Know Your Beef, Know Your Cuts

It might just be me, but I love having a beef chart on my wall when I have to develop a recipe or when someone uses a term I don’t recognize (sometimes geography determines names).

There’s a good reason to know what you’re buying. How you cook a cut of beef has everything to do with what type of cut you’ve got. So, here are some guidelines:

Top Round Steak comes from the hind portion of the beef. It’s from muscle that works hard, so it's not as tender as some cuts, and it’s quite lean (ours has only 4g fat per serving). Marinating it before grilling adds flavor and tenderness. If you want to roast it, longer times and lower temperatures bring out the best in top round. You could also tenderize it by using a meat pounder to flatten and thin it slightly.

Eye of Round also comes from the hindquarters and you’ll often see this as a roast cut. Also a lean cut (4g fat per serving), roast this low and slow or cube it and use it for beautifully lean beef stew. The long slow cooking of a stew brings out the best in eye of round.

Flank Steak—like the name implies, this comes from the flank—low down and behind the brisket and plate. Like the other super lean (Laura’s Lean Beef flank has 5g fat per serving), not-so-tender cuts, flank steak is perfect for marinating, tenderizing or slicing super thin for a quick cook (place flank steak in freezer for about 30 minutes to get super thin slices for use in a stir fry, for example).

Ribeye Steaks are from the center rib section, beautifully marbled and full of flavor. Quick grilling with little fuss allows the full flavor of ribeye steak to shine. You’ll find a lot of chefs picking ribeye over all as the cut they want to enjoy when they sit down to dinner. That natural marbling can lead to fatty steaks, but not with the Laura’s Lean Beef Ribeye. It comes in naturally lean at only 9g fat for a serving.

Strip Steak is another tender cut of beef (with the bone and accompanying round of tenderloin, a strip steak becomes a T-bone), not as marbled as the ribeye (5g fat per serving). Strip steak comes from the loin portion and lends itself to little fuss and quick cooking. A hot pan or grill, quick sear on both sides, then cooking until it reaches desired degree of doneness. (You’ll also see strip steaks called top loin at times).

Sirloin Steak comes from the section just behind the loin/strip steak section. It is nowhere near as marbled as the ribeye, but still great for quick cooking (on grills or in a hot cast iron skillet). Laura’s Lean Beef Sirloin has just 5g fat per serving. Once cooked, sliced sirloin (like the strip steak) makes for great slicing meat for a sandwich or steak salad because of its lean tenderness.

Tenderloin, the most tender and most expensive of all the cuts, gets almost no action (as a muscle, that is), which is exactly what preserves that delicate texture. The beauty of a tenderloin (also called filet mignon and, if it’s the beautiful center cut of the tenderloin, Chateaubriand) is that it is both tender and lean (just 5g fat per serving of Laura’s Lean Beef Tenderloin). Tenderloin shines on its own, but with such mild flavor and almost buttery texture, tenderloin takes well to just about any sauce you might want to try with it.

Ground Beef at Laura’s Lean Beef is made from both sirloin and round steak, two lean cuts, resulting in ground beef that is 98% lean. Laura’s Lean Beef regular ground beef comes from our other cuts and is 92% lean. Leaner ground beef means you lose less volume when cooking, whether you’ve got burgers on the grill or a meatloaf in the oven.

Look for lots of great recipes on our website!