Rumplesteakskin (or, "Spinning Cheap Beef Into Gold")

Jaden's Steamy Kitchen is a favorite foody blog of mine. I love the way she skips all the irritating pretentiousness that permeates some how-to sites. She specializes in what she calls "Modern Asian Home Cooking," or high-end Asian eats with low-end quickie preparation. It certainly helps that she's ridiculously funny and good with the "whys" of something works. She's just like Alton Brown, except for the simple fact that she's hawt.

Um, anyhow...

I was scrolling back through previous articles and came across this gem: How to Turn Cheap "Choice" Steaks into Gucci "Prime" Steaks. This combines two of my favorite things:

1. A really great steak, and
2. Saving money

The secret is simple: Salt, and lots of it. Adding salt liberally to a steak for a short period of time brings about a tender juiciness in the meat that may be lacking due to its more common origins. You salt up your cheaper cut of beef, let it sit for about an hour, rinse off the salt, dry it off, then onto the grill it goes.

The steak's salt bath doesn't translate into a salty steak. Jaden brilliantly illustrates why this is so through state-of-the-art JPEG illustrations.

The comment thread is nice and healthy, with plenty of excellent successes (along with some good illustrative failures). If you're up for a little cow-based experiment, voila ici. Grab a chunk of cheap choice meat and get to work!