Word: flavorfully
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...months old, it is taken to a slaughterhouse and killed. (USDA beef is graded according to two criteria, one of which is age of the cattle. According to the website “The BBQ Report,” “Beef is best in flavor and texture when cattle is between 18 and 24 months old,” which accounts for why most cattle are slaughtered at this age.) Most slaughters are two-step. First, the bull receives a bolt of electricity or a metal rod to the forehead, which stuns it into unconsciousness. Next, its throat...
...secret. At Restaurante Baserri Maitea outside Guernica, Juan Antonio Zaldúa served us one gigantic Rubia Gallega (Galician Blonde) rib-eye chop and an even bigger, more marbled German one. Marbling is largely genetic and, as an indicator of quality, a myth; it signals juiciness but not flavor. The leaner, leggy Galician Blonde was just as tender as the fattier German. Zaldúa claims that the sum qualities of an individual animal - feed, upbringing, genetics - are more important than breed or regional origin. The best beef is raised free-range on grass, with whole cereal and hay over...
This brings us to another supermarket paradox: moist raw meat means dry, tasteless steak. Fresh is certainly not best. Beef has to be hung to lose excess water, develop complex flavor, and break down tough fibers, but for how long? Experts disagree, sometimes violently. With all due respect to Zaldúa, two weeks is not enough for full-on flavor. Nor does youth yield tenderness. After encountering a steak at Etxebarri in Axpe from an old retired dairy cow as tender as a veal calf and infinitely more flavorful, I was also ready to challenge the received wisdom that...
...Palencian steer named Makalele, as terrible as the ancient aurochs. A nearby barn housed two more of the six retired farm animals that Gordón has been collecting from all over rural Spain and Portugal for his little restaurant. After a life of flavor-building labor, they are boarded here until they become sleek and relaxed from eating hay and grain, avoiding heifers, and listening to Latin disco pop. After sending them to that big pasture in the sky, he ages the meat at 32F (0C) for between 40 and 100 days...
...Capricho's private underground dining room, the meat came practically raw and boneless to the table, where we cooked piece after piece on earthenware platters sprinkled with salt. We gorged ourselves on the deep, primordial flavor of beef as it was meant to be, full of days spent in the goodness of open fields. Somehow in the cholesterol-induced euphoria, my brain noted that the perfect steak seemed to be in the center rib section, aged for 90 days, of a 16-year-old Rubia Gallega...