perfect control over the centre, and crispy outside. I suspect however that would not be the way to go for Kobe though - the higher fat content means you would need to sous-vide for a long time to get the fat to render. *Anywhere mid range is going to be overpriced and disappointing - anywhere at the upper end has more interesting options, though tbf I've not been to a top notch steak restaurant since I started.
Seb Member	Fri Aug 27 03:56:58 The other thing you can do to really get a high gradient between crispy fat/skin and super tender and rare interior is use a kitchen blow torch. A lot of high end restaurants cheat and use sous-vide, sear and blow torch. You can tell if when you cut into a thick steak and it is uniform all the way through, except for a thin layer a few mm thick on the edge. Physically, the only way to achieve that with a thick steak is a sous-vide: heat diffusion always leaves a gradient, so if it's really uniformly cooked from a few mm in to the centre, and an inch thick, then it's been kept at a uniformly low (c 50 degrees) temperature for long enough time for the whole slab to equilibrate. It's pretty much impossible to do that in an oven or skillet.
Seb Member	Fri Aug 27 03:58:01 Also, once you have sous-vided the steak, you can stick the vac bag in a freezer, defrost it, and it's no different from if you just cooked it. So it's really easy from a stock control point of view for restaurants.
williamthebastard Member	Fri Aug 27 04:08:41 Indeed, I would sear with a torch if I had one. I was going to sous-vide, I usually do a variant on that, I actually nipped down to the local chemist to get a thermometer but it turned out to only show "Low - 37C - Hi". Thats why I instead elected to fry it at an extremely low temp. One disadvantage to the sous-vide solution here is that you want to be able to pour every single drop melted fat over the meat when you serve it and you'll lose some in the sous vide process.
williamthebastard Member	Fri Aug 27 04:12:03 "the higher fat content means you would need to sous-vide for a long time to get the fat to render. " No, see, the fat here is much softer and melts very quickly. Sous vide probably works fine here to achieve an even cook, but probably no more than half an hour (this piece was about 1.2 cm). Another positive difference is that the meat hardly shrinks.
Seb Member	Fri Aug 27 04:29:12 WtB: Fucking around with a pan of water and a thermometer is a nightmare. Get a precision sous vide machine - they are c. £100 ish. http://www...-w7jte9MGoCkIAqZhoCQ1gQAvD_BwE You just hook it over the side of a pan full of water, set the temperature to within a half degree and it takes care of the rest. You can get it wifi enabled and controlled via an app too. Vaccum bag kit costs another £30 with enough bags to keep you going for years. "One disadvantage to the sous-vide solution here is that you want to be able to pour every single drop melted fat over the meat when you serve it and you'll lose some in the sous vide process." That is true, the liquid in the bag will be too salty to use. 1.2cm is thin, I must say I have found that sous viding thin steaks doesn't work so well - the first time I used a thinner cut it curled when I put it in the skillet and it was more "well done" than if I had simply seared it in a pan in the first place. Since then I've only gone for thick cuts. But I've just got myself a Kamado, so at some point when I've managed to heft the thing into it's bench and fired it up, I am going to have a go at sous-viding a chunk of sirloin, followed by a charcoal flame grill. I reckon that will get me a nice crispy fat layer on the outside with a juicy rare centre.
Seb Member	Fri Aug 27 04:30:22 The other great thing about the precision machine, you can make loads of other stuff. Once you've sous-vided prawns, you will never go back to frying them. Just amazing. Also makes it trivial to make béarnaise/hollandaise etc. Best kitchen gadget I ever bought.
williamthebastard Member	Fri Aug 27 04:44:06 Im moving country soon so dont want to get bogged down with equipment, but for years Ive been wrapping meat up tightly and dumping in 56/58 C water, it works fine
williamthebastard Member	Fri Aug 27 04:45:14 "1.2cm is thin, I must say I have found that sous viding thin steaks doesn't work so well - the first time I used a thinner cut it curled when I put it in the skillet and it was more "well done" than if I had simply seared it in a pan in the first place. Since then I've only gone for thick cuts." This was the whole problem. To get a thick slice I would have had to order about 600 gr.
williamthebastard Member	Fri Aug 27 04:53:48 Luckily, as it turns out, kobe hardly shrinks in the pan.
williamthebastard Member	Fri Aug 27 05:03:22 That Kamado thing looks interesting. Once Ive moved Im going to look into several kitchen utensils Im interested in.
