Choice of meat makes a big difference! Take an old bull and it will not be good. I would say a high percentage of beef from the locker I posted above would make prime grade. But it's not like a grocery store and graded. Small family run locker and most folks working there are family members, GON.
There's a movement to use meat from older cattle because it has a different flavor that some consider better. The difficulty is of course in tenderness and cooking technique. But tough cuts often have the most intense flavor - especially oxtail.
On a recent afternoon at Otoño in Highland Park, chef Teresa Montaño is rhapsodizing about an unforgettable steak in Spain’s Basque Country.
www.latimes.com
On a recent afternoon at Otoño in Highland Park, chef Teresa Montaño is rhapsodizing about an unforgettable steak in Spain’s Basque Country.
“I’d never seen anything so beautiful,” she sighs, eyes closed. “They presented it to me raw, and the meat was a deep red, with this gorgeous bright yellow fat. I picked the biggest one, and it came out perfectly cooked, with a powerful beef flavor. My heart was racing with every bite. It was one of the best meals of my entire life.”
Montaño had just experienced vaca vieja, literally “old cow,” a steak sourced from older steers at the end of their working life. Beef from mature animals — particularly animals raised on pasture by responsible farmers — offers an entirely different eating experience than the melt-in-your-mouth steaks many Americans are accustomed to.
Flavor-wise, old beef is, by virtue of its maturity, more intensely meaty, with a deeper beef taste, more flavorful fat and complex textures. The muscles in older animals, those around 5 to 9 years old, are more developed, and they tend to eat a more varied diet, including grasses that impart a yellow tinge to their fat.
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Other chefs and butchers are championing old meat as well. When Spanish chef José Andrés, familiar with vaca vieja from his home country, opened the steakhouse Bazaar Meat in Las Vegas, he made a concerted effort to reintroduce older animals to American palates. But Andrés, along with executive chef Alex Pitts, recognized the need to do so gradually.
“Compared to Wagyu or some other amazing, ridiculously expensive steak, older meat can be considered tough,” Pitts says. “But it’s also a flavor bomb. It tastes like you rubbed bouillon all over a steak.”