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Turning to Cube Steak, and Back to Childhood (Austerity cooking)
NY Times ^ | Published: March 3, 2009 | By KIM SEVERSON

Posted on 03/06/2009 3:44:52 PM PST by dennisw

The cube steak is suddenly one of the hottest cuts of beef in the country, according to figures from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The amount of cube steak sold during the last quarter of 2008 was up by almost 10 percent over the same period a year earlier. The overall amount of beef sold went up only 3 percent.

It doesn’t take a wizard to figure out that the economy’s swan dive has much to do with the cube steak’s resurgence. But even before kitchen budgets became tight, the cube steak had its fan base.

Through good times and bad, it has remained a wallflower among meat cuts. Old-fashioned and a little mysterious, it’s a steak without pretension, or maybe a hamburger with humble aspirations.

But tell people you’re on a little cube-steak jag, and the reactions you get — either pro or con — are surprisingly powerful considering we’re talking about a cutlet.

“Oh, I just really love them,” gushed Kathy Sullivan, 66. A Rhode Island resident, she has warm memories of cube steaks served alongside her father’s homemade piccalilli relish. Later, she pan-fried them for her own children. But only good ones, she said, made from slices of sirloin or round steak she had the butcher cube by hand.

Susan Schultz, who lives in Fort Atkinson, Wis., fondly described the slightly pink centers of cube steak sautéed in nothing more than butter and seasoned with a little salt and pepper.

“It was kind of an upgraded hamburger if you couldn’t afford steak,” said Mrs. Schultz, who raised two children on pan-fried cube steaks. “I’m going to have to have one now.”

Although pounding tough pieces of beef to make them more tender has a long history cube steak became an inexpensive butcher shop staple.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


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To: phormer phrog phlyer

I usually make country fried steak with them, I’m going to try grilling them.


21 posted on 03/06/2009 4:07:09 PM PST by panthermom
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To: dennisw

I bought one of these bad boys on clearance a while back (practically stole it, but that’s another post): http://www.sausagesource.com/catalog/ce-mt4010.html

This machine will definitely do the job; it’d probably tenderize a brick.


22 posted on 03/06/2009 4:16:32 PM PST by WorkingClassFilth (Actually, it all started back in Mayberry. Helen Crump was a traveler and Floyd, well, you know...)
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To: dennisw

I’d rather eat beans and rice.


23 posted on 03/06/2009 4:21:24 PM PST by Tax-chick ("There are more enjoyable ways of going to Hell." ~ St. Bernard)
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To: Paul Heinzman
What, actually, is a cube steak?
24 posted on 03/06/2009 4:38:18 PM PST by ottbmare (Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Obama!)
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To: dennisw

I remember that term. You could cook them in a minute and they were full of flavor. You could also slow cook them in a sauce, such as a tomato and onion sauce or creme of mushroom soup for hours until they were fork tender.

Problem with these “discoveries” of versatile and highly flavorful cuts of meat, which are always the tougher cuts, is that they become popular and the law of supply and demand drive the price up.

A couple of examples are brisket and, most especially flank steak. When so many people discovered how good brisket was when cooked low and slow, or how great marinated strips of flank steak were in fajita’s, the price went up.

These days, you’re lucky if you can find brisket for under $3 a pound (and that’s for a packer’s cut), and flank steak for under $5 a pound.


25 posted on 03/06/2009 4:41:03 PM PST by Paul Heinzman (Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive. --William F. Buckley Jr)
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To: ottbmare

Thin round steak beat all to hell with a bumpy hammer. Great stuff. Getting ready to fry up a batch with onions and mushrooms this weekend.


26 posted on 03/06/2009 4:41:41 PM PST by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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To: MHGinTN

So it doesn’t refer to the particular cut of beef but the fact that it’s been hammered?


27 posted on 03/06/2009 4:44:35 PM PST by Yardstick
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To: WorkingClassFilth

Alton Brown showed that very model on ‘Good Eats’ a few months back!


28 posted on 03/06/2009 4:45:15 PM PST by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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To: dennisw
The amount of cube steak sold during the last quarter of 2008 was up by almost 10 percent over the same period a year earlier.

Does that even make sense? How can one cut of meat rise or fall relative to the others? Either they sell it, or they had to throw it away, right? Can cube steaks be made from the same meat that can be used for some other purpose?

29 posted on 03/06/2009 4:45:26 PM PST by krb (Obama is a miserable failure.)
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To: Yardstick

Actually, there are ‘tines’ which make punch cuts int he senews of the meat, and that tenderizes toughter cuts. MArinated in Dale’s Steak Sauce, they’re absolutely yummy!


