I'd like to try to make this at home and I just have a couple of questions.

1) Will tenderloin from Whole Foods work, or does it have to be "special" in some way?

2) I like to think that I'm pretty good with a knife, but I haven't taken any classes or anything. Will I end up turning the meat into a liquidy mush if I try to cut it up myself? Should I ask the folks at WF to grind it for me instead?

Thanks!

It would be tough to turn it to mush with a knife. If you have a grinder set it to medium.

The meat doesn't have to be "special" just high quality and fresh.

I wouldn't use tenderloin -- I prefer something a little more rich and flavorful, like a sirloin.

I've made it with a knife before, comes out fine but is a little labor intensive. Getting a courser grind at the butcher works fine.

Hmm. I suppose I just assumed that tenderloin was the way to go.

I have seen many recipes call for tenderloin as the cut for this, but I agree with WM that sirloin is the way to go.

More flavor, and less likely to turn to mush.

Thanks for all the advicce. Cuts of meat and the steaks they produce often confuse the heck out of me. I know that there are several cuts taken from the sirloin, but can somebody point me in the right direction for what market ready cut I should look for?

I wonder what cut Circle Bistro uses. That's some damn fine bloody meat.

Made some tonight using the recipe from the Gourmet cookbook, and it turned out really well. Sirloin certainly seems to be the ideal cut here, and cutting it by knife did take awhile, but was worth it. How great is it to learn that you can make one of your favorite restaurant dishes (that usually goes for $15-20) at home for three bucks? I know this applies to endless menu items, but for some reason I had a mental block against steak tartare.

Now that it is gone, how am I going to resist making this for breakfast?

It's actually really good for breakfast - especially the morning after. Think of it as a more elegant steak & eggs.

Was the Gourmet version classic, or did they try to get cute with it?

So how long does it keep for? If I make two servings, one for dinner and one for breakfast the next day, I'm good to go?

The Gourmet recipe was fairly traditional: capers, horseradish, mustard, s+p, worcestershire, and green onion. There was supposed to be some radish and watercress on the plate for show but I left that out. No egg, either. Do the rest of you typically go the egg route?

I like the flavor and texture when egg yolks are included. And it should be fine if refrigerated overnight covered with plastic wrap.

Damn this is making me hungry.

The gourmet recipe calls for chopping the meat and in a separate bowl mixing all the seasonings, etc. together and then adding them to the meat. So methinks another option for breakfast tartare would be to chop the meat the night before and separately mix the seasonings, then blend the two together (plus yolk) in the morning.

Maybe we should do a tartare tasting at some point...

I'm going to give the Les Halles recipe for steak tartare a shot tonite. One question that I've contemplated is whether or not using dry aged beef is safe or even desirable. Any thoughts on it?

Ostensibly, one of the reasons why dry aged beef is so tender is that the enzymes have been to work. In other words, the meat has rotted under controlled circumstances. I wonder how this translates in terms of food safety.

Dude, it's the raw eggs that are going to have you sluicing out of both ends all night. A few beef enzymes (which one assumes are present to some degree even in non-aged beef) are nuthin'.