Steak Expert Guesses Cheap vs Expensive Steak | Price Points | Epicurious

I'm Angie Mar and I'm your steak expert so it's really nice it's like better ribeye is actually one of my favorite cuts of meats this is one that I know intimately well the best rib eyes come from ribs one through seven it's kind of like the perfect cut on beef just because it's tender but it's still twosome enough it's got a deeper more irony flavor and that's what I really love so if you look at steak a you don't have a lot of intramuscular fat so you've got a higher lean meat ratio and there's less marbling throughout the eye this steak also looks like it was cut towards the back of the animal where there is less of a fat cap one of the really important things when I'm selecting a ribeye is actually looking at the ribeye cap right here this cut here when you're looking for a really great quality steak should have really high level of marbling typically between 30 and 40 percent fat to lean meat ratio if you actually look at B you can see in here on the ribeye cap that it is almost 50 percent so this is actually a really really nice steak this this is what I want to see what I'm looking for really good quality meat but you've got this beautiful marbling and intramuscular fat all throughout the ribeye cap as well as the eye so this leads me to believe that this one comes from a little further up towards the head of the animal you can also see this one it's got a really nice fat cap here and you know as we know fat equals flavor this is probably the steak that I would be going for and you can actually tell by the differential in color between a and B that this one is a little bit brighter red but what I'm going to say is prime it's got that deeper garnet color and this is what signifies to me that this is a prime steak prime USDA is actually the highest grade that you can get and what it is is the fat to lean meat ratio how much intermuscular fat that the animal has and there are eight grades provided by SDA the first beam prime choice select standard commercial utility cutter in canner but the three that are always used for retail and restaurant consumption are prime choice and select typically the other grades are used for burger meat they're used for fast-food chains and then even lower down honestly dog food the best part about a ribeye cut is actually after you finish the steak getting to gnaw on the bone there's a lot of really great connective tissue here and that's where the most flavor is that's like the breakfast of champions right right off the bat I'm gonna say that this one clearly has a little bit less fat because you can actually see everything's been rendered out really with the marbling this one still looks like it has a nice healthy fat cap to it I think I'm just gonna jump right in right off the bat when we cut into the steak we see that the muscle fiber is really really grainy and it just doesn't really look that juicy when I cut into option B you see that it is pink you can see that it looks way juicier way more moist and you can actually see the fat distribution from the marbling in here let's just taste them both so the thing is with this steak when I'm eating it it is dry and the fats actually very chewy a really nice fry mistake should just be this kind of like melt-in-your-mouth fat or you're not like you know feeling like you're just chewing on end all right so I'm gonna try the second steak now but you know it already looks juicier and you can see the fat in here so let's give it a taste ribeye B is definitely more juicy it is more flavorful and it's way more tender than an option a so I'm gonna say that option B is prime and option a is choice because option B it was just more juicy the mouth feels just a little bit silkier and the flavor is just a little bit more beefy I'm gonna go with option B as being more expensive steak let's see which one is which so 13 and 54 pound taste right but definitely worth the cost so in front of me I have to strip steaks and one of them is clearly Kobe beef this one we can tell right off the bat that it's clearly ko bait just because of the high fat content the marbling ratio and then this one option B is Black Angus that's what American beef is it's always Black Angus so the thing to know about Japanese beef is that all Co Bay is Wagyu beef but not all Wagyu beef is cobain voix goo refers to any of the four Japanese breeds of beef but Kobe beef specifically is very much like champagne where sparkling wine that is champagne can only be grown in the Champagne region of France it's exactly the same with Kobe beef it's one of the most rare most expensive beef in the world and that's largely because there's only about 3,000 heads of cattle every single year that will actually qualify as Kobe beef this is actually to me looks like an a5 Coe Bay which is the highest level that you can get so the Tajima cattle is actually fed grain and fodder throughout its life and you can actually see the marbling in here it's a super super light pink it's got more of a fat ratio than leaveme ratio on these cattle I love with Black Angus and this especially is a really beautiful strip steak this is a bone-in strip and it looks like it has definitely been finished on grain because you can tell it's got really beautiful marbleization I like to cut this a little bit thinner what I'm serving it for a group just because it helps but with the tenderization when you're actually eating it the times when I look Kobe beef this is something that I really want to enjoy as a carpaccio or a tartare this isn't something that you need to cook but I think we should we should sear it off anyway so here we have our two strip steaks I'm going to start with the Kobe so this steak of course really doesn't need to be cooked that much it's got