Wagyu, that is.
A couple of years or so ago, my wife and I found ourselves at a Japanese steakhouse. The menu included a Kobe rib-eye for some ridiculously high price, somewhere near the $100.00 mark. For just 8 ounces. It may have been 10, I don’t remember. Still crazy expensive though. I wasn’t really all that interested, but, for some reason, my wife, who never eats red meat, wanted me to try it. Ok darling, if it will make you happy. Sigh.
It was Kobe beef imported from Japan, or so they claimed. They showed me the raw steak before it was cooked, the thing has so much fat in it that it was almost completely white. As in practically no red.
I’d love to report that it was the best steak I ever had, and for that price, it should have been. I love eating high fat meats and I have long been convinced that the supposed perils of animal fat are non-existent. And I love rib-eyes. So what could be better than the highest fattiest rib-eye you’ve ever set eyes on?
Well, I guess there’s such a thing as too much fat. Eating that steak, after just a few bites, felt more like drinking liquid bacon fat than eating a steak. I’ve never eaten a stick of butter, but that steak tasted kinda the way I would imagine eating a stick of butter would taste.
Maybe it was they way they prepared it? It was a thinly sliced thing, cooked on the big flat “grill” of the type you see in Japanese steakhouses. I dunno, but I suspect that is just how Kobe beef tastes.
Now, according to wikipedia, Kobe “refers to cuts of beef from the black Tajima-ushi breed of Wagyu cattle, raised according to strict tradition in Hy?go Prefecture, Japan.” Again, according to Wikipedia, Waguy “refers to several breeds of cattle genetically predisposed to intense marbling and to producing a high percentage of oleaginous unsaturated fat.” (Ah, that irrational fear of saturated fat is everywhere, ain’t it?)
Jump ahead to just a week or two ago. We are in an Asian market, and I come across a ribeye steak labeled as “Wagyu.” It had a lot of fat but less than I remember seeing in the one described above. It was $30.00 for a ten ounce steak. I decide to buy it.
Now this is not to be confused with true Kobe beef, or any other type of Wagyu beef raised in Japan (Kobe’s not the only one, just the most famous one). For one thing I’m pretty sure it was raised in the US. Apparently (and I just discovered this today), people have imported the Wagyu breed into the US and bred it with Angus cattle. This was done to make a cow that will survive in the US climate, and to make steaks from that cow that were less “white” and more “red.” Like the steak I brought home from the Asian market. This sort of steak supposedly has more appeal to the American palate.
So, you’ve got this fairly expensive piece of meat in your hands, you don’t want to mess it up, do you? Ah-ha, this is a job for the Sous Vide Supreme! It was a relatively thin steak and I didn’t want to risk ruining it by leaving it on the grill a minute or two too long. Not an issue with the sous-vide technique, you cook it to the perfect temperature, sear it, and voila: steak perfection. Every time. Still amazes me.
Here’s the steak, with salt and pepper and in the bag. I didn’t add any olive oil, like I normally would for a steak. I figured this guy already has enough fat.
I set the controls to 120 degrees, and dropped ‘er in. I meant to only cook it for about 45 minutes, but ended up cooking it for about 90. No worries.
When I took it out of the bag, it had the weirdest texture I’ve ever found in something I was about to put in my mouth. Felt more like jello than a piece of meat. I was really surprised that it didn’t fall apart. Very strange stuff.
Here it is, in the pan, with just a little bit of butter.
And here it is, a few bites in.
Sorry for the sloppy fuzzy photography. I was hungry!
And did I like it? Well.. sort of… It wasn’t as bad as the first one I had tried at the steakhouse, but it was very much leaning in that direction. The direction of just too much fat and not much else going for it in the way of flavor. Given a choice between this steak and a grass-fed, sous-vide hangar steak, I would go for the hangar steak any day.
Which reminds me, the Asian Market did have something in the Wagyu section labeled “flap” steak, which is just another word for hangar steak. It had more marbling than my rib-eye, and it was more uniformly marbled. Even though I have very little reason to expect I’ll like it any better, something in me makes me want to try that flap steak out. Something in me wants me to try that flap steak out sometime very soon.
