426: Good Beef with George Motz

23:02You just want to get that. It's like you know that you need to like sop up any leftover gravy. We've been trained, but then when it's butter, it makes it even better. Oh, yeah. And then let me ask you then, anybody coming up in the future, You want to announce? Yeah, so right now we have Autumn Weston brought with her her family's secret olive sauce from Weston's Coupie in Lansing, Michigan. So they actually drove in 20 gallons of olive sauce for the burger, and it's not enough. So I'm actually going to be heading back out myself personally to Michigan to get another few gallons of the restaurant.

23:38You're road tripping to Michigan to pick up the olive sauce. Yeah, we're going to make a couple stops along the way. Yeah. Other burger spots. nothing's yeah that's a road trip for you oh yeah it's a fun road trip do you ever like do like a fast food burger on the way just to keep it you know real sometimes if I have time yeah I'll do a steak and shake yeah my god that's the one I love that you'll find those in Michigan alright last question I want to ask you what are your big beefy plans for the summer what do you what do you want to make with beef this summer is there like a cut or is there like a preparation or is there some project and it doesn't have to be on the grill you know we know that you know you can do beef you can do bordignan even in the summertime.

24:14I'm a very big believer that, you know, seasonal cooking is fun and we like get into it, but you can make beef stew in August. It's fine. It's delicious. It's true. Yeah. I like to just continue on with the stuff I've been playing with beef. I love to be able to have the time, which I don't sometimes. When I do have the time, I do focus on cooking outside of the restaurant and I do as much grilling as humanly possible outside. I have in my backyard, I think I counted once. I have 14 different grilling and cooking apparatus outside in the backyard. Because I like to be able to pick and choose. I have this thing called a channel griller, which is basically, it's for kebabs.

24:52It's a kebab griller. It's about eight inches wide, which is how big a kebab really should be. And it's about three feet long. Wow. And it's nothing more than just a bed of charcoal. And this sounds amazing to us in America, but pretty much the rest of the world uses these things on the street. All the time to make kebab food and cook, you know, street cooking, street food. What that comes on a stick is usually cooked on some kind of a trough or channel griller. I'm Googling channel griller and picking one up from my backyard. Yeah, that's also called like a party griller. Ah. Yeah, so it's a good one.

25:26That's a great one. They're expensive and I love these things. That's one. I mean, I've got so many different types of cooking. So there's a party in George's backyard this summer. We'll be there. George Motz, thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thanks for having me.

25:48Dr. Phil Bass, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you doing? I'm great, man. How are you? I'm terrific. Now, I've been talking to George Motes all about beef, and I think it's time to now call in the big boys. We're going to get a doctor in the study of beef, and really you're at the University of Idaho, and you're a meat science professor. I have to ask you first up, what's for dinner in Troy, Idaho? What's on your table last night? Well, interesting you ask that. Ribeye steaks. You know, that's one of our favorites of the whole family. We like fat. We like beef fat. And ribeyes are robust and very, very tasty.

26:31Easy to grow. And, yeah, it's one of our family favorites. That's amazing. So what's the preparation? How are you doing it? You know, if you have good beef, it's not much of a preparation. Salt and pepper and then goes right to the grill. We're a family. And if I had time for charcoal, I'd probably do that. But we tend to get busy sometimes. So we just go right to a propane grill and cook it to about a medium rare degree of doneness. And away we go. Way to go. So, Phil, you grew up in a livestock family around meat cutting and the whole industry. So let me ask you, how did you get into the science behind beef?

27:13So, yeah, so that's an interesting story. And, and, and honestly, I, I grew up cutting meat, but not professionally and, and the family never did it professionally. I come from a family of Italian carpenters that also raised livestock and we cut our own meat. And so it was very much more just for family purposes. We made sausage, we, we cut beef, lamb, pork, things like that. But I really started getting more into it when I went to university at Cal Poly, California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo, California, in the central coast of California. And I learned from a meat science professor there, Dr.

27:55Rudy Wooten, who happened to also be my academic advisor. And I just really loved the whole process. I love the art of it. I think it's something that we need to continue to recognize as an art, as a trade. I think there's a lot of career opportunity in the meats world. But yeah, to make this more of a profession and become more of an instructor in this, I needed to go down the realm, go down the path of meat science. and meat science. My true meat science path began when I started doing research at Cal Poly when I was working on my master's degree, and that was with Dr. Bob Delmore, who's now at Colorado State University.

