Boiled Beef

[Liza]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/06/dining/_06MINI.html

I'm thinking of trying it next weekend. Any thoughts?

[tommy]

i have to admit this intrigued me when i read it.  but not enough to boil 30 dollars worth of tenderloin. ;)

actually, i'll probably try it some day.  i do, however, find it hard to believe that it's better than good ol' fashionded grilling.  i'm a sucker for that cancer causing char.

[Shiva]

A flashback from Apocalypse Now:

                     CHEF

"F#ck it ! I'm gonna get some mangoes."

Willard and Chef leave the boat :

WILLARD

" Chef ?"

               CHEF

"Yes, sir --"

               WILLARD

"How come they call you that?"

               CHEF

"Call me what, sir?"

               WILLARD

"Chef -- is that 'cause you like

mangoes an' stuff?"

               CHEF

"No, sir -- I'm a real chef, sir

-- I'm a saucier --"

               WILLARD

"A saucier --"

       

                       CHEF

"Yes, sir -- See, I come from New Orleans -- I was raised to

be a saucier.. a great saucier."

                       WILLARD

"What's a saucier?"

                       CHEF

"We specialize in sauces. Has to be a mango tree here somewhere...

I was  supposed to go to Paris, study at the  Escoffier school. Then I got

orders for my physical.  hell I joined the Navy, heard they had better food.

Cook school -- that did it."

               WILLARD

"Oh yeah, how?

               CHEF

"They lined us all up in front of a hundred yards of prime rib --

magnificent meat, beautifully  marbled.. Then they started

throwing it in these big  cauldrons, all of it -- boiling.

I looked in, an' it was turning  gray. I couldn't f#cking believe

that one. I went into radio school..."

[Liza]

So should Bittman, for the suggestion, or me, for considering it, be publicly shamed? I mean, more publicly than here on egullet.  

[Jim Dixon]

Boiled meat sounds awful and usually doesn't look all that great, but it can taste good. In Trieste there are cafes called buffets that serve boiled pork products (tongue, shoulders, cotechino, etc) that are incredibly good. They're all boiled in the same pot, and the counterman forks out a chunk of whatever you want, slices some off, and serves it with kraut and mustard.

I also thought the idea of the boiled tenderloin was intriguing, but I doubt I'd spend that much just to try it. I actually like the cheaper cuts more anyway.

Jim

[Fat Guy]

I agree with Bittman's take on this: The key is the garnishes. As he suggests, the boiled beef will be great with "a variety of flavorful garnishes like minced shallots, good mustard, chopped cornichons, coarse salt, soy sauce, even ketchup. Your guests can pick and choose among them. Personally, I favor mustard combined with shallots and cornichons, which may remind older New Yorkers of the hot-dog relish once served at Nedick's." The point is that the boiling technique gets you a beautifully rare and even piece of meat.

Sometimes whole tenderloins go on special at Stew Leonard's (a local East Coast market chain) or Costco (everywhere, pretty much). This seems a good use for them. I find them, as Bittman does, quite lacking as grilled steaks (a/k/a filet mignon or chateaubriand). So you can do this with the thick, even part, and then use the rest in various other recipes.

[russ parsons]

anyone who would diss boiled beef is a fool (how's that for my first post?). I'll make up for it. here's one of my favorite recipes (for the writing, not just the eating). it's from Pomiane. Now tell me this doesn't make you hungry:

BOEUF A LA FICELLE

To make this dish all you need is a piece of top rump steak weighing between 1 1/2 and 2 pounds, a large saucepan of well-salted water boiling on the fire and a piece of string.

Get the butcher to give you a piece of rump steak as nearly cube-shaped as possible and to tie it securely in shape.

Now fix a piece of string to the meat. Lift it up, and the meat swings slowly on its string like an incense burner. Look at your watch and take careful note of the time. Plunge the meat into the saucepan and tie the string to the handle in such a way that the meat is suspended in the water without touching the bottom. Put on the lid and wait. The water will have gone off the boil for a moment, but as the heat is intense it soon boils once more.

But, you will say, surely this is not the way to make a stew? You are quite right, but you are making boeuf a la ficelle. When you make a stew you want the meat to be edible whilst the gravy is rich and savory. For this reason you put the meat into cold water and raise the temperature very slowly so that after long, slow cooking the goodness is drawn out of the meat.

But now you are in a hurry and you want to prepare the meat so that it conserves all its juices. For this reason, you must seal it by plunging it straight into boiling, salted water. You must allow 15 minutes' cooking time for every pound of meat, so look at your watch carefully.