such a high fat content but you can see it's just like all marbling in fat which is definitely my jam looks like butter it is super sweet super fatty and super super rich the steak is just so rich then I can only do a couple bites of it so let's get into the Black Angus so look you can see in the angus steak all of the marbling right here the intramuscular fat it's obviously not going to be as much as a Kobe beef but again you know this is a steak that I want to sit down and really eat as a state versus this it's kind of like a one or two bite thing the black angus is definitely prime and it's definitely still a little bit on the sweeter side because this is actually finished on grain but these are just two completely different products I think both of them are extremely delicious and we look at Kobe beef from once again just because there's so few cattle that actually you know get qualified as Kobe beef and because they're exporting it to the States this is obviously going to be the more expensive steak let's see how much all right so the Kobe is 130 and the Black Angus is 66 a pound so obviously the Kobe is definitely a splurge but I think that if you have the opportunity to try it just the sheer experience is an absolute must for me and again just because the richness of this steak a little bit goes a really long way in front of me I have to tomahawk rib eyes tomahawks are the exact same cut as a ribeye and when you go and get a ribeye it basically is the ribeye the ribeye cap the short plate the short rib and you have this entire layer of protective meat and fat that goes around the ribeye and this is called the deckle and I think when a lot of people think of a tomahawk steak they think of a ribeye that's attached to this really long handled bone personally I think that's kind of a waste of everybody's money what good is paying for the weight of a cleaned off bone if there's no meat attached to eat this is probably one of the most flavorful cuts of beef and really the most diverse one of these steaks is clearly aged and let's start with just talking about the dry aging process the dry aging process with beef is typically used only by restaurants and very high-end retailers process of drying is taking an entire primal cut of beef and putting it in a temperature and humidity-controlled room for a certain amount of time while the enzymes the means natural enzymes are breaking down the connective tissue and increasing tenderness the muscle fibers actually start to shed water weight typically in the dry aging process you lose between 20 and 30 percent of the steaks original water weight the molecular makeup of the beef really changes and that's gonna result in a different flavor one of the things that I love about dry aged beef is it's got a deeper richer flavor versus beef that hasn't been aged which has a lot of higher notes and it's more sweet but triage beef it's just it's funky it almost has this like blue cheese quality to it but in the best of ways and you can even tell like as I'm standing here you know and smelling it you can tell that there's just that deeper funkier and more blue cheese smell to this steak so this steak I would actually say is probably about 100 to 120 days old for me that's kind of a sweet spot I think you know for people that haven't had dry aged beef before it's really good to start at a steak around 45 to 60 days just because that's kind of like the entry level where you're going to really see the difference between a fresh piece of meat and something that has an increased flavor profile and increased tenderness we're back with our two tomahawk steaks and I am just gonna cut right into them we're gonna see how they look just even as I'm cutting this you can just see how the knife just kind of goes through it's super tender and look at all the fat look at the marbling so it's really nice cut into the second one a little bit tougher so you can already see just right after cutting through the color this one is probably going to be the fresh on aged steak because you've got all of this light pink color here the fat looks a little bit tougher it feels a little bit tougher so you can actually just see the greens through the eye of the rib here as opposed to this which has way more marbling in the eye of the rib this one smells a little bit sweeter and a little bit fresher but we're gonna just jump in and taste it it is so flavorful so tender super juicy and it just has that really beautiful blue cheese taste to it it's got that nice funk but let's try this other one too so this one's got a lot of like nice high sweet notes but if I was really looking for a great quality super funky steak I'm gonna go with hey that's my answer this is the aged one it's definitely more expensive alright let's see what the reveal says alright $42 a pound and $35 a pound obviously there is a bit of a price differential here a dry aged steak is unparalleled it's gonna be like nothing else so I definitely opted for option a but I think that at the end of the day from the low end to the high end of the spectrum there is a steak for everyone

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 698,753

Rating: 4.7504592 out of 5

Keywords: cheap vs expensive, price points, steak, cheap steak, expensive steak, cheap vs expensive steak, best steak, steak expert, steaks, cheap steaks, expensive steaks, cheap vs expensive food, steak test, steak tasting, steak taste, steak making process, steak taste test, how to make steak, taste test, steak reviews, steak comparison, steak review, steak testing, steak price, ribeye, ribeye steak, strip steak, tomahawk steak, best steaks, most expensive steak, epicurious

Id: -1qeVvWsrA8

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 16 2019

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