Cole Cooks: Prime vs Choice Steak Taste Test

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Most fancy restaurants advertise dry-aged prime steaks.  Dry aging is an intensive process.  In addition, prime steaks are hard to find and expensive.  Fun Diego Family did a test to see whether prime steaks were really better than choice. In addition, we tested a quick dry-aged method.  This is the result of our Prime vs Choice Steak Taste Test.

The goal of our Prime vs Choice Steak Taste Test was two-fold:

• Which did people prefer prime steak or choice steak?
• Do people like a dry-aged steak over traditional steak?

Of course, dry-aging a steak at home is not very practical.  However, Nathan Myhrvold, in his book Modernist Cuisine at Home, creates a recipe for a quick dry-age method.  The problem is this method still takes six days according to this Food & Wine recipe (the Modernist Cuisine cookbooks are outside our budget.

I ended up using a variation of a Quick Dry-Aged Steak Marinade I found on the site of sous vide manufacturer Sansaire.  You can see my version here.

Cole Cooks: Quick Dry-Aged Steak Marinade

We have heard that most fancy restaurants dry-age steak for long periods of time.  This is not really something we are equipped to do at home.  I read about methods for a quick dry-aged steak marinade that can be done in less than a day.  This is my experience with creating a recipe for Quick […]

Note I do not own a Sansaire machine, I own an Anova Sous Vide.  The steaks were cooked to 131 degrees or medium rare.  You can see an overview of this method here.

Cole Cooks: Sous Vide Steak Meal with Sides for $3 Serving

  A delicious low cost steak meal Cooking steak at home can be a daunting task.  How do you avoid ruining a beautiful piece of meat by overcooking it?  This has always been a problem for the amateur home chef.  In a restaurant if a piece of meat is over (or under) cooked you simply […]

For our Prime vs Choice Steak Taste Test I bought 2 large prime and 2 large choice sirloin steaks from the same butcher.  I marinated one prime and one choice in the Dry-Aged Marinade.  The other prime and choice steak I cooked without the marinade.

Once cooked, the steaks were cut into slices and served on 4 color plates.  Each colored plate corresponded to one of the 4 variations which included:

• Prime, Dry-Age Marinade
• Prime, No Marinade
• Choice, Dry-Age Marinade
• Choice, No Marinade

We had eight people tasting, including myself (I set it up so I did not know which was which).  The results proved quite interesting.

There were definite preferences.  Some of these were around the dry-aged method.  My 13-year old daughter said she much preferred the no marinade steaks over the ones in the dry-age marinade.  My 11-year old son and another adult were the opposite.  They preferred the dry-aged steaks.

One other adult preferred the non-dry aged prime as far and away the best.  However, two other adults preferred both versions of choice steak over the prime.  One of our participants played to the host and said they were all great.

Embarrassingly, I was the only one whose tastes seemed to have no rhyme or reason.  My favorite was the prime with marinade.  However, this was followed by the choice steak with no marinade, then the choice steak with marinade.  The prime with no marinade was my least favorite.

My conclusion.  I am only going to buy prime steaks if the price is close to choice steaks.  If I do my quick dry-aged steak marinade, I am also going to cook steaks without the marinade.

The one meat cut I am consistently buying at prime grade is brisket.  The price difference is small, and experts say it makes a big difference in quality.  Go here to check out our smoked brisket recipe.

Check out our Sous Vide Cooking Guide

Sous Vide Cooking Guide

Sous vide is a cooking technique that has hit the mainstream in recent years.  We love this technique because it allows you to perfectly cook meat.  This is our guide to getting started with sous vide cooking. Overview The idea behind sous vide is that you heat food in a water bath to the exact […]

Check out more of our Favorite Sous Vide Recipes

Top 10 Sous Vide Recipes

Sous vide is a cooking technique that has hit the mainstream in recent years.  We love this technique because it allows you to perfectly cook meat.  This is our regularly updated list of our top sous vide recipes. Overview of Sous Vide For an overview of sous vide and the equipment you need be sure […]

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