My pastured grass fed swiss steak is kind of tought and a bit dry is this because of the lower...?!
Last night I ate 2 of my freshly purchased swiss steaks for dinner, fried with a bit of butter in a skillet. They were a bit tought and a bit dry. So today, I fried 4 more for us for lunch in skillets again, again with butter, but this time I used a lot of water and cooked it even slower. (gave it about 25 to 30 minutes on low heat) They were still a bit tougher and a bit more dry than it seems like conventional swiss steaks normally are when cooked in the same manner.
Is this due to the lower fat content of grass fed animals? (this is the first time we have had swis steaks from grass fed animals).
What Can I do about it? More fat (butter?), even slower cooking?
Answers:
I was pretty sure that this meat is always tough, especially cooked as if it is nice and tender. Sure enough, my first search turned up this recipie that explains a lot. Also, it takes two hours of cooking. Still, looking at this recipie made me hungry, so maybe I will try it when the weather is a little cooler. Good luck!
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/00…
Yup, you've got a lot less fat in there so the meat usually cooks faster and can be dryer. I'd suggest soaking in a brine solution or some other sort of marinade. Anything with a high acid content will help soften the fibers of the meat. Most importantly, don't overcook... it's very easy to do with grass fed beef.
Pan sear to seal in the juices. You should double check the origin of the steaks and refer to the farmer for the best way to prepare the steaks. Maybe it's not pasture fed swiss steak. Shop for your meat closer to home. Organic beef farmers would appreciate your trade all over n.America.
This is why rib eyes are so good.
The next time you cook the steaks, cook them at low heat for a long time. That will make them tender.
Why are you using water to cook your steaks ? Swiss steaks are not the most tender to my knowledge.
Swiss steaks are not tender nor to be eaten as a steak.
Swiss steaks are usually round steak. Tough. Needs to be simmered in water or juice a couple of hours
Yeah, I have this problem with grass-fed steak myself, and I'm still learning what to do about it. Swiss steak is designed to make a tough cut of meat more tender by physically cutting the fibers that make it tough, but if it doesn't have enough fat it's going to be dry even if it's not tough.
Traditionally, this is solved by braising, rather than frying. You cook it a LOT longer, over an hour, more like a pot roast. Alton Brown recommends slicing it thin, searing the slices (for lots of nice brown flavor) and then giving it up to two hours in braising liquid.) At the end it will fall apart, because all of the connective tissue will have turned to gelatin. That will give it a great mouth-feel, almost like a nice fatty piece of meat. And keep the temperature low; boiling it will contract the muscle fibers, squeezing all that nice gelatin into the broth (but out of the meat, rendering it dry.)
A conventionally-raised animal has a lot more fat, so it doesn't require this careful treatment. That corn-feeding makes for a very tender, juicy steak, even if you just fry it, because you don't need to turn all the collagen into gelatin to get a slippery mouth feel.
An alternative would be to use ground beef rather than swiss steak. Ground beef has its fat content carefully controlled (they add fat from the plate, which is too fatty to eat otherwise) and the grinding makes for a very tender mouth feel from even the toughest meat. Too tender, if what you were looking for was the pleasant chew you could get from a pan-fried conventional swiss steak.
I always find it kind of funny that the conventionally-raised stuff really does taste better than the pasture-raised stuff. But I much prefer the latter because that's the way I want my animals treated, and if it takes more work, then so be it.