When the meat is almost ready, prepare a hot dish and some watercress and see that your salt mill is ready on the table. Lift the beef from the saucepan and remove the string. The meat is gray outside and not very appetising. At this moment, you may feel a little depressed. But don't worry. Take a very sharp knife and slice into the beef. Inside, it is rosy and tender and the gravy pours into your plate. No roast could be quite like this.

Give each of your guests a thick slice of meat, some watercress and a piece of French bread. A couple of turns with the salt mill and you are ready to eat.

[vengroff]

Boiled beef just plain doesn't sound right.  But I've had a couple of very good shabu shabus of paper-thin sirloin boiled tableside.  For optimal eating, add a good selection of mushrooms, greens, spring onions, and a nice soy dipping sauce.  At the end, you are left with a nice broth for noodles.

The biggest problem with shabu shabu is that many people overcook the beef.  It only takes a few seconds.  Any more and you might as well not fish it out of the water at all.

[Jinmyo]

Uh. Never thought of shabu shabu (an onamatopaeia, actually) in connection with boiled beef. And never had boiled beef that wasn't boiled for hours.

Boil a tenderloin? Too good for it, sez me. But with the right sauces... and mebbe as shabu shabu... Some use after all.

[mamster]

A similar principle is at work when you get the rare beef in pho.  Raw beef slices are added to the broth and, if you're lucky, get just barely colored.  Now I'm hungry, and I just had dinner.

[Fat Guy]

Russ (welcome, by the way), were you by any chance present at this week's big secret meeting of newspaper food editors where they all decided to run boiled beef stories on the same day? I just noticed that Edward Schneider -- one of my favorite food/travel writers whose freelance work is seen far too infrequently -- had a boiled tenderloin piece in the Wednesday Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...7-2002Mar5.html

Overheard at Costco in Yonkers:

"Yo, where's all the tenderloins?"

"Don't know, some lady says she's gonna boil 'em."

"So call the D.C. store, they've always got extras."

"Tried it, they're out too."

"Whatever."

[Steve Klc]

Russ--thanks for the Pomaine--it's so direct and clear. Did you pull that passage from a particular volume--and should someone be given the credit for translating and conveying such ease and enthusiasm?

(For eGullet members who may not already know this, Russ edits what many consider to be the overall best newspaper food section in the country--the LA Times--and is the author of "How to Read a French Fry.")

[max bittman]

i was so dubious about boiling beef tenderloin that i waited 20 years to try it. It's completely different from braising cheap cuts, and ten times as reliable as grilling. And, as i think i might have said in the piece, if you grill tenderloin long enough to brown it, you're not going to get it rare anyway. this is guaranteed. and it makes incredible sandwiches.

mb

[Fat Guy]

After years of overemphasis on grilling and crusts, wet cooking methods in general seem to be making a comeback in the better restaurants. I'm glad. For anyone who isn't in advanced stages of attention deficit disorder, wet cooking makes overcooking a thing of the past.

Sir Bittman (and welcome to you), I did have one question about your thesis: You mentioned that "unlike most cuts of meat, tenderloin does not become softer as it cooks." Isn't the phenomenon of losing tenderness during cooking common to most of the steak cuts -- basically, anything from the short loin, the rib eye, etc.? This strikes me as more of a difference between quick-cooking cuts and slow-cooking cuts (brisket, shank, whatever), and seems to presume the method as well as the meat. Actually, in my experience, just about any cut of meat will first toughen and then soften if you cook it wet for long enough, though I'd hate to attempt braising with a tenderloin just to prove it.

I like the extra Schneider step of sprinkling a little salt on each slice before serving, though I wouldn't spoon the poaching liquid around the meat on a platter. I'd just sprinkle a few grains of fleur-de-sel on each face of the half-inch slices and serve them ungarnished, with garnishes on the side, as per the Bittman instructions. Then again, I haven't tested the recipe, so I'm just speculating.

[Steve Klc]

mb--did you ever try dangling the chateaubriand from a string like a yo-yo or did you just write that off as quaint nostalgia?

[Lesley C]

I once worked with French chef Jacques Maniere (author of Cuisine a la Vapeur) and watched him steam beef tenderloin and rack of lamb. He then sprinkled them with icing sugar and browned them under the salamandre. Believe it or not, it was delicious and cooked to the perfect (sorry Steven) medium-rare. Maniere only started cooking in his mid-thirties and started life as, if I recall correctly, a chemist. He steamed absolutely everything (rabbit, game meats, vegetables, creme caramels).

