Ultimately the best way to get a great steak on the plate is to buy a great steak from the butcher in the first place. Here are some observations on steaks from butchers:
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marbling - everybody agrees that more marbling = more flavour and more tenderness. Unless you are on a health drive, go for the steak which has the best marbling. I don't eat steak too often (less than once a month) so I don't worry too much if it has some fat in it. A bit of fat is OK on occasion, just don't make a habit of it.
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grass fed vs. feedlot. Grass fed means that the cows were allowed to roam and graze, meaning they got more exercise. More exercise means more flavour. Unfortunately, it
sometimes means less marbling - but marbling depends on other factors as well, e.g. the type of feed and the breed of cow.
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Slaughter - it has been proven that quick, humane slaughter produces superior meat to other forms of slaughter (e.g. halal and kosher methods). Both halal and kosher slaughter may not involve stunning the animal prior to the neck arteries being severed, so there is a greater risk of suffering to the animal, irrespective of what their clerics may tell you. The reason why quick slaughter produces superior meat - when an animal is panicked, it increases blood supply to the muscles and tells the muscles to use energy (in the form of ATP) in preparation of the "fight or flight" response. When the animal is slaughtered, the depleted energy supply causes rigor mortis to occur earlier and produces a more rigid form of rigor mortis, such that muscle fibres might be torn. The residual lactic acid also has deleterious effects on meat quality. All butchers will tell you that their meat was humanely slaughtered, but you want to make sure you do not buy halal or kosher meat. Unless you have to.
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Aging. It is essential for beef cuts to be aged, so that they go past rigor mortis and start becoming tender. There are two ways to age meat - in a vacuum bag (cryovac) or dry aging in a humidity and temperature controlled cellar. The advantage of Cryovac is that there is minimum moisture loss, so the meat is heavier and can be sold with more profits. Dry aging actually dries out the surface of the meat, which needs to be cut off and discarded producing more wastage - so the meat is more expensive to sell. But the results are well worth it - see
this article.
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Cut. Different cuts of meat produce different results, but that is the subject of another topic.