williamthebastard Member	Fri Aug 27 05:08:08 Have you learned to know when the meat is ready by touch? If not, dead easy, just fry up a few small pieces and feel them, the feel is easy to remember. You probably know that already
Seb Member	Fri Aug 27 08:42:55 "This was the whole problem. To get a thick slice I would have had to order about 600 gr." Yeah, that's a bit pricey! About readiness - I use the thumb and finger approach that a Argentinian chef taught me when I was living in Costa Rica https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/the_finger_test_to_check_the_doneness_of_meat/ It seems to work well - but when I'm using the sous-vide it's not an issue: just take it out and sear it for a minute on each side in a really hot cast iron skillet.
Cloud Strife Member	Wed Sep 01 04:33:47 I'm not too keen on insanely marbled beef, but IMO Argentina still has the best beef in the world, and they have the same high marbling cuts as the rest of the world. Also, how can grown men not cook steak by sight? 'The other thing you can do to really get a high gradient between crispy fat/skin and super tender and rare interior is use a kitchen blow torch. ' This is probably the most aesthetically pleasing way, providing the desired experience for most people looking for very rare meat, although I see no issue with a slight gradient by standard grilling. The middle doesn't really need to be cooked anyway, only raised to a reasonably warm temperature.
Seb Member	Wed Sep 01 06:00:36 CS: Argentinian steak is - I think - probably the best. "Also, how can grown men not cook steak by sight?" Depending on the cut, quality of the meat, and the grill you have to hand the results are variable. I can't get the same results out of my hob and griddle pan that I can on the sous vide. I mean it's good - steak is hard to fuck up - just not the perfection I get now. RE the gradient - I agree, the aesthetics are irrelevant. It's just an indicator of how it was actually cooked. I've started noticing that a lot of restaurants are actually sous-viding their steaks and searing them after. Normally the ones you pay more to eat at too. Some people though like fairly thin cut steaks like say, sirloin, (or rib eye) with the fat crisped but the centre medium rare to rare - which really can only be done with focused and directed heat - the time it takes for the fat to render normally would leave the middle much more well done. I suspect that is also often achieved not using the grill. It is more my rebuttal for grill nerds that consider it cheating. From my point of view, it is the eating experience that matters.
williamthebastard Member	Wed Sep 01 12:40:16 I would actually preferably subscribe to the torch and sous vide method in most cases. The gradient isnt a huge issue but it is a portion of the meat that is very overdone.
williamthebastard Member	Wed Sep 01 12:41:22 I would say that sous vide is even more efficient when it comes to tenderizing joints that are tough but full of flavour.
Seb Member	Wed Sep 01 13:55:45 Best thing to sous-vide though - prawns. My god, so much better when sous-vided. Best kitchen gadget I ever bought.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Sep 01 14:13:33 So, no one here is going vegan anytime soon :)
williamthebastard Member	Thu Sep 02 07:07:37 Ill have to try prawns then. Im actually eating black eye as we speak, bought from a fisherman who fumed over the UK for 10 mins lol...he said its the only time he's ever supported the Italian football team. He says he understands problems with huge fishing fleets but he's just one little guy with a little boat etc etc etc. Btw, France is great at meat, this is my local supermarket: https://ibb.co/YX9vPRy
williamthebastard Member	Thu Sep 02 07:09:08 http://ibb.co/YX9vPRy
Seb Member	Thu Sep 02 07:25:38 WtB: Much as I dislike brexit, the EU screwed us on fishing by non tariff barriers so I'm not sure why we let you have any quota.
Cloud Strife Member	Thu Sep 02 09:58:11 The EU defends its interests against mosquito states. Look at this poor bastard. He's willing to live in France just to be a part of a relevant economic bloc.
williamthebastard Member	Sat Sep 04 07:15:00 Otoh, I just got this at my supermarket which has a spectacular meat section at literally 1/10th the price of the aforementioned Kobe. Kobe is, of course, in its own unique class, but I eat this 40 day matured one quite often and its as good as the couple of wagyus Ive tried. If you compare the marbling to the australian wagyu chart, its in the top class http://ibb.co/cxBc0xS http://sagcdn.azureedge.net/Images/TopicImages/australian-wagyu-grades.jpg
	show deleted posts

Your Name:
Your Password:
Your Message: