Bistec Para Asar from Harvey's Fresh Market

JeffB wrote:No slam felt. Given some of the recent postings around here, you might be wise to assume chatter without any basis is taking place. But you might trust Don Santander, if not me.

I shop frequently in Spanish-language-first groceries and butchers and have most of my life (though the Cuban and PR meat lingo of FL varies from the largely Mexican terms here in Chicago). I also bounced this off of my irritatingly grammarian (in Spanish and English) mother in law -- a great cook, shopper, and Spanish speaker. The term, as Santander aptly explained by analogy to similarly vague and/or useless English terms like "stew meat" or "ground beef," doesn't appear to connote any particular, recognized butcher's cut.

You might find this link helpful:

http://flavorsofthesun.blogspot.com/sea ... 20de%20Res

There might be a recognized Chicago-hispanic meaning for bistec para asar, but my bet is that any meat counter using that term is looking to keep its options wide open.

None here either. Jeff's usually righer'n I am (broader experience with Latino communities in different regions, I just have Chi-town). If I remember, I'll either bring that chart or just refresh some of my butchery vocabulary (contrast with butchered vocabulary) and try to pinpoint the canonical Chicago asar cut with Tony's; what we really need, and where all of our knowledge is limited, is the story straight from the Harvey's staff.

As to arrachera, my experience is that even your garden variety mid-American butchers don't agree on where the flank ends and the skirt begins, or if the skirt always necessarily equals the plate (not to get into where the short plate begins, and whether the hanger steak just resembles the flank, or actually is part of the flank, depending on what you call the flank). To me, it's all undercow.

What I can tell you is that Tony's arrachera is what I call as flank (meatier, more completely covered with a thin white layer of fat and gristle that has to be trimmed, and a longer, narrower grain to the meat) than skirt, which is in keeping with what the menus translate arrachera to in my travels in Mexico. The best arrachera I ever had was on the beach at Paraiso de la Bonita in the Riviera Maya right after Hurricane Emily. It was translated as "flank," and I wouldn't trade it for all the California wood pigeons and Normandy blue lobsters in the world.