28:43We were looking at some of the value of different breed types and growth technologies that are available for the industry to use to improve feed efficiency, improve resource utilization, things like that. And that led me to Colorado State. And in fact, I went to Colorado State and was done and graduated there before Dr. Bob Delmore went there. But I started working with Dr. Keith Belk and spent some time both looking at some of the challenges that we're facing in the meat industry. And at that time, we were considering just how big cattle we're getting. and interestingly enough that research has not stopped all the way to today where that's what our team does is look at how can we come up with practical ideas of improving the beef carcass and beef quality that with with means that can be easily used at a packing house or at a grocery store at a restaurant and so that's kind of the direction we're going right now and that's that's my short story of meat science.

29:55Well, it's so fascinating because as as end users, as the as the home cooks who are who are going to the grocery store and buying beef, I'd love to get a sense of how your your research about the consistency of beef leads to like, how does it translate to what we're actually buying in the grocery store? There's there's so much that goes into it. And we don't have we don't have time to spend several hours on this. In fact, I teach entire courses on what it takes for to make a good meat eating experience especially on the beef side of things beef has has something that the other species don't have and that's a depth of flavor um pork is great pork is a a great inexpensive uh meat product chicken um it's not as inexpensive as most people might think um but still very versatile beef is also a very versatile item but it brings with it that depth of flavor that the other species species have a hard time reaching.

30:53And when it translates to consistency and quality at the grocery store, we're thinking about what is happening on the live animal side? What are our farmers and ranchers doing to prepare that animal to become high quality meat products later on? And most of that begins with genetics. We have to start with a good quality animal, the right bull and the right cow. make nature and in the end hopefully they had genetic potential to pass on that's that's focusing on quality. I like to think of the analogy that you know you can you can have a really great variety of wine grapes but if you don't have the right soil conditions and you don't have the right management it's hard to make really good wine and so it does also take the management side of things.

31:47And that's where feeding the animal appropriately, maintaining a high, what we call planum nutrition, making sure that they have adequate nutrition throughout their life. And I'm a big proponent of giving those animals concentrate. So a lot of people might think of that just as a corn-based diet. We raise a lot of corn in the United States. But there's up here in the Northwest, we actually feed a lot of potato byproducts. Either way, we mix that into their ration. Still has a little bit of hay and a little bit of silage or something like that, different roughages that are going to be mixed in.

32:23But we give them that starch content, and that helps to put down some really great fat. What we're targeting is not just fat on the outside of the animal, but on the inside of the muscle. And the best fat that we're looking for is what's called marbling. It's intramuscular fat. A little flecks of white fat that's going to be interspersed throughout the muscles, especially one like the ribeye, one of my favorites. And that fat inside is going to lead to the flavor, the tenderness, the juiciness. We just heard from George Motes, and he was talking about the grocery store and thinking about how do you buy beef to really enhance your summer grilling experience.

33:06I've been meaning to ask a professional like yourself, do you have a great sneaky good cut that works extremely well for the summer backyard that maybe we don't know about? Well, you know, yes, but the challenge will be, can you find one? You know, this is where maybe the meat sciences and the retail sector haven't quite caught up yet. But I would tell you, as far as as far as steaks that are more readily available beyond beyond, say, like your ribeyes and your striploins and your tenderloins and things like that. think about sirloin cuts usually they're going to be a great value especially ones that are probably coming from the top sirloin so you have your top sirloin center cuts which are going to be more like a baseball they're usually pretty lean but but still pretty tender and a great value the the top sirloin cap muscle some might might know it as the culotte is a great steak as well and very similar in texture and tenderness to a strip loin.

34:12And again, a lower cost item in that regard, but super for the grill. The culotte can also be found in a roast size. It's triangular in shape, but it's not to be confused with the tri-tip. The tri-tip also is a great item for the grill. That's a good value as well. And it's going to also have kind of more of that ribeye flavor because it's going to have a heavier marbling to it. So, I mean, man, I could get really excited about all these different meat cuts. I'd tell you, if you do have a more eclectic butcher that's nearby that can do a little bit more fanciful type cutting, there's a steak called the Denver steak.

