Is there a better Beef Steak deal at Costco than this?

Sounds like good steak, lousy cook. Good steak does not have to be cooked well done. Inside of uncut meat is sterile and bacteria on surface is destroyed by cooking.

What makes beef a higher grade is a higher fat content. You have Choice, if it was Prime, there would be even more fat but it would taste better (more tender etc)

Maybe you should be buying London Broil or some other cut with a lower fat content if that bothers you. BTW $7 a pound is not bad for steak.

The butcher at Costco explained to me that their "Choice" is "almost prime" in that Costco guarantees "choice or better". Dunno if that's accurate but he told me that when he went back to get a slab for me of the New York Beef Loin Top, Choice.

He explained there are two types of fat, which is the stuff you cut off (of which I cut off about 5 pounds on that 15 pound slab), and what he called "marbling" which is the internal fat stripes.

He said the marbling on this cut he gave me is prime but Costco doesn't label it prime.

But is that "more fat" the marbling? Or is it all that fat I cut off the sides?

I am confused by your statement because the fat I cut off was pure fat (as you can see from the photo). Nobody eats pure fat, do they?

The "marbling" is fat that was kept but that was "inside" the steak whereas the fat I cut off was outside.

I was wondering, because Costco sells cut steaks, about 5 or so at a time, at about 7 dollars a pound, whereas mine was 5 dollars a pound for a

Lousy cook is a given since I am a lousy cook. Normally, I read we should grill a steak, but I don't have an indoor grill. The kid doesn't like the "burnt" flavor anyway as he's grown up with my baked steaks for years and he gets set in his ways.

I go by price mostly, and quality, which is a balance.

At Safeway, the steak is more expensive than at Costco, so I get it at Costco but then I have to buy 15 pounds at a time to get the 5-dollar a pound price for beef top loin choice grade (the butcher usually has to get it for me as they don't have it on the floor most of the time).

I tried Costco tritip, but it was too chewy (maybe I cooked it wrong). I don't want to get a brisket or other tough meat since I don't know how to cook them such that they won't be chewy.

I never know what temperature to aim for.

I generally aim for 150 degrees F, but, I'm open to whatever degrees makes sense since the colder the better when it comes to flavor but the warmer the better when it comes to food safety.

You are right about the marbling but for a cow to get that much marbling in the muscle, it will accumulate a lot of surface fat. Costco buys that fat when they buy the primal and they in turn sell it to you to get the price per pound down. The steaks in the foam tray have most of that trimmed off. I end up feeding that kind of fat to my dog, a little bit at a time in his dry chow so it does not go to waste. He loves it. If you know a bird lover, they feed this suet to the birds in the winter but, again, they don't need that much. You also will attract rats. A roof rat can get to just about anything a squirrel can get to.

Of course they do. Not JUST the fat but along with the meat. And I'm not talking about the fat within the muscle but that on the outside or, sometimes, the inside. One of the things I miss in this new era of cryopak meat is the bit of suet that was tucked in under the tenderloin in a porterhouse. Now that and the tail are both gone. Ditto the various cuts of sirloin.

It is not unusual to have prime beef shipped in when dealing with choice or better. Where I worked we had 'premium' which denoted the top

Marbling.

We were told to trim all but one eighth an inch off unless the customer wanted more fat. That was a little more than the thickness of the steak knife (butcher's knife).

You can render that fat down to tallow and use it for making great tasting French fries (and other deep fried stuff).

Tri-Tip and briskit are tough cuts. They need to be cooked low and slow for a long time to break down the collegen which is what makes meat tough. Cook them fast like a regular steak and they will be very tough. When served, they also need to be cut in thin slices across the grain, not with the grain.

Costco sells Prime (restaurant quality) grade steak - look for the blue tray. They are very expensive though, so you do need to know how to cook a steak properly and definitely not any more than medium, preferably medium rare.

Some Walmarts sell Choice grade - look for the black tray. Both are better than Select or supermarket ungraded steak.

