Shopping in grocery stores these days is like playing dodgeball with bulldozers. In almost every aisle, there is a barge loaded with individual containers as store employees select items for on-line orders. It’s a pain getting around those things, as they take up much of the aisle space, but I really feel sorry for those who let others pick out their food. They miss the best deals of all. Like day-old filet mignon steaks. Often, whether in Sam’s, Kroger’s, or other grocery stores, I see filet mignon, tenderloin steaks, reduced because they have lost that bright red color. You can then buy a steak that costs $16 a pound for about half that price, and that’s a real deal.
Modern butchers add nitrites to keep meat red as it bonds to the myoglobin and acts as a substitute for the oxygen. Oxygen and sodium nitrate both turn myoglobin red, but nitrate attaches with a more stable bond and so the color lasts longer. For some reason, the filets lose that redness quicker than other steaks in the bins and most customers shy away from “gray steaks”. Not me. Up to a point, the longer they age, the better they get. Steaks at Peter Gallagher’s in New York, for example, are aged almost to the point of rotting. So, a day-old steak is no big deal.
Almost always, when I see reduced tenderloins, I buy them, and if I’m not ready for steaks that night, I freeze them.
Though I really prefer the flavor a rib-eye or a T-bone to a tenderloin, the filets are much less fatting. I can eat a 10-oz. filet (sans a baked potato and sour cream) and lose weight the next day.
In todays’ world of spiraling prices, don’t hesitate to buy day-old tenderloins. It’s the best deal in the grocery store.