34:46It's actually out of the shoulder. It's highly marbled. It's the cut that at a certain part of the animal becomes the short rib, which is more of a slow cook braising or barbecue type item. but if you can get a denver steak um there uh don't get it too cut too thick you'll actually want to cook it to about a medium degree of doneness um that will be your best tenderness on that and man that is a it's a it's an amazing eating experience oh my gosh mostly because of the marbling man phil i i was i gotta tell you i i just cooked with a denver steak i was making a Korean beef stew called tenjeon chigae, and I needed a nice thin cut that had nice marbling.

35:31It's not like a beef-driven dish, but it needed accents. And I found that Denver cut at my local stop and shop, and wow, did it deliver. I love that you mentioned that. Yeah. Well, then that's awesome to hear that it's out there because not a lot of grocery stores are to that level yet. But for those who are interested in providing a really cool eating experience for the customers, I think it sounds like there's some out there that are willing to go to that step. And man, it's a great steak. So Phil, let me ask you, what does a meat science professor teach his students? I mean, do you guys actually go into a kitchen and taste the beef?

36:10So that's interesting you say that. At the very end of the semester for when I teach my meat science class, we absolutely have what I call the sensory lab, which is just a selfish way of saying I'm going to cook some brisket for my friends. We get somewhere between 40 and 50 students a year in our meat science class here at the University of Idaho. And we do everything in that class. We start out with just basic animal handling and why it's so important for animals to have good animal welfare when you're raising these animals all the way up until the point of what we call harvest. So that's the slaughter process.

36:51And then we go through those processes. So we'll slaughter beef and lamb and pigs in the class. Those carcasses that are produced from those animals are then going to be fabricated. That's a fancy way for butchering, taken down to the individual steaks, steaks and roasts. From there, we'll talk about the different pieces and parts, but we also talk about the biochemistry that's happening in the muscle, in the live animal, during the harvesting process, all the way down to when we're aging meat and the enzymes that are involved, and then even into what we call further processing. So when we're making sausage and bacon and hams and roast beef and things like that, corned beef.

37:37We talk about all of the different chemical sciences that are involved in food science, but it's very meat-centric. But the other cool thing about meat science is that we learn a lot about anatomy. We cover anatomy of the animals and how different muscles in different parts of the animal because of their function lead to different eating experiences. And then on top of all that, we cover food safety. You know, it's important to make sure that folks are understanding the proper way of going through handling meat products and making sure that it's not only tasty, but safe to eat. When you're talking about fabrication and you're talking about maybe working with a more ambitious butcher, you're at the cutting edge, pun intended, of beef cutting.

38:25What are some more innovative cuts or techniques that you're seeing in the marketplace? And how does that translate to maybe new recipes and new ways of thinking about cooking with beef? Yeah. Okay. There's a couple different directions I want to go there. First off, I'll brag on some of our own students here who have helped to develop new meat cuts. There's a small muscle at the base of the top sirloin. It's very unknown with the exception of a handful of butchers in North America. But because I learned from a few of these more eclectic butchers, we've been able to peel this piece out. The muscle is called the gluteus accessorius muscle.

39:07Not a great marketing name, of course. And so we're just calling it the top sirloin tender right now. And hopefully somebody more ambitious can teach me a better way of selling that item. It's a steak item that comes out of the animal pretty much already portion controlled. You don't have to do anything but pull it off of the top sirloin, and then you skin a little bit of connective tissue or silver skin off the outside, and it's ready to go. Throw it right on the grill. It's very lean but very, very tender and has a very robust sirloiny kind of flavor, and that's the best way we can describe it.

39:39Beyond that, you know, there's a handful of cuts in the round, something that folks that, you know, we don't think about the round as a piece. So the hind leg, the big hind leg, we don't think of that as a piece that's really grill ready, but there's a muscle called the top round cap. It's the gracilis muscle and the top round cap, when you pull it off of the top round, it resembles a skirt steak. It seems as if skirt steak has become a very popular item in both the culinary world and the retail world. And so we just kind of need more of that kind of cut. And the top round cap is one that can provide that.

40:20And it's lesser known. It's often just left on as a part of the top round roast or as part of a London broil. Last couple of things that I'll mention are items that are beyond just the traditional carcass. And so beef, cheek meat. Oh, my gosh. Gosh, if you like a really robust, deep-flavored piece of meat, it's really good if you do some braising or stewing or that kind of stuff. But beef cheek meat can be a really delightful eating experience. The sweetbreads, so that's the thymus gland. It's right at the base of the neck on the animal, but that comes out during the harvesting process. And so it's not left on your traditional carcass.

