Difference between TA westbound (UK->NYC) and eastbound (NYC->UK)

[tacticalbanjo]

53 minutes ago, buchanan101 said:

You mean it has the required hormones in it 🫢

 

I guess it's marketing as I doubt very much that US standards for beef are better than UK ones... the UK having to accept US standards is one of the many stumbling blocks in any trade deal

 

Yep - (see below)  UK standards higher so why advertise as USDA?

 

Hormones as you suggest, and antibiotic levels

 

https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/brexit-trade-deals-how-uk-food-standards-compare-to-the-world-a4NCx9G2qFJy

US beef and UK beef taste difference. US beef is generally grain fed and has a much higher fat content which generally makes it more tender and since fat is flavour, more flavoursome. UK beef is grass fed which makes it leaner. Australian beef is often grass fed and grain finished which makes for a best of both worlds product. It's horses for courses really, I don't think there are any significant nutritional differences. I like US and Australian beef for long, slow cooking methods like smoking as the fat effectively bastes the meat while cooking. UK beef tends to need to be braised to get to the same level of tenderness with long cooking methods.

 

TL;DR: There are some dishes where you might prefer US beef to UK beef because the different production methods give different flavours and fat content.

[exlondoner]

1 minute ago, tacticalbanjo said:

US beef and UK beef taste difference. US beef is generally grain fed and has a much higher fat content which generally makes it more tender and since fat is flavour, more flavoursome. UK beef is grass fed which makes it leaner. Australian beef is often grass fed and grain finished which makes for a best of both worlds product. It's horses for courses really, I don't think there are any significant nutritional differences. I like US and Australian beef for long, slow cooking methods like smoking as the fat effectively bastes the meat while cooking. UK beef tends to need to be braised to get to the same level of tenderness with long cooking methods.

 

TL;DR: There are some dishes where you might prefer US beef to UK beef because the different production methods give different flavours and fat content.

But the hormones? You can’t ignore that.

[buchanan101]

2 minutes ago, tacticalbanjo said:

US beef and UK beef taste difference. US beef is generally grain fed and has a much higher fat content which generally makes it more tender and since fat is flavour, more flavoursome. UK beef is grass fed which makes it leaner. Australian beef is often grass fed and grain finished which makes for a best of both worlds product. It's horses for courses really, I don't think there are any significant nutritional differences. I like US and Australian beef for long, slow cooking methods like smoking as the fat effectively bastes the meat while cooking. UK beef tends to need to be braised to get to the same level of tenderness with long cooking methods.

 

TL;DR: There are some dishes where you might prefer US beef to UK beef because the different production methods give different flavours and fat content.

"it's horses for courses"....

 

Surely that's France? (or Linda McCartney ready meals)

[tacticalbanjo]

42 minutes ago, exlondoner said:

But the hormones? You can’t ignore that.

At the moment with no trade deal, USDA beef has to comply with UK regulations to be imported. That might change in the future. But if you buy it in the UK, it should be hormone free. Although as pointed out, it might be horse instead!

[exlondoner]

27 minutes ago, tacticalbanjo said:

At the moment with no trade deal, USDA beef has to comply with UK regulations to be imported. That might change in the future. But if you buy it in the UK, it should be hormone free. Although as pointed out, it might be horse instead!

In Mantua, the speciality is donkey. Very nice, I’m told.

Edited Thursday at 11:28 AM by exlondoner

[buchanan101]

23 minutes ago, tacticalbanjo said:

At the moment with no trade deal, USDA beef has to comply with UK regulations to be imported. That might change in the future. But if you buy it in the UK, it should be hormone free. Although as pointed out, it might be horse instead!

So presumably USDA beef on a QA cruise out of Southampton has been imported and not done some funny where it's not officially been imported...

 

...as an aside I found the use of keycard/ID cards instead of passports to leave and rejoin the ship interesting - I wondered how it would happen. (No stamping passports in and out of Norway 3 times) Given that there were no passport checks arriving back at Southampton I guess we'd never officially left the UK and were loaned to Norway with Cunard effectively as guarantors that we were only ashore for a day...not sure what happens if people miss the departure and are ashore with no passport

[TheOldBear]

3 hours ago, buchanan101 said:

So presumably USDA beef on a QA cruise out of Southampton has been imported and not done some funny where it's not officially been imported...