30 posted on 03/06/2009 4:46:39 PM PST by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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To: Paul Heinzman
Problem with these “discoveries” of versatile and highly flavorful cuts of meat, which are always the tougher cuts, is that they become popular and the law of supply and demand drive the price up.

Also happed to ribs. Lets face it. Ribs are 60-70% bone by weight. They used to be almost given away before the BBQ craze

31 posted on 03/06/2009 4:57:28 PM PST by dennisw (Archimedes--- Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum to place it, and I shall move the Earth)
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To: dennisw

MMMMMMMM.

Chicken fried steak.

Mashed potatoes & Gravy.

Okra on the side.

Sweet tea.

Makes good pepper steak too.


32 posted on 03/06/2009 4:57:32 PM PST by Califreak (1/20/13-Sunrise in America)
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To: dennisw

after the decline in take-home pay my next cut of meat will
be tube steak.


33 posted on 03/06/2009 4:58:48 PM PST by rahbert
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To: dennisw

I had some awful tough cube steak in my younger years.


34 posted on 03/06/2009 4:58:51 PM PST by Retired Chemist
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To: WorkingClassFilth

Did you get that meat cuber for tenderizing game? That cuber will be in demand if TSHTF


35 posted on 03/06/2009 4:59:13 PM PST by dennisw (Archimedes--- Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum to place it, and I shall move the Earth)
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To: dennisw
Isn't cube steak what they use for chicken fried steak? If so, I like it.

Lately I've been digging on some canned fish.
36 posted on 03/06/2009 4:59:30 PM PST by mysterio
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To: MHGinTN

It’s made in Czechoslovakia or someplace in the former Eastern Bloc. I got mine at Gander Mountain just after last fall’s deer season. Paid about $70.00 because it was in a different box than the new packaged line they were selling at $240.00. Shove a baseball mitt through that sucker and you’ll get filet minon.


37 posted on 03/06/2009 5:03:04 PM PST by WorkingClassFilth (Actually, it all started back in Mayberry. Helen Crump was a traveler and Floyd, well, you know...)
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To: mysterio
Isn't cube steak what they use for chicken fried steak? If so, I like it.

I believe it's one of a few candidates for chicken fried steak

Lately I've been digging on some canned fish.

Wild pink Alaskan salmon is the bargain of the century at $2/15oz can. I pour a little bit of soy sauce on and some raw onion and eat w/ some good bread. It also likes mustard

38 posted on 03/06/2009 5:03:28 PM PST by dennisw (Archimedes--- Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum to place it, and I shall move the Earth)
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To: Yardstick

Usually round steak, cut about 1/4 thick (or even thinner) and tenderized before cooking.

I dredge it in a flour (or flour and cornmeal), salt and pepper mixture, pan fry it, and then use the rest of the flour mixture for a white gravy (Texas style) or brown gravy (southern style).

Serve it and the gravy with mashed potatoes or rice, and you’ll be full for not a whole lot of money. (Tell your rich friends its a Barvarian schnitzel, serve it with potato dumplings for that presentation).


39 posted on 03/06/2009 5:04:30 PM PST by PAR35
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To: phormer phrog phlyer

Sounds great.

I worked a spell as a manager for Ingles Markets which is a grocery chain in the south. Great company. The machine that they use to make cube steak is a horrifying device without the hand guard in place. We had one at the restaurant I worked at in Byesville many years earlier, but at the restaurant the hand guard was always in place.

Meat cutters are all lunatics. We had one by the name of Big John. He told me that he never met a cutter that wasn’t an alcoholic, a womanizer or a pill-popper. He had a theory as to why this was: It’s from breathing the vapor from the animal blood.

We had two journeyman cutters and one apprentice. Big John and Randy were both drinkers, and the apprentice was a womanizer who was taking steroids.

Funny thing about the apprentice. He was juicing, but he didn’t work out. He kind of looked like the Michelin Tire mascot. He had these great big muscles that never flexed, just flaccid bulk.

My point is, in a real supermarket—one that still has butchers—you’ve got slicers, cube steak machines, and this huge band-saw. The knives would frighten off Mongol hordes. And these guys throw away any safety equipment that comes with these things on day one.

When the cutters weren’t there in the evenings, occasionally someone would ask me to cube a round or sirloin. I didn’t mind that so much. They’d ask me to cut up a sirloin tip, and I’d do a serviceable job with these 14” sabers they used.

But once I had to slice a country ham on that band-saw. What did I use for a hand-guard? One of those styrofoam trays that the meat is packaged in.

I came away with all my fingers, and an enormous respect for those alcoholic, pill-popping, womanizing meat cutters out there.


40 posted on 03/06/2009 5:07:07 PM PST by Paul Heinzman (Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive. --William F. Buckley Jr)
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