Beef and booze

[getonwithit]

...love a good natural hunk of raw MEAT!

isn't this the point where criss colon is supposed to make a post?

 

[m65swede]

Meat should not be soft as in North America. That is only from hormones (female btw) antibiotics and other nasty additives.

You've been badly misinformed, monaco09 . Hormones and antibiotics have little to no effect on the tenderness of beef. And tough beef is most certainly not desirable ever.

neil thomas and Andy B listed most of the factors that explain the lack of tenderness in Dominican beef. They are:

Inferior beef genetics; too many dual purpose animals
No grain used to "finish" steers
No aging of meat after slaughter
Dominican animals usually older at slaughter

All you have to do is start with some Black Angus steers, feed them rations including lots of corn, and slaughter them at 12 to 18 months of age. Aging the meat by hanging for awhile (5 days to 8 weeks) in a cold room will further tenderize beef. Hormones not necessary.

We've maintained a herd of Black Angus cattle on our family farm in Livingston County, Illinois, USA since the 1930's (My grandfather began the herd). We don't use hormones nor antibiotics in our cattle feed.

Canadian whiskey. When Dominicans refer to whiskey, they generally mean Scotch whiskey. I'm with you on this one; I would much rather have a good Canadian whiskey or even Jack Daniels or Maker's Mark rather than Scotch. But when I'm in the DR I drink rum or Presidente.

Swede

 

[keithrogan]

Tough meat can be tenderized by wrapping it in papaya leaves (or marinating it in papaya juice), in your refrigerator for several days. This is an old trick I learned from a Mexican friend.

I marinate caribou steaks in papaya juice (along with worcester, red wine, garlic, etc) for 48 hours and they come out tasting like Kobe beef instead of freshly shot, wild, tundra grown caribou... This is quite a feat since caribou is a rather tough and grainy meat, especially when it comes from a big old bull.

Papaya contains the enzyme Papain; the "new" miracle tenderizer that is starting to replace MSG. You generally see it advertised as "all natural" or "non-MSG" tenderizer. Every housewife in Southern Mexico has known how to use papaya on meat for hundreds of years. I'm surprised this isn't general knowledge in the DR.

Keith in Kodiak

 

[keithrogan]

I should add that traditionally, the leaves are generally used for tenderizing, rather than the juice. I use the juice (or sometimes just sliced papaya) because I can't get the leaves in Alaska. It works very well, but perhaps not as well as the leaves would.

Keith

 

[XanaduRanch]

But Chris & Hubby Buy Up All The Aged Beef!

We buy meat from the German Fleischerei - if you enter Sosusa from Cabarate, its on the left hand side of the road ... The butcher now knows what we like and he makes it so! So now, we get lean meat, very nice, well aged ... and if we don't mess it up in the cooking process, some of the best meat I've eaten.

Alba and I finally stopped by the other day to get some of that beef as you suggested Chris but he told us you and Richard had bought it all up! No aged meats left for us. And me being from Iowa after all this is rough!

But you guys have never messed it up in the cooking process. We'll just have to stop by your place and have you cook some more up. Yum! I'll bring the 'aged' and 'not-so-aged' wine! ::wink::