Raising the steaks

I like to think that men haven’t changed much in the last 4,000 years. Given a sharp enough spear and a field of semi-tame bovine, today’s man would have no problem in providing generously for his adoring, admiring and ultimately obedient family. Of course, Jurassic man was unencumbered by the shackles of modern life – the late afternoon saunters to Hendrix Hall, the allure of cheap Sambuca at former Chinese restaurants, and the lack of readily available stone spears.

Let me be your guide through that uncharted world of the supermarket meat aisle – the final resting place of animals deemed too tasty to live; conveniently refrigerated, packaged and butchered for our pleasure. We picked out prime hunks of cow from these meat Meccas and attempted to find the perfect student steak; the ideal mix between the right amount of bloody animal on your plate, and pound coins in your wallet. We made a nice, simple, creamy mashed potato and sat down with four pieces of rare, bleeding, slightly blackened beast; ready to sate our prehistoric needs.

Meat from campus favourite Costcutter was our first tasting. The nondescript, generic red meat, at a price which could only inspire confidence about the goods under the wrapping, failed completely to deliver any kind of carnivorous satisfaction. It felt almost like a Heston Blumenthall creation; consisting of water, red food colouring and perhaps some gelatine . A cattle substitute had been born. Incredibly, the master chefs at Costcutter had even managed to develop some true-to-life gristle, which really provided value for money through the next few hours of toothpicking. To get some real calf, we decided we must have to venture further than our front door.

Morrisons was our next beef outlet, and we got lucky. We picked up 200 grams of fourteen-day matured dry-aged fillet steak, reduced to under £2. With an apparent incapacity to actually decipher the adjectives used to describe our meaty find, we just settled on the widely accepted mantra that longer must be better. It was, juice and blood seeped out of the dark red muscle as my Wilko’s own butter knife glided through. The taste was mellow and the essence of cow covered the tastebuds. Altogether an excellent steak.

Watching Delia Smith caress a hunk of beef in a Come Dine With Me advert break had me set on including Waitrose in this line-up. For only £3 I was able to purchase a 21-day aged Aberdeen Angus sirloin. Those extra 7 days were worth every penny. The Morrisons sub-standard faintness was blasted from my pallette by full on farm flavour. Rich, juicy meat, marbled with tender fat, melted in my mouth, revealing an earthy, punchy, cattle sensation – which was over in 4 mouthfuls. This tiny amount of food provided such an incredible experience it feels almost like blasphemy to criticise, but the thirty seconds of pleasure just left me craving much much more.

Our final steak was there to fill this void. £8 provided us with a full 20 cm of Celtic pure breed, straight from the Irish butchers. As the only steak which lacked multicoloured plastic packaging, it surely couldn’t disappoint. A thick layer of white fat spooned the meat beside it, seared to a deep brown. Oozing as my fork pierced this barrier, the cow submitted to the knife without any retaliation – the tenderest steak so far. The flavour was deep, beefy, almost winey, providing a rich base upon which the meat could melt. But and it hurts me to say this, at about a fifth of my weekly food budget I can’t say that it was truly worth it. Perhaps as a one-off to impress that girl you met at the aforementioned Chinese.

So we’ve discovered, in our adventure through the depths of the bovine carcass, price really does matter. Overall, I think we saw that Waitrose provided a perfect compromise between price and quality. But perhaps I’ve also reaffirmed that you can buy whatever nice looking, matured slab of meat that catches your eye; cook it lightly, and serve it simply, that’s where the real pleasure lies. At the end of it all, meat is meat. You can’t count for that basic connection between meat and man, you can’t count for the primal pleasure it provides  and you certainly can’t better it.