You’re Never too Old to Find Out You Know Nothing

I think I’ll waste time writing about food.

My wife and I got two big surprises recently. We tried Jiffy biscuit mix and Costco prime New York strip steaks. Both impressed us a great deal.

I have always made my own biscuits. It’s very easy, and I had no real choice as far as I knew. Canned biscuits are very tasty, but they don’t taste like biscuits. And they’re tasty in the way that Cheetos and gas station pecan twirls are tasty. Not the classiest food.

We order a lot of stuff from Walmart because a) we live a good distance from town, and b) our nearest Walmart is not great. It’s somewhat dirty, every cart seems to have a wheel that won’t turn, and checking out is like trying to get out of Afghanistan under Joe Biden. Ordering makes things easier, and somehow, Walmart manages to do one-day deliveries on things the local stores don’t have.

My wife ordered some stuff, and for some reason, they sent us two boxes of Jiffy biscuit mix we did not order. Rather than drag ourselves to town to return three dollars’ worth of merchandise, we decided to try them.

You would think they would be disgusting. Biscuits from a box, made with…wait for it…water. Yes, water. Not milk. Not buttermilk. Not even Coffee Mate. You dump the mix in a bowl, add water, stir, and roll.

She followed the directions, and we tried them together in silence. I think we were both afraid to be the first to confess. We both thought they were really good. I mean, like 95% as good as a decent homemade biscuit. Good enough to make for company without telling them.

I checked the box. One of the ingredients is lard. Of course. That explains everything.

I decided we should look around and see if there were other good mixes. If Jiffy can do it, why can’t someone else?

We saw websites that said Cracker Barrel’s boxed mix was the best. I’m not a huge fan of their restaurant biscuits, but reviews said the box was different. We bought some and tried a batch.

It’s not good. I don’t mean it’s disgusting. The biscuits taste good. There are problems, however.

1. They fall apart because they are way too soft. You should be able to pull a biscuit apart in two halves and put butter on each one. If you try that with a Cracker Barrel box biscuit, you’ll just tear it into useless pieces.

2. They have a funny flavor to them, as if a team of food scientists said, “We’ll add some chemicals to give them a special homey flavor!” That’s probably what happened at the factory. I can’t describe it, but it’s like they’re trying to fake the flavor of mom’s oven and pans. It tastes artificial, which it is.

3. They’re sweet. I like to add a tiny bit of sugar to my own biscuits, but not enough to make them sweet. Adding a small amount of sugar to savory foods can round out the taste without making people realize the secret ingredient is sugar. This is not what Cracker Barrel does. Their biscuits are nearly as sweet as scones. Sort of like Chick-fil-A biscuits. I think you could make good scones with this mix if you cut some cream cheese into it and added even more sugar.

4. They use low-grade shortening. Soy and palm oil. These are staples in places like Bangladesh and Congo. They are cheap for good reason. Biscuits need animal fat. It’s actually a little insulting that Cracker Barrel, which is associated with Appalachia, would put this sludge in biscuits.

My feeling is that we should try mixing a little buttermilk with the water when using Jiffy mix. A small amount of fiddling could result in a biscuit just as good as homemade.

I think the reviews we saw were written by yankees. That would explain a lot. Yankees don’t understand Southern biscuits, as anyone who has eaten those big Bob Evans pillows can tell you. It’s completely possible to make a fantastic yankee biscuit, but you can’t market them to Southerners and expect them to think they’re just like mom used to make.

One site that recommended Cracker Barrel was Tasting Table. It’s based in Indiana, and that tells you everything you need to know. The people that run it probably eat at Bob Evans all the time.

When we made the Jiffy biscuits, they didn’t last long, because they kept calling to us after breakfast. We kept going back for biscuits and pieces of biscuits. The Cracker Barrel biscuits were easy to walk away from and throw away, even though they tasted good. They didn’t have that special biscuit magnetism.

The steaks were a huge shock to us.

I always eat rib eyes or filets. I have always considered the rib eye to be the king of common beef cuts. The flavor of the cap is out of this world, the center is not as good but still excellent, and a choice rib eye is nearly as good as prime. Sometimes I get rib eye fatigue, so I have a filet. I can’t say why. Something about the taste and tenderness. Nothing else tastes quite like a filet, and the way they fall apart in the mouth is wonderful.

I gave up on strips long ago, for good reason. I was eating marvelous choice rib eyes, and when I tried choice strips, I found them stiff, chewy, less flavorful, and a little dry. Why suffer with that if the same money gets you a rib eye that tastes nearly as good as prime?

The other day we were at Costco looking at beef, and my goal was to find a reasonably-priced steak that was good enough to be enjoyable and also small enough to allow us to prepare two in one pan. It can be challenging to get two rib eyes into the same skillet.

I saw prime strips as a subprimal for $15 per pound. Right now, hamburger costs $8 per pound at regular supermarkets in my area, so $15 didn’t look bad. A choice rib eye brings around $16 per pound here, on sale. The prices are post-apocalyptic.

I figured strips would be good enough for easy lunches, so we bought a subprimal. I cut it into 1.25″ steaks and wrapped most of them for the freezer. I left a few in the fridge for quick consumption.

I salted two strips down and cooked them medium-rare (tried to, anyway) in an All-Clad skillet with butter. I like All-Clad for steak because you’re guaranteed to get even heat.

The steaks came out more like a high medium, but regardless, they were astonishing. Some of the best steaks we had ever had anywhere. Dripping with melted fat. Loaded with flavor you would never find in a choice strip from Publix. So good they made me wonder if I should make strips my top choice from now on.

Sometimes I like putting Bearnaise sauce on steak. Sometimes I’ll just use melted butter with salt and tarragon. Rarely, garlic butter. These steaks were too good for any of this. Salt was all they needed. Pepper would have ruined them.

I could have wept over the lost years, except they weren’t actually lost. Eating rib eyes year after year is not really a sacrifice. It’s humbling to realize I was this wrong about strips, but then I never had a good strip until this week.

The frozen strips were just as good. No noticeable harm.

This is going to be my go-to steak from now on. We are going to buy Costco strip subprimals and cut them up. I love rib eyes, but they are trickier to cook, and it’s nice how two huge strips fit in a skillet.

We lost a couple of pounds of fat when I trimmed the steaks, and that is sad, but beef fat is useful. The end result is a figure closer to $17 per pound of usable steak. Okay, that’s bad, but compare it to $20 for a choice rib eye or choice porterhouse, and it’s an astonishing bargain.

I’m also a big fan of London broil, fried like a steak. The flavor is excellent, the meat is juicy, and those things make the extra chewing worth it. Can’t touch a prime strip, though.

One thing I will not do is grill a steak. It comes out either grey or black, with no crust. And grill marks are the worst. Bitter stripes of burned meat with grey, flavorless meat between them.

Now I wonder if I should order a strip the next time I go to a steakhouse. What if their strips aren’t a superior grade of prime? What if they cheat and use high-end choice?

Nobody wants to pay $72 for a steak and feel like he’s rolling the dice. I’ll have to interrogate the waiters when I order.

I hope Costco’s strips are always this good. I will definitely be finding out soon.