41:02But those could be either braised or even fried. Oh, yeah. And then, yeah, yeah. Oh, fantastic. I mean, if you like a really umami kind of flavor, a little bit more texture to it, but kind of almost a little more fatty, it's so delicious. And then it's so amazing to see the popularity of oxtail anymore. You know, that was kind of just a poor person's cut that kind of went by the wayside. We exported a lot of them, but the value of that has really grown in the United States as well as the tongue. And so, So, you know, we're not talking about our classic cuts anymore. We're talking about different ways of experiencing that.

41:39Oh, my gosh. Well, I'm the biggest lengua taco fan you're going to find. And when I'm in Chicago or L.A. and I'm finding the best Mexican food in America, I'm going for the lengua. What a great cut. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Very popular now. Yep. Phil, let me close and ask you. It's summertime. What are your beef adventures planned for the summer? you got it, you got the grill going, you've got, you've got, maybe you're taking a few, few weeks off from teaching. Are there any ambitious beef plans that you have? I am, I'm becoming more and more of a, uh, a fan of the smokers right now. And so, um, and I never thought I would be interested in pellet grill smoking, but I am.

42:25Um, and I, I kind of surprised myself with that, but I liked the precision that comes with it. And, um, And so I've been experimenting a lot more with that. I like how you can use it to just impart some flavor and then go over to your traditional, say, propane grill or charcoal grill and get that high heat afterwards. But start with that nice, subtle, deeper smoke. But then also, I mean, we don't want it. We shouldn't just think of summertime as grilling. I think summertime is just a great time to enjoy good food. You just happen to eat it outside more. And so taking cuts out of the shoulder of the beef carcass and putting those on the smoker and treating them just like you would a brisket, something like an old-fashioned pot roast out of the chuck roll, put that on the smoker.

43:16And if you cook it long enough, it'll shred like a good pork shoulder. There's also some really great pieces out of the arm roast of the beef carcass. Put that on the smoker for a couple of hours, and the texture is fantastic on that. It's a very, very tender piece of meat as well. So I'm probably going to spend more time playing around with the smoker, honestly, and seeing what kind of delights we can generate from that. Last question. How do you do your burger? Oh, man. Fatty, first off. Yes. My man, that's the way to do it. Yeah. You know, I'm a big fan of George Motes. I've had the chance to work with him in the past, and he and I have similar perspectives on the burger.

44:00You know, grilling's great, but flat top or skillet has got to be some, probably the best way of cooking a burger. 100 % agree with you. Keep the juices in. Keep it there, yeah. Dr. Phil Bass, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Excellent. Thanks.

44:26I'm here with our producer Clayton and I wanted to wrap up this very special beefy episode of This Is Taste with some final thoughts about how we're cooking with beef this summer. You know, we talked to George Motes and he gave us this great intel coming from the restaurant point of view from the chef's point of view and we talked to Dr. Phil Bass, coming from more of like an academic point of view, but both are big fans of beef and they really gave us a lot of ideas. So with all of this in mind, Clayton, I wanted to go over some of our recipe ideas and grails for this summer. I'm going to start and say, right now, the New York Strip is top of mind.

45:07I've been a sirloin fan for a long time. I've been a ribeye fan for a long time, but really I've fallen in love with the New York Strip. To me, the New York strip is the most irony, flavorful cut that I'm going to get for that price point. I love doing it. The way I do it is I always salt about 1 % to 2 % by weight. And I leave it on there for at least four hours, if not longer. I want that salt to soak in. I want it to really flavor the cut. And I'm always, always going to put it on my cast iron. And I'm going to grill it on high heat. I'm going to cook it on high heat for about four to five minutes each side.

45:48And I'm going to check temperature. And for me, that is like the simplest way to enjoy beef. But we're going to go back and forth, Clayton. What do you think? You have an idea, I know. Well, I love a New York strip, obviously, because New York City, best city in the world. So why wouldn't the cut of beef be the best? A namesake cut, for sure. Absolutely. I like to do a little bit of slow braising short ribs. Ooh, I love that. Nice. Tell me more. Brown it in the Dutch oven. And then you add some red wine, some beef stock, some Italian aromatics like thyme and oregano. And then you got to braise it for three hours.

