Where's the beef?

My bride dragged home some shell steaks from a local market.
Since its 4 degrees here, I ghetto dry aged them a couple days and then did the old Cast iron pan sear and then into the oven trick. ..................HORRIBLE! '..........................
As tough as could be imagined. Here's the question- I have been seeing a lot of ungraded meat labeled as ANGUS is this somehow exempt from USDA grading? These bad boys would have been select at best... so what does the brain trust know about this Angus "grade" beef.
The other two steaks are in the SV for 30 hours, lets see if we can save them.

 

Can't speak to your specifics. Here when beef prices are to good to be true, it''s usually locally marketed and is from dairy cattle that are not producing milk anymore.
I''ll hear through grapevine that _____ market has ribeyes for 3.99/lb! Yeah. Guess it's wet aging if it takes place while it's still on the cow...

 

My understanding is that Angus is a breed, and has nothing to do with the grade.

Getting a USDA inspection of beef for quality is a voluntary thing (and there's a fee associated with it) but there's not a requirement for the stores to list a grade. If they DO show a quality grade, e.g. "Prime", it's illegal to misrepresent what they're selling. BUT--they can call something "Prime Value" and sell you something less than prime.

If there's not a label on it, there's a chance that the meat doesn't meet the standards of "prime" or "choice"; if it did, they'd probably want to let you know you're getting a higher quality beef. This isn't always the case. With grass fed beef, the meat's going to look different than grain fed beef and may end up with a lower grade since the scoring system was built around grain fed beef, so the farmers might not want a grade put on their high quality meat.

 

Thanks for that info folks. I pulled the steaks and they seem pretty tender, we will see.