Beef

Here's a hint: There's no corn in it.

Choosing the right cut can make or break the dish.

This two-step method won, hands-down.

You’ve probably read in recipes and heard again and again that you should slice steak and other cuts of meat against grain. But what exactly is “the grain,” and why is it so important to slice against it? Oh, and how do you even know what it looks like?The grain refers to the direction that the muscle fibers are aligned, and it is important to cut against it so that your meat is easier to chew.

You don’t need an excuse to treat yourself, but the holiday season is definitely a great opportunity for special meals. Enter: the prime rib. Although this cut of beef, also called standing rib roast, is available at most butcher shops and even some grocery stores, for many of us it remains an order-out or once-a-year indulgence.

Find out where your favorite steak comes from.

Our favorite tool for the job might surprise you!

What you need to know to make beef stew like a pro.

Flexibility in use landed this method in the top spot.

Flank steak and skirt steak are both long, odd-looking cuts of steak. Wonder if you’ve ever eaten either of them? If you’ve ever had fajitas, then chances are it was skirt steak. In most recipes, they can be used interchangeably, so how are these cuts actually different from each other? The flank is located at the cow’s bottom abdominal area, while the skirt is a thin, flavorful cut located in the diaphragm area.

You'll be bound for greatness with this one!

Here's how to plan so that you're not going to be swimming in leftovers, or leaving anyone around the table starving.

Although short ribs used to be seen as a less desirable cut of beef, they’ve risen in popularity, causing prices to also increase for this cut that used to be fairly inexpensive. So if you’re now spending more for short ribs, it makes sense to get to know the two popular ways that they’re cut, flanken and English style. The difference can come down to thickness of the cut and cook time for your desired meal.

For starters, one is a roast and the other is a steak.

Want to cook your best corned beef yet? Keep an eye out for these.

Yes, there is a difference!

Here are the four most popular cuts of steak. We'll cover where they're cut from, what they taste like, and how best to cook them.

The winner truly makes a tastier burger on the grill or in a skillet!

No one wants to mess up steak on the grill. For one thing, a leathery over-cooked steak makes for an extremely sad eating experience. For another, steaks are expensive! From grilling pro Jennifer Chandler, we have six steps that will guarantee a perfectly grilled steak every time.When I asked Jennifer about steaks and explained my nervousness about grilling them, her excitement kicked up a few decibels.

Searing meat is 100% about building flavor. And oh, what flavor it is! When that meat hits a scorching hot pan, the surface instantly begins caramelizing. In your stew or braise or roast, this translates into the kind of deep, savory flavor that we crave on an almost a cellular level. This is the flavor that makes us want to lick our plates clean. No sear, no plate-licking good times. Here’s how to do it. Searing meat might seem like an unnecessary and time-consuming step in a recipe.

What happens if you forgot your ground beef or chicken breasts in the fridge for a couple of days? Do you need to scrap your plans for burgers or chicken for dinner? Is it still safe to eat or should you throw it out?The good news is, even if there’s a color change, the meat or poultry is still perfectly fine to eat if stored properly in the refrigerator or freezer and consumed within a safe period of time (up to two days for ground meat and five days for other cuts).

Including the one thing you should be doing before you even turn on the heat.

Your official guide to cooking restaurant-quality steak.

Not all meats last the same amount of time!

Making this easy ingredient swap will take your meatballs to the next level.

Whether you’re cooking a massive prime rib or a simple pan-seared steak for one, it’s helpful to know the temperature beef should reach before it’s safe to eat. To make it easy to remember, the safe internal temperature for cuts of beef, lamb, and pork is all the same! The USDA recommends an internal temperature of 145°F, which is considered medium-well. Ground beef, however, should be cooked to a higher temperature of 160°F.

Apparently, we've been doing it all wrong.

Rich, long-simmered stews are as satisfying to eat as they are to make. It’s all about building layers of flavor and then stepping away from the stove to let the low heat gently do its magic. You don’t need a recipe – just a few basic guidelines will help create the perfect stew!Note for Vegetarians – Sure, you can make stew, too! Instead of meat, try adding about a pound of mushrooms and a pound of potatoes.

Folks can get pretty particular about how they like their steaks. Some of us like it well-done while others say the more red and rare the better! When we’re cooking steaks at home, it can be hard to get it just the way we like it, especially if we have guests with different preferences.Cutting into the steak to see how things are coming along works well, but this also lets out juices and moisture that we’d rather keep for ourselves.