Marbling is the flecks (not streaks) of fat in beef. You do want to trim the exterior fat, while leaving a small band around the edge. That renders down during cooking and gives the steak more flavor. If trimmed down properly, what's left is eaten with the beef, again for flavor.

There are plenty of You Tube videos on this... :)

Publix uses an ungraded steak for the most part and it runs the gamut from something close to prime down to dog food so you really need to know what you are looking at. The best time to buy is counterintuitive. It is when they are having a super sale (right now it is rib roast for $6.99/lb). On these sales they move a lot of meat and there are some pearls in the case. I always laugh when I see some dumb woman saying, "look at all the fat" and they pick up something that is pure fire engine red. It seems they trim those particularly close so the dumb folks will grab them up. "Here is a nice one, no fat at all". I bet you need a hack saw to cut that if they cook it "well done" (another thing I see these snowbirds do). I either cook it as a roast or cut it into steaks.

My wife does the grocery shopping. I tell her that too watch my weight and keep cholesterol down that I prefer not to eat more than a quarter pound of red meat per day if any.

You are being given a lot of good advice in this thread. Take advantage of it, watch videos and learn how to cook various cuts of meat. Cheaper tougher cuts when properly cooked can be very tender and tasty. Some cheap cuts may have so much fat to trim that the good meaty part actually costs more.

My wife is a good cook and nobody taught her. Her mother did all the kitchen work herself and did not involve the kids. Took her awhile after we married but she learned it herself.

Good beef can be eaten raw or just seared on the outside. As mentioned, the inside is sterile.

I take a well seared steak off the grill at 110 and let it rest. A beef roast or your baked steak can go to about 125 and let rest.

Tough cuts (chuck, rump roast, brisket) for stew, pot roast bbq brisket should be cooked at low temperature for a few hours or more. That breaks down the collagen and makes the meat tender. It has to reach

Pork tenderloin 130 to 135. Pork loin 140 t0 150. Pork butt or shoulder, 185 to break down the collagen.

Chicken 160

This Science American says less but I don't know the details further.

The Complex Origins of Food Safety Rules--Yes, You Are Overcooking Your Food: U.S. agencies recommend temperatures and times far beyond those supported by science

I like that idea of "rendering" the fat to "tallow" (whatever that process is) because I do make potato wedges.

After parboiling the potato wedges, I dust them in flour and spices and then I freeze them for frying in vegetable oil.

What is the process of making that tallow? Is only 5 pounds of fat enough?

Cut the fat into small pieces, or grind it if you have a meat grinder, and then cook over a low heat until all of the fat has turned into oil. Add a small amount of water right at first just to keep the fat from sticking to the bottom of your pan, it will completely evaporate before you are done. Just strain the oil to remove what solids are left. You'll know when all of the water is gone when it no longer makes bubbles. You can do this in a slow cooker if you wish, but I usually do it on the stove-top. It does take several hours, but no real work.

I don't recall any food stories where people got food poisoning from steaks that were even done rare. Like Frank said with a solid piece of meat, bacteria are generally confined to the outside, which even when going for a rare temp, winds up way hotter, unless you're using sous-vide method or something similar. The bad stories are typically with ground beef or cross contamination. Like the big mess at Chipotle. IDK if they ever figured out what was going on there, but all there meat has always been well done, so I suspect it was improper handling, storage, etc of some ingredients. Ground beef is the worst, because any bacteria can be in all of it, so if the center winds up rare, it's not enough to kill the bacteria.

Turning brisket into corned beef or bbq is a classic example of that,

While I agree with the basic principle put forth, "sterile" it isn't. Unless it's been irradiated or similarly processed. IT's just that it won't have the worst of those bad bacteria inside that can get on the outside during processing or throughout ground beef. But any viruses, bacteria that were in the cow's blood when it was slaughtered will be there. Fortunately almost all those seem to have no effect on humans, Mad Cow disease being an exception.