Eating a good steak is part of the folklore when you visit Buenos Aires.
how to distinguish a good portion of meat from one that is not so much?
Advised by Pablo Rivero, owner of Don Julio, one of the most famous grills in South America (and one of the most visited by tourists), we give you five tips so you don´t leave the city without having tried a good steak. Bon Appetite!
Taste versus tenderness. What do you prefer? A tasty cut? If what you want is to taste the best steak you´ve eaten in your life, you have to choose a beef bull, an animal of 400 kilos and 2 or 3 years old. A tender cut? Opt for one of veal, which will be a little tender, but won´t distill the flavor and aroma as marked and lusty as in the beef bull.
The appearance is one of the easiest ways to tell if the beef you are serving comes from a pasture-raised animal based on extensive livestock (ideally) or feed-lot or intensive farming. If you can see the grill before you bring the steak to the table you'll see very clear: the color red meat from an animal bred in the open field is a more intense and bright red, that is, the red meat which we are used to; while the feed-lot is paler and pink (more like pork). There is also a variant that are the cuts that come from mixed breeding animals (half pasture, half feed-lot), something increasingly common in the country. Here the difference is more subtle but exists: sharpen the view or ask the barbecue man.
An average baby beef weighs between 380 grams and 450 grams. That is, almost the portion per person calculated on a barbecue (half kilo per capita). So if you want to try other meat delicacies, you should share the steak and complete with sweetbreads, chitterlings, sausage or any other offal included in the menu.
Within four to six inches in height is the average measure of a baby beef. In some grills it can be served divided in the middle with butterfly format. Either way, it's delicious.
In the case of cuts that come with bone (short ribs, rib eye steak), a good way to tell if it´s an animal feed-lot or pasture is that in the former case the bones are smaller and white with more rounded shapes.
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