[Fat Guy]

Ducasse and others who use the Cry-O-Vac and a water bath to bring meats to very exact temperatures have been known to blowtorch or otherwise create a crust after cooking. It's the exact inversion of the traditional approach of sear-the-outside-to-seal-in-the-juices (a fallacy that has been definitively disproven by McGee) and then pop it in the oven. Instead, cook the meat and then apply a crust. Interesting. Certainly on Ducasse's squab, it's highly effective. Nobody does squab as well as Ducasse. The nice thing about the Cry-O-Vac that moves this a step beyond the Bittman/Schneider approach is that you get to have a barrier between the meat and the liquid, so you'll never lose anything to the liquid -- and you can seal a marinade or seasonings or whatever right in with the meat and it will usually cook in nicely. Of course it's no longer minimalist cooking at that point.

[Steve Klc]

As an aside Steven--we talked about Herme's technique of poaching rhubarb in plastic in boiling water--from the first Herme/Dorie Greenspan book--not too long ago.

It could be minimalist in the sense that you don't have this whole pot of infused poaching liquid left over when you're done--and who doesn't have a baggie lying around?

[=Mark]

Russ, Have not heard from you since you left the FoodWine mailing list some years ago.  How've you been doing?

As to boiling meat, it only reminds me of my Ex and the outlaws in the culinary wasteland of western Pa.  I've seen my Mother Out Law take a beautiful 2 pound 2 inch thick sirloin steak, toss it in a skillet with a glob of that fake soft margarine substitute (You know, the stuff that when tossed in a hot pan does not even melt, just separates into a wad of goo and a puddle of mystery moisture...).  She then slaps a lid on it and lets it boil till it's gray.

I realize this is no comparison to carefully timing a tenderloin or roast so that it stays on the rare side, but then you'll never see anything other than overcooked out there.

To add insult to injury they've trained my sons to press all the moisture out of burgers with the spatula and to eat hotdogs with catsup...    :confused:

[Fat Guy]

Steve, I guess when you put it that way, yes, boil-in-bag is arguably the epitome of minimalist technique. You just have to make sure you're not using the crap-brand baggies that melt in direct sunlight. You don't really need Cry-O-Vac technology if you're careful and you don't need to reproduce the exact physical conditions of a vacuum seal. I suppose it would be easy enough to take the tenderloin we're talking about here and wrap it tightly several times around in plastic film before simmering. If the wrap really clings and you tie the ends like a torchon, there shouldn't be any cross-pollination. This would allow you to salt and pepper the meat prior to cooking, and to put in a little soy or another flavoring agent. Then we just unwrap it, glaze it with something that caramelizes easily, and brulee it with a blowtorch so nobody ever figures out it was boiled.

[max bittman]

Steve, I guess when you put it that way, yes, boil-in-bag is arguably the epitome of minimalist technique. You just have to make sure you're not using the crap-brand baggies that melt in direct sunlight. You don't really need Cry-O-Vac technology if you're careful and you don't need to reproduce the exact physical conditions of a vacuum seal. I suppose it would be easy enough to take the tenderloin we're talking about here and wrap it tightly several times around in plastic film before simmering. If the wrap really clings and you tie the ends like a torchon, there shouldn't be any cross-pollination. This would allow you to salt and pepper the meat prior to cooking, and to put in a little soy or another flavoring agent. Then we just unwrap it, glaze it with something that caramelizes easily, and brulee it with a blowtorch so nobody ever figures out it was boiled.

i like the plastic bag idea but i assure you you are not losing much flavor to the broth: this process is so fast, and the cooking liquid really does not do much more than 'sear' the meat.

as for the string: cute but why bother.

and the tenderness issue: I think I disagree - most sirloin is not more tender raw than it is cooked. this may be true of perfectly aged sirloin, in which the proteins are somewhat broken down before cooking, but supermarket (and most restaurant) sirloin seems to me more tender when cooked medium rare than when cooked rare.

one might consult McGee - i'm not sure about this - my comments are purely empirical in this instance.

[Fat Guy]

Interesting. For the theoretical proposition, I was relying on something Ed Behr wrote in The Art of Eating, and now that I've looked it up I see it's in issue #47 Summer 1998 page 6, which is devoted to steak:

Any cooking beyond medium-rare makes the meat significantly dry, and in fact any cooking at all only makes the meat harder and tougher.

But McGee (in On Food and Cooking at page 91) has words that seem to disagree directly with Behr's statement as applied to a high-quality steak:

. . . fat contributes to the tenderness of meat by acting as a "shortening" agent, much as it does in pastry. When it is melted during cooking, fat penetrates the tissue and helps separate fiber from fiber, lubricating the tissue and so making it easier to cut across or crush. Without much fat, otherwise tender meat becomes dry and resistant. Deposit fat is much less successful in penetrating the tissue than marbled fat, hence the value placed on good marbling in steaks.

