Good Green Beef

I seem to be on a Foodie thing. Was recently remembering how, many many years ago, I went into a small neighborhood grocery store in the upscale part of town looking for a good steak from their butcher counter. It had to be a special occasion but I don't remember what. The butcher recommended a piece of steak in the display case that looked...green! Well, faintly greenish at least.

I expressed consternation.

He told me they are best that way and I'd never find one as good in the supermarket because people don't know about the finer points of aged beef and will only buy them when they are red. Hm. Well, I thought to myself, maybe he's right and why would he want to sell me something bad? This IS a really good part of town and wealthy people come in here all the time and see the meat in the case, so ... he's got to be right.

Long story short: I bought it, I cooked it, I ate it and it was the best steak I've ever had. Tender, juicy, tasty meat, seared on the outside, pink on the inside. I've always remembered that experience every time I've bought red steaks at the supermarket. But I never went looking for greenish steaks in spite of the fond memory of that one.

Fast forward some, oh, forty-five years or so. Thinking about it again recently reminded me that a friend had gone through a phase as a butcher many years ago, so I decided to tell him the story of my experience with the greenish steak and ask him what he thought. Well, there went a pleasant memory. He reminded me of all the training he'd gone through learning how to "break down" a carcass of beef (meaning divide it into all the familiar cuts), how to age the meat, how you have to use the best grade of meat to do it right, how his butcher shop had customers who would buy the whole animal and let the shop age it properly for them. They hang it at 33 degrees for a few weeks, sometimes wrapping it in linen cheesecloth. You have to remember, he said, that it's rotting, that's what aging is. Well, that kind of takes the glamor out of it right there. It does make for tender tasty beef though, he added.

BUT, he said, NO, you do not want green meat, that means it's gone bad, that's not just aging, that's bacteria. That butcher obviously just wanted to sell a bad piece of meat and I'm lucky I didn't get sick from it.

Oh dear. Well, I know he knows what he's talking about BUT. That steak was SO good I can't bring myself to believe him entirely. It spoiled a nice memory though and I probably won't ever have a greenish steak again.