 

...as an aside I found the use of keycard/ID cards instead of passports to leave and rejoin the ship interesting - I wondered how it would happen. (No stamping passports in and out of Norway 3 times) Given that there were no passport checks arriving back at Southampton I guess we'd never officially left the UK and were loaned to Norway with Cunard effectively as guarantors that we were only ashore for a day...not sure what happens if people miss the departure and are ashore with no passport

 

On our first TA our passports acquired stamps on board from UK Border folks, at the LeHavre terminal [before and after a shore excursion] and last when arriving back in Brooklyn. It was then time to renew the passports and our current ones have only been checked and stamped electronically.

Some ports will need a government issued id before you get to location where the ship's card may be scanned and checked against the shipboard computer.

If you miss departure from a port, the ship's agent [details in the day's newsletter] will have your passport as fetched from the safe in your room. [perhaps other items as well - I don't know what standard items ship's security looks for].

[*Miss G*]

4 hours ago, buchanan101 said:

sure what happens if people miss the departure and are ashore with no passport

 

As @TheOldBear says, they retrieve your passport(s) from your safe and hand them to the port agent.  A full account is detailed in the attached post by a former HAL Security Officer. You’ll find it about halfway through the post. It’s an interesting read.

 

 

[D&N]

8 hours ago, buchanan101 said:

"it's horses for courses"....

 

Surely that's France? (or Linda McCartney ready meals)

I had seen "Burger à cheval" on a lunch menu. I ordered thinking I was going to find out how horse meat tasted. I should really have googled the term before ordering. It tasted remarkably like beef, because it was. Simply a beef burger topped with a fried egg rather than cheese. 😀

[D&N]

In Scotland Aberdeen Angus beef is claimed to be amongst the World's best. We used to buy fillet steaks from a respected butchers near where we lived and fresh Marks & Spencers beef burgers, all Aberdeen Angus.

Here our preferred butcher mainly provides a breed called Parthenaise, which we find tastier than what we used to eat in Scotland. We've found frozen Charolais burgers with around 12% fat to be our favourites. They have a fairly strong sweet flavour. We're sometimes forced to buy Limousin, which we find much dryer tasting. To us the Charolais burgers taste better than Aberdeen Angus, and we'd probably prefer Limousin as well.

Lidl were selling fresh Charolais burgers with a 5% fat content. We tried them and quickly switched back as they didn't have enough flavour.

[NE John]

16 hours ago, buchanan101 said:

"it's horses for courses"

Be care then when in Verona, Italy where Cavallo is the specialty. I believe we had horse lasagna there. A familiar dish with an unfamiliar flavor…

BTW, the Dorset lamb served on Cunard is some of the best meat I’ve had anywhere. 

[Kordy]

On 7/4/2024 at 6:07 AM, tacticalbanjo said:

US beef and UK beef taste difference. US beef is generally grain fed and has a much higher fat content which generally makes it more tender and since fat is flavour, more flavoursome. UK beef is grass fed which makes it leaner. Australian beef is often grass fed and grain finished which makes for a best of both worlds product. It's horses for courses really, I don't think there are any significant nutritional differences. I like US and Australian beef for long, slow cooking methods like smoking as the fat effectively bastes the meat while cooking. UK beef tends to need to be braised to get to the same level of tenderness with long cooking methods.

 

TL;DR: There are some dishes where you might prefer US beef to UK beef because the different production methods give different flavours and fat content.

 

On 7/4/2024 at 7:00 AM, tacticalbanjo said:

At the moment with no trade deal, USDA beef has to comply with UK regulations to be imported. That might change in the future. But if you buy it in the UK, it should be hormone free. 

 

This is a great summary and great information - thank you.

 

So basically, US beef tends to be more fatty and therefore more flavourful, but UK beef tends to be leaner (less fat means it's slightly more "healthy").

 

As far as hormones are concerned, UK beef is better in this regards as it has less hormones than US beef, however, if US beef is imported into the UK via the official channels, it should have less hormones to match UK regulations.

 

But as the QM2 restocks its beef in NYC, you probably get more hormones in your beef going NYC->UK, than you do, going UK->NYC.

 

Taking all the pros+cons into account, it seems to me that the UK beef wins overall, although if all you care is the best possible flavour, then US beef is better 😉 

[ivanidea]

After recently experiencing a TA round trip, the only difference in food I noticed was that British strawberries taste much better than the American ones.  Otherwise all food was a prepared and served to a high standard as usual.