Category Archives: Product Reviews

Wagyuman

The Wagyu Man e-shop is currently offering 10% off all orders, and a free order of chuck roll wagyu shabu shabu with each wagyu beef order!

The otoro tuna is insane, and has marbling that looks more like beef than fish.

And the beef? Well, check out these flat iron steaks. INSANE!

 

Babylon Village Meat Market

If you’ve been following along with my meat adventures on Instagram, you might have seen me tag or mention Babylon Village Meat Market in some of my posts since the summer. This market carries some really high quality beef, including rare beef from Japan like snow beef, olive fed wagyu, etc. Marbled to holy hell.

 

In addition to the rare stuff, they also have plenty of prime, dry-aged steaks, and everything else you might expect to find at a village meat shop, from salami to sandwiches, from porchetta to potato salad to produce to prepared pasta. They’re even launching their own brand of jerky, which is insanely tender and delicious.

Below is a nice unboxing video I made, from when the owner sent me a care package wishing me good luck in the new apartment. I was blown away by his generosity.

I can’t wait to dig into more of this stuff!

BABYLON VILLAGE MEAT MARKET
85 Deer Park Ave
Babylon, NY 11702

The Otto Wilde Grill + Promo Code

This thing is a BEAST!

This is pretty much as close as it gets to having a professional level steakhouse broiler at home. With ripping flames that reach as high as 1500ºF, you are putting a serious crust on your steaks when you toss them in here.

The best thing is to see for yourself just how incredible this monster is in action:

More here, from when we christened it at our annual “Meatfest” in the Summer:

I’m so into this thing that I have two of them, the “Otto Lite” and the Pro, yet I have nowhere to use them. I stashed them at friends places, and they reap the benefits more than I do. HA! But if you’re interested in this amazing piece of equipment that will take your steak game to the next level, you can get 10% off with promo code Johnny10. DO IT! You are going to love this thing. Click HERE to explore the Otto Wilde products.

Strassburger Steaks

Strassburger Steaks‘ “Steakhouse Collection” of home delivery chops is wonderful. Thick, aged cuts of highly marbled beef are vac sealed and shipped right to your door in tight styrofoam coolers, surrounded by ice packs.

The first thing I made was a rib eye. I overcooked it a little, but here’s my video:

It was really flavorful, and the aged profile really came through nicely.

Next up, I did a Philadelphia Italian-inspired twist on taco night: ground beef, blue cheese and broccoli rabe.

These were incredible! The beef was 80/20, really brightly colored pink and delicious.

Then I tried a “dry-brine” on a highly marbled porterhouse. Here’s a pic before brining.

And after:

Check out the video:

As you can probably see, with the exception of the area right near the bone on the strip side, this technique made for a really great Maillard brown crust.

I undercooked it a bit, but thoroughly enjoyed.

I still have a lot more to try, but this is a great start. I definitely recommend these steaks for home delivery. And don’t forget, I wrote an article about Suzy Strassburger and this company way back. Check it out HERE if you haven’t read it yet.

The Stand

Wyoming Whiskey teamed up with pitmaster Tyson Ho (from Arrogant Swine in Brooklyn) for a killer meal at The Stand near Union Square.

To get the juices flowing, we sipped on the Wyoming Whiskey bourbon as well as a cocktail made with Delirium Tremens and the whiskey. Very nice.

We started with a delicious Brazilian style elk tartare that was paired with a herbaceous frozen cocktail called a batida that featured the whiskey.

Then we moved on to a Filipino style BBQ quail with a smoked old fashioned. This course was awesome.

The smoked leg of venison was nice, tender and thinly sliced, served with Bengali spices and a fat washed whiskey sour.

Next up was nori wrapped rib eye and BBQ sweetbreads. An odd combo for sure, but the sweetbreads were my favorite bites of the meal. This was paired with a nori and mushroom infused Manhattan.

Dessert was a nice blackberry and vanilla ice cream pie/crumble with a swig of the single barrel.

I really dug this meal. Most of this is not available on the regular menu at the Stand, but based on tasting chef Harold Villarosa’s cooking alongside Ho’s cooking, I would go back for sure.

THE STAND
116 East 16th St
New York, NY 10003

Zoe’s Meats

These chubby little meat stick snacks were good!

Apparently they own or partially own Two Hot Chick’s jerky as well, which I have yet to try. I will get on that soon. But as far as Zoe’s goes, I liked the jalapeño stick the best of the three pictured here.

Aufschnitt Meats

These Aufschnitt meat bars are really good.

I tried a few flavors at a trade show and was hooked. This pineapple one is killer. If you see these, pick some up! You won’t be disappointed.

Ayoba-Yo

I’m a big fan of this biltong! Ayoba-yo packs a wallop of flavor, and I really liked the beef sticks as well as the thin sliced whole muscle. I will definitely be getting more of this stuff. I saw them at a trade show and snatched up a few samples:

Definitely worth your time!

Kize Bars

I recently got one of these Kize energy/protein bars from a trade show as a sample.

It’s a bit small and still has a bunch of calories (200), but it was nice and peanut buttery. Tasty.

I probably wouldn’t pick this up on my own simply because they are not fulfilling enough for a snack to hold me over between meals. I need something more substantial. But if you aren’t watching your caloric intake, these are very easy to crush. I could have taken down five or six with ease. And the good thing is that a portion of each sale goes to help those in need. That’s nice.

Tomer Kosher Beef Sticks

My sister and her husband gave these to me for my birthday.

So far, I’m really digging them. I’ve tried pepper and jalapeño. They’re not greasy or waxy, like many beef sticks are. They’re also really tender. No yanking or tugging, like men often do with their hard beef sticks. These are soft. Great product!