How This Tastes to a Vegetarian

Esquire provides the basics, from grades to cooking times

(NEWSER) - There's more to a mouthwatering steak than meets the eye. So Esquire offers some tips and terms every steak lover should know before a Labor Day meat-fest:

• Types of beef: Grass-fed: "Healthier but ... less flavorful than corn-fed." Heritage: "Rare heirloom breeds ... without the hormones or pesticides." Aberdeen-Angus: "Pure breed found in the US, England, Scotland, and Ireland."

Get ready for the Vegas strip steak

(NEWSER) - Good news for carnivores and not so good news for cattle: People who specialize in such things say they've found a new cut of beef from a cow called the "Vegas strip steak." Business Insider picks up on the weird scoop from the Drovers Cattle Network , which proclaims that the steak "is the latest and perhaps last steak to be found from the beef carcass." Patents, believe it or not, are pending. More»

'It didn't smell much, it didn't smell bad anyway,' he raves

(NEWSER) - Ever wondered if beef ages like wine? Well a Swedish man ran something of an experiment on the matter yesterday, cracking open a jar of brisket that had been sealed for more than 70 years, The Local reports. Eskil Carlsson’s parents-in-law had sealed the beef away during World War II, when rationing was in force, and decided not to open it in case “the bad times returned,” he explains. More»

Pasture-raised version of other, other white meat draws new fans

(NEWSER) - Some conscientious objectors to eating veal are not only reconsidering their stance, they are doing an about-face. The new hot product at top restaurants is “humanely raised” veal—calves no longer wrenched from their mothers and raised in cages, but brought to slaughter after an idyllic, if short, life at pasture. It's more ethical to eat it than not, the argument goes, since farmers can't afford to raise most male dairy calves. “It’s a resource that needs to be utilized,” one tells the Washington Post. More»

NYT investigation shows industry practices that leave lots to be desired

(NEWSER) - A nausea-inducing feature in the New York Times tells you more than you wanted to know about what's actually in commercially produced hamburger, and why it's especially vulnerable, despite FDA regulation and several fatal outbreaks in recent years, to E. coli contamination. The Times follows the case of a 22-year-old dance instructor paralyzed after an infection, finding that a single hamburger could contain beef products from several slaughterhouses on several continents. More»