Cutting to the bone for a Vegas steak of Certified Angus Beef

Playing with words is what marketing people do. To consumers, marketing words often seem meant to mystify. This is the season for it. When I’m not traveling on the road or sailing on a cruise ship, I hang out in Ohio, where I heard enough obfuscating ad words and phrases in the 2012 presidential campaign to last me for a lifetime.

Marketing words in Wooster, Ohio, were more fun this fall, as I joined chefs slicing into a beef carcass in search of what marketing people are calling a Vegas steak.

 

Chef Rory Schepisi of Vega, Texas, slices into beef rib steak in the hunt for the hidden Vegas steak (Photo by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)

The new cut from a venerable animal was introduced to the world during a Protein Innovation Summit meeting in Chicago in May.

Before we could don white coats and grab sharp knives to slice our way into a mammoth slab of beef carcass, we got a lesson in words at the headquarters for Certified Angus Beef.

Not all Angus is top quality beef

Chefs from around the country were in Wooster to learn about proper cuts and how to get the best use of beef for their money. They included Craig Deihl of (Cypress) Charleston, S.C.; Ric Rosser of Saltgrass Steakhouses; Rory Schepisi of (Boot Hill Saloon & Grill) Vega, Texas; Cindy Hutson of (Ortanique) Miami; Cedric Tovar of (Bobo & Rosemary’s) New York; and Brad Barnes of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY.

 

Cindy Hutson, Miami

Craig Deihl, Charleston, SC

Ric Rosser, Saltgrass Steakhouse

 

Marketing folks talk about Angus beef, which comes from a breed of cattle native to Scotland. When grocers say they are selling Angus beef, don’t be fooled into believing that this means a high quality of meat. You can buy good Angus, chewy old Angus and ordinary Angus. If you want the best, look for a label that says: Certified Angus Beef.

Regretfully for the steer or heifer in question, beef on the hoof will never know whether it’s been certified, because you can’t tell from the outside. No, you’ve got to be dead before you can be certified. Inspectors cut into the inside to decide whether your life was good enough to be eaten well.

Certifiers look for 10 carcass characteristics, judging toward flavorful, tender and naturally juicy beef, looking for superior marbling and maturity, telltale size (rib eyes of 10  to 16 square inches, and less than 1 inch external fat), and appearance.

I know there's a Vegas steak in there somewhere

The group of chefs who cut bone, trimmed fat and sliced into the carcass soon located a muscle of meat that some chefs say is as tasty as a New York strip steak. It resides in the area where butchers carve out chuck for roasting and grinding. Making this new cut into a steak means adding value to a beef carcass.

And excuse me, but I just used a bad word, or at least a word never heard at the headquarters for Certified Angus Beef.

We were attending, after all, a “Culinary Ideation and Trends Session.” Don’t think that we were butchering a beef carcass. Oh, no. With our leader, a meat scientist named Dr. Phil Bass, we participated in a “Beef Fabrication.”

Which, when cooked, tasted a lot better than any fabrications during the political campaign.