Beef, and Reverse Price Discrimination

A tried and true technique that retailers use to drum up business is to have a “sale” – a supposedly temporary reduction in the price that seems to be quite successful, especially in certain nuclear family members of mine, in creating a sense of greater “value” and thus the drive to buy the item in question. Whatever that item happens to be.

I suppose that’s just in line with the adage that a man will pay $2 for a $1 item they need, and a woman will pay $1 for a $2 item they don’t. Like most stereotypes, I’m sure this doesn’t actually hold in most cases, but it certainly does in mine.  But there wasn’t a starker example than running around at Costco about a month ago. While Valerie was keeping her eye out for prices ending in .97 (indicating that the item is on clearance, even though there are no other markings to suggest this), I was stunned by a price tag higher much higher than I’d seen for any beef sold by Costco. In fact, at $38.99/kg, it was close to double the regular Costco price when buying a whole beef tenderloin (which normally is the most expensive cut there). Naturally, I had to try it:

Note that I’m absolutely not a luxury goods shopper, who assumes that paying more means I’m getting more. In fact, I’m averse to anything remotely associated with “luxury” because I assume I’m paying a ridiculous premium for brand or “prestige” or something else that doesn’t actually help me in any way.  I still cannot even begin to fathom $1,000 Louis Vuitton handbags (and fortunately, neither can Valerie). But one thing that I really like about Costco is that pretty much nothing is there to rip you off when you’re not being careful. While I’m sure there’s some variation in their margins between items, almost the entire warehouse seems like it’s priced at cost plus some pretty reasonable amount. So while I could easily ignore a “Black Angus AAA USDA Certified Kobe Cut” label elsewhere as a marketing gimmick, I assumed here that the beef must just be really good. Was it?

Indeed, this beef truly was (at least in my opinion). I’m sure this picture of it is indistinguishable from the cheapest cut from the cheapest supermarket – but hey, for me, the picture reminds me how great it tasted when I tried it for the first time (it’s redder than it looks here, which you’d be able to see if only I had white plates):

I liked the beef so much that I was determined to serve it at my going-away party at work, despite the significant logistical difficulty in doing so (no cooking is permitted anywhere in the facility, and the cafeteria refuses to allow any outside food to touch their equipment even if you pay them). Fortunately, with lots of help from Valerie and my father-in-law, we wound up being able to do so.

Several people asked how the beef was cooked – which was perfect, because they must have assumed I had some cooking skill if they asked how I cooked it instead of the more relevant question of “where did you buy the beef”. Still, the answer to the cooking part of the question is nonetheless interesting. I definitely do mess things up while cooking and would be virtually guaranteed to do so in trying to have enough beef for about 60 people (some of whom prefer rare or even blue, with others preferring well done). Fortunately, I was lucky to have a nearly mistake-proof means of cooking things – a sous vide cooker:

The principle behind sous vide is quite simple. Normally, you cook meat under relatively high heat until the center reaches a certain temperature (60C/140F for medium rare, for example). Normally, for steaks, you learn how long a steak of a given thickness needs at a given power/heat setting – or you bake it and use a meat thermometer (e.g. for a roast). All the variables involved make it hard to be consistent, especially if the cut itself is not 100% uniform. Cooking at a lower temperature for longer dries out the meat, so you can’t just set an oven for 140F and leave the beef in there till it’s cooked all the way through, unless you are continually basting, etc.

With sous vide cooking, you vacuum seal the meat (so there is no moisture loss) in a plastic bag, and immerse the bag in water that is set to exactly the temperature you want the meat to come out at. If you set it 60C/140F, and leave the meat in there long enough, your meat will be exactly that temperature from edge to edge. Often with steaks you talk about what the center is like – here, the entire piece will be exactly the same consistency. You still need high heat to sear the outside to get the finish you want, but the inside will be exactly what you want – every time, with no variation. You do need to give it long enough to be consistent throughout, but there’s minimal impact to leaving the meat in an extra 20 minutes so you have a very wide margin for error.

The particular machine I use is the Sous Vide Supreme – because when I bought it, it was the only thing available. However, I first experimented with this method by hand squeezing some ziploc bags, and using a pot of water and a meat thermometer. This was very high effort (you need to manually turn on and off the stove to maintain the target temperature, and stir constantly to avoid hotspots), but it produced results I liked enough to buy the machine pictured above. Since there was little competition at the time, I paid a premium – $400 – for the machine, sealer, and a few extras. There’s a few more options now, and since the machine looks like it should cost less than $100 to make, the newer options are a decent amount less expensive. Alas, Costco didn’t have a low-margin version, so I actually had to have this expensive thing shipped from the US!

No doubt, a skilled chef could produce better results without this (though this method originated from the kitchens of restaurants, often high end ones). And a barbecue lover will undoubtedly miss the flavor they get off the grill. Still, I’m glad I had this around, and the roughly 8kg of beef that my co-workers consumed suggests they weren’t too unhappy about it either.