46:23On low. You got to do it. You got to take the time. I mean, that's the thing. Crack it open a beer. If you don't drink, crack open an NA. Yeah, man. And just let that thing braise. Yeah. Take it out of the pan, right? And then you're just serving it. You're slicing it off. Oh, yeah. I love it. So, you know, for me, I love that you call it short ribs because for me, short ribs in Korean cooking is kalbi jim, which is similarly braised, but it's not red wine. It's in like a puree of Asian pear and sesame oil and a little bit of soy sauce. And that's kind of the base of it. And I'm doing the same technique.

47:00I'm doing it low and slow in a Dutch oven for three hours. I've also used a pressure cooker in the past, and that speeds it up a bit. Yeah. Until it's fall off the bone. Some places actually put a little bit of cheese on the top of it and use a little blowtorch if you want to get creative. Matt, do you have a blowtorch at home? You know what? I do. And to me, I got to have a blowtorch not just for brulee, but for a little bit of like this and that on top of a short rib. And for me, the next kind of big idea I have is I want to take my burger game to the next level. I want to push my butcher to go above the 80-20.

47:36So it's 80 % lean, 20 % fat. I'm going to seek out. I have a great butcher in my town. His name is Sam. Sam's butcher. I'm going to see if he can do 75-25. I'm just going to see if they'll humor me with that. Because I think as Phil Bass has said and his store just said, you know, adding a little more fat to your ground beef is going to give it all that flavor. And I always do it to a medium rare. And I feel like that, to me, is the best way to do a burger. Clayton, do you have any other ideas about beef? Well, I like, especially in the summer, I like some carne asada. Oh, yeah. I use some flank steak, and you marinate it.

48:14You can use fruit juices, like orange juice, soy sauce, sometimes just olive oil, but you're adding some garlic, some chili powder, paprika, black pepper. Put it in a Ziploc. Overnight if you can. Yeah. But, I mean, a few hours is good, but you got to do overnight. And then you grill it. You grill it to medium rare, slice it, wrap it in a tortilla, add whatever vegetables you want. Salsas. Salsas, whatever, your accoutrement. I love it. I love it. Great call on the carne asada at home. Lots of ways to do it. Time is going to be really your friend there. And also, I'll just add, you know, what Phil Bass told us, lengua, like beef tongue.

48:57I love that. I've never actually attempted to make lengua on my own. I feel like I'm going to also go to Sam's and be like hey man you're giving me the 75-25 cut of ground beef this really nice blend throw in a tongue because I want to try to do like a marinated beef tongue that to me is so terrific we had some lingua tacos on our trip oh yeah we did didn't we yeah out in Las Vegas right well I think it actually was in Chicago oh Chicago we've been on the road all summer man it's been crazy So this is this is you're reminding me of that beautiful Chicago lingua we did have. I really like that.

49:35You know, I'm going to close and just say, honestly, my last idea for the summer is I'm going back to the ribeye. I know I started and said I like the strip over the ribeye. But you know what? I've changed my mind. But for me, I like going to the butcher and actually getting it boneless because a boneless ribeye, it's going to cost more. Yes. But if you can get the bone out and this have them a really nice, well marbled ribeye steak, it's really going to be your friend. It's going to be one of those cuts that you really you can be a little bit more, I would say, aggressive with the cooking because the marbling is going to help you win over your crowd because it's going to be so tender and there's no bone to fuss with.

50:16And you can do it, serve your guests, eat your ribeye steak if you're being all fancy. But honestly, you could just slice it thin, put it on the table, dress it with some great olive oil, flaky maldened salt or any kind of salt, and maybe some herbs on top. And you've got this platter, perfectly cooked ribeye. I feel like for summer, that's what I want to do. Well, Matt, I'm so glad that when you thought of beef, you thought of me. Clayton, I thought of you, but also I thought of you listeners. I felt like we needed to have an episode that dedicated to one of our favorite summertime ingredients and our summertime activities, which is grilling outside.

50:55And really, I hope you took a lot away from this episode. Thank you so much for joining this very special episode of This Is Taste. This special episode is supported by Beef. It's what's for dinner on behalf of the Beef Checkoff.

51:12This is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumbert. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.