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I love steak. I don’t eat it very often, maybe once or twice a month because of the negative “side-effects”, but when I do I enjoy it immensely. I also never eat steak at a restaurant. Eating out, steak in my price range is almost sure to be of less quality than I get at home. Eating at a premium steak house isn’t a palatable option either, no pun intended, and in fact, I’ve never been to one. It’s extremely expensive, more than I can eat in one sitting, and reheating leftover steak that I might take home in a box is just not appetizing, making it even less of a value. So I’ve been perfectly satisfied with the USDA Choice beef I get from Sam’s Club at a price that is sometimes cheaper than I can get lesser beef from a grocery chain. I don’t usually pay attention to the price per pound, but I think I average between $11-$13. The meat I get there is tasty and very tender. I’ve never had any complaints, other than the limited cuts available. My favorite steak is a porterhouse, which Sam’s doesn’t sell. I’m limited to boneless ribeye, New York strip, or tenderloin. A porterhouse steak is a New York strip on one side of the bone and a fillet mignon on the other, so it’s really two steaks in one.

Never having eaten a “premium” steak though (think Morton’s or Ruth’s Criss), I was always curious how much better it might be than what I’m used to. I figured if I ever got the chance to get some of that meat at home, I would try it. Now granted, I don’t have any advanced equipment that some of these steak houses might have to cook one of those steaks to perfection, but I do a pretty good job with what I have, and it still won’t change the flavor of the beef itself. A friend turned me on to an outfit that has been supplying USDA Prime dry-aged beef exclusively to restaurants for a long time and now was marketing to the general public as well. I’m not going to name names here just to avoid any trouble, because what I’m going to write is strictly my opinion, but you should be able to figure it out with a little research. Their prices are exorbitant, but are all-inclusive. The packing and shipping of frozen beef has to be a big part of it I suppose. Now dry aging is supposed to impart some kind of magical textural and flavor transformation in beef which has been supposedly unavailable to the home cook until now. I have long intended to try it, but up to now couldn’t justify the expense. However, this past week was my birthday, I always treat myself to something special this time of year (no one else will) and I hadn’t really spent much money on myself so I decided to splurge. I got on the web and ordered a pack of four 20-ounce dry-aged porterhouse steaks for (gasp) $189.

FedEx dropped off the box two days after I ordered. It was pretty big for four steaks, but inside was a Styrofoam cooler, and inside of that, a small box packed in dry ice. There was still plenty of the dry ice left for playing around with, an extra bonus. Inside the small box were the four individually vacuum packed steaks, frozen solid. They looked a little smaller than I expected, but I took one out to place in the refrigerator for thawing but weighed it first, and it was almost 21 ounces. OK, I put the rest away in the freezer. They claim the frozen steaks will be good for up to a year in there.

So I fired up the grill that night and cooked myself a $47.50 steak, which is probably what it would have cost me to eat it in a restaurant with all the trimmings as well, making my original argument against steak houses seem pretty foolish. I could have a bottle of wine at home that definitely would have cost me at least three times as much though. I noticed it didn’t smell any different to me, dry-aged or not. It looked to have slightly better marbling than the New York strip at Sam’s. Anyway, I pulled it off at medium-rare and the moment of truth arrived.

Cutting into the fillet portion, it was obvious I probably didn’t really need the knife. Though the beef from Sam’s is almost as tender, this was probably the most tender steak I’ve ever had. I anxiously wondered what wonderful taste experiences I would unlock as I brought the fork to my mouth with a nice crusty-on-the-outside, pink-and-juicy-on-the-inside hunk of hugely expensive meat. What I got was disappointment. It tasted no different, not better or worse, than any of the beef I buy at Sam’s. Bite after bite, I just kept saying to myself, I will never, ever spend this much on a steak again. The only difference I could discern was the tenderness, and that really only extended to the fillet side, I couldn’t actually say the same for the strip side.

While the steak was certainly tender and delicious, there was no way on this green Earth it was worth even a dollar or two more than what I already have available. Not to me anyway, and certainly not at 4 to 5 times the price. If you have a Sam’s Club nearby and are not a member and you love beef, you owe it to yourself to get a membership, because you’ll make up the $40 annual cost in meat purchases alone. Truthfully, that is the only reason I’m still a member.