Since being introduced to pressure cooking and sous vide a few years ago, I've noticed something funny about my beef purchasing (and cooking) practices. My favorite cuts of beef -- indeed, the only beef I buy -- is either expensive and tender (i.e. ribeye, striploin, tenderloin) or cheap and tough (i.e. cheek, short rib, brisket, chuck, tongue, shank, oxtail). There are a few cuts that fall somewhere in the middle like flank and skirt steak, as well as the teres major muscle. But apart from the cuts I've just explicitly mentioned, I really don't buy much else.
So my question is... what do you fine folks do with mid-range cuts like top round and sirloin? These don't have the fat, flavor, and connective tissue that makes me love the really cheap stuff. But they also aren't especially tender either. So I don't really know what to do with them and consequently never purchase them. When I think about cooking with these cuts, there's invariably another cut on the animal that I think would be better for the task, even if it would be more expensive or more technically challenging to cook). Are there any recipes or purposes for which these mid-range cuts of beef outshine their competitors? Or are we almost always better off using something else?