Beef bacon. It just sounds weird to say. Bacon as most of us know it comes from pigs and there’s never really been a reason to question that. Before now, beef bacon has only been available through Halal Butchers (for the most part), although it’s slowly creeping onto your local grocery store shelves. We took it for a test run this morning and as you might expect there are some differences! For our morning test run we used not only beef bacon, but uncured beef bacon.

The result? A crusty, flavorful, pink-in-the-center steak that is nothing short of a chef’s (or grill master’s) kiss.

If you’ve had corned beef or pastrami before, then you’ve had brisket. This large piece of flavor-packed beef is often cured or smoked, but it’s also one of the best cuts for braising and slow cooking. There’s much to learn, though, when it comes to what brisket is and how it differs from other types of meat. Let’s talk about where this hefty piece of beef comes from and how to buy and cook it!

Ready to nail your St. Patrick's Day dinner? Start here.

You've probably wondered, too. Here's the answer (plus our favorite recipe!).

Adding just one pantry ingredient gives you tender, browned beef.

You'll love the flavor and char that sugar adds to your steak.

This gets the beef extra tender without letting the veggies fall apart.

Get your food processor ready!

Is it really worth the hype?

Can you save cooking and cleanup time with a new technique? We investigate.

Stock is one of the kitchen's greatest magic tricks. Here are the five rules to this magic.

Plus: The ingenious hack to test if meat is done without a thermometer.

When we’re cooking large pieces of meat like roasts or turkey, we’ve always been told to let the meat rest before cutting into it. This has seemed like an odd step to us, especially since it’s been ingrained in us not to let food sit out for too long. Besides wouldn’t you want to serve it up and dig in right away?As it turns out, you actually don’t! Click through to see why…As meat cooks, the muscle fibers start to firm up and water gets pushed out.

We interviewed a chef and a grandmother to get a brisket walk-through.

You'll need a spoon and a paper towel.

Consider this over the weight of your steaks.

Follow these guidelines for juicy, never-dry burgers.

No matter you cook it, you should always be doing this.

This meat alternative was developed to be a complete replacement for ground beef. Here's what you need to know.

Even if you've made beef stew in your Dutch oven or slow cooker, you're gonna want to read this.

Get all the flavor in 1/6 of the time.

This old-school method makes mouthwatering chicken and steak.

If you’re going to invest in an expensive steak , you’ll want to focus all of your attention on cooking this steak, especially if you don’t do it very often. But what if you want to make this steak just a wee bit more special without committing to a complicated pan sauce?

These are the most common missteps — plus how to solve them.

Make this the summer of the best ribs yet.

In addition to the rich broth, the most satisfying element of beef pho is the meat layered in the bowl before serving. Added raw, the thin strips of beef are cooked when the boiling broth is ladled into the bowl. Choose wisely, though, because not just any cuts of beef will do. These inexpensive cuts of beef celebrate pho’s humble roots, bring just the right blend of fat and flavor, and are, most importantly, quick to cook in the broth.

Because we don’t buy steak all that often, we have trouble keeping all the different cuts straight when we do. Did we like the porterhouse for this recipe, or was it the rib eye? Food Paper has a quick and dirty guide to all the cuts, and we’ve bookmarked the page for just these moments!This quick guide focuses solely on the common cuts of steak, so we don’t have to sort through dozens of chuck and rib cuts to find what we’re looking for.

Whether dry-aged or wet-aged beef is better has actually become quite a debate in certain foodie circles. Dry-aging has centuries of tradition on its side, while wet-aging is really the new kid on the block. Is one really better than the other? You decide.All meat benefits from some amount of aging before being sold and consumed. In the days after slaughter, enzymes go to work on the muscle tissue, breaking it down and making it tender. Chicken needs a few days, while pork and lamb needs a week.

Like many of you, we’ve been recently buying more whole cuts of meatgristleNote: There are images of raw meat after the jump.As always when working with meat, use a sharp knife. Check out our tutorials on sharpening and straightening knives if you think yours needs some help!Set the cut of meat on a cutting board. Cut or pinch off a small tag of the fat toward the top.Still holding onto the tag of fat, set your knife in between this fat and the meat.

There’s hardly a roast more alluring, majestic, and intimidating than beef Wellington. A filet of beef gets wrapped in puff pastry with the hope that both the beef and pastry will bake up to a gorgeous, golden-brown on the outside and tender, pink perfection on the inside. And Gordon Ramsay’s version is as infamous as it is beloved. You might already know Ramsay as the hot-tempered chef at the helm of shows like Hell’s Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, and MasterChef.