What he says (at pages 120-121) regarding long wet cooking is:

. . . a long slow braise is the best way to tenderize meat that is tough on account of its connective tissue content. For higher grade meats with little connective tissue, however, long braising makes the meat much tougher than it would be if it were cooked quickly to a lower final temperature.

I was encouraged to believe the theoretical proposition by my experience with several dry-aged steaks I cooked a couple of years ago to varying degrees of doneness for the purpose of determining which I liked best (a friend, a food stylist, had a whole mess of them left over after a photo shoot so we were able to be wasteful). I foolishly did not taste the steak raw, which would have given me more to go on in this conversation here and now. But I did find that the rare was more tender than the medium-rare and medium.

It sounds as though there are a number of forces at play here, and perhaps it's really a question of at least two curves and where they intersect for maximum tenderness: You've probably got the steak losing moisture from the second you start cooking it, and you've got marbled fat breaking down to tenderize it. At some point the drying effect of cooking has got to overtake the moisturizing effect of the fat.

Which brings us back to why the heck a tenderloin is different from a shell/strip (which is what you mean by sirloin, I take it) in this regard. Because the nutrition sources I've looked all say there's more fat in the tenderloin. Hmm. Well, it's certainly interesting if nothing else.

In terms of losing stuff to the water, I'd guess you would lose anything you put on the steak, such as salt or pepper or a rub or marinade. For me, salt is really essential to bringing out the flavor of beef, so if I'm cooking a steak I'll salt it before, during, and after cooking. That's the kind of thing the plastic would help most with, I'd think. Again, just a guess. I'll definitely be experimenting next time Stew Leonard's puts tenderloins on sale.

[Sandra Levine]

For an evocative description of the complexities of something as simple as boiled beef, take a look at "Tafelspitz for the Hofrat," an essay in Blue Trout and Black Truffles. a compilation of articles and autobiographical essays  by Joseph Wechsberg, first published in 1953 and still available in paperback. Wechsberg was born in 1907 in Moravia.  His writing is a window on a long-lost world, where, in Vienna there was an elegant restaurant that served no fewer than twenty-four different kinds of boiled beef and patrons were known to the staff   by their favorite cuts.  Wechsberg conveys the atmosphere and attitude as well as the food of a time, place and era.

[Bux]

Boiled beef just plain doesn't sound right.

I think a lot of people would have said that before they had some form of beef cooked solely in a hot liquid, which may mean that a lot of people still do. Boeuf à la ficelle is not what most people think of when boiled beef is mentioned either and I'm glad to see Sandra Levine's mention of Vienese tafelspitz although a far different dish that the one that promted this thread.

A lot of people, myself included, would say that it goes against all reason to produce as good a boeuf à la ficelle, or even "tenderloin without string," by poaching in water vs. a flavorful broth. Intuitively, it seems that there'd be a loss of flavor from the meat to the liquid and it may be that we need to do the controlled experiment to become a believer. Bittman and Schneider seemed to have done it both ways before making the suggestion that it doesn't make a difference worth talking about. I suppose one of the reasons I am hesitant is my experience with poached pork tenderloin. We'd strain and freeze the broth after each use. We started by poaching these just below the boil and using the meat for cold summer salads, but we also noticed that it was excellent when eaten warm from the broth as well. We felt the flavor or the tenderloins improved with each reuse of the broth. Was it only from expectation?

In any event, I'm finding this thread quite interesting for the extra insight brought to a published recipe. It's a bit like reading the author's notes. Come to think of it, it's exactly like that in spots. My thanks for that.

[mamster]

I have a bit of anecdotal evidence for the idea that well-marbled meat gets more tender as it's cooked, up to a point.

A few years ago my family went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, which serves pretty good prime wet-aged beef.  My father and I sat adjacent and both ordered the rib eye.  I asked for mine medium-rare and he requested medium.  (Ruth's Chris is one of those places that has a frame-shifted standard for cooking times:  rare equals charred exterior, cold interior.  What most people consider rare, they consider medium rare, so my father was not asking for his steak to be overcooked.)

As it turned out, my father's steak had a great balance of chewiness and tenderness, and mine verged on tough.  (So I kept stealing bites.)  As I said, this is purely anecdotal, and I'd give more credence to Shaw's experiment, but I still consider my experience pretty suggestive.  Perhaps the fact that we ordered rib eye, probably the fattiest cut on the menu, had something to do with it.

Jeffrey Steingarten, in his article about wagyu, does a side-by-side taste test of rare and medium-rare samples of this highly marbled beef and likes the medium-rare better, but he doesn't ascribe this to tenderness, only taste.