Prime Cuts: My Beef with Steaks
I like steak, though I rarely order them while dining out. I have no secret animus with bovine flesh. Nor do I have salacious kitchen insider stories of why to avoid eating beef in restaurants. Steaks are boring. A good steak doesn’t need a creative hand to make it excellent; it just needs the cook to focus and not screw it up. In practice this is much harder than it should be.
Before you buy the actual steak, some basic culinary decisions must be made. How are you going to cook the steak? This really comes down to two choices: direct heat, grilling/broiling, or indirect heat/conduction pan searing. Both styles yield reliable results, so it’s really about personal preference and what cut of steak you’re going to use. In grilling, the steak will come into contact with an open flame. This will char the steak, giving it a hint of smokiness. This method also results in the fat dripping away from the meat. Pan searing is another dry heat cooking method that works best with cast iron or copper pans. These pans are good conductors of heat, and high heat is the key to creating the crust on a pan-seared steak.
After deciding how you are going to cook your steak the next decision is what cut of meat you are going to cook. Meat is muscle. In general, the more work/exercise muscle gets the less tender the steak will be. Culinary 101 rules state that tender cuts are best when cooked for short periods and less tender cuts should be cooked using liquid (moist heat) for longer periods of time.
The tender cuts in general come from the center of the animal. This rule applies to most land-bound animals. These cuts are ribeye, sirloin, including New York strip and top sirloin and the tenderloin. One notable exception is skirt steak. This cut from the diaphragm is very thin and has lots of connective tissue and strong elongated muscle fibers. Marinating will help with tenderizing this cut, as will slicing it thinly across the grain. Skirt steak has a deep, earthy beef flavor. For best results, cook medium rare to medium to help break down some of the connective tissue. Rare skirt steak tends to be tough and chewy due to the physiology of the cut.
A quick aside, really a chef rant/diatribe for those who must eat steak well done: don’t choose premium cuts like filet or specialty steaks like Wagyu/Kobe and order them well done. You are making adult chefs have nervous breakdowns and Chernobyl-esque meltdowns. I hear the self-righteous tirade now; I’m the customer, I will order it how I want, just shut up and cook. That’s fine, but don’t complain about toughness; the more well done a steak is, the chewier it will be. As for Wagyu/Kobe, this breed is expensive and rich in intramuscular fat. Cooking to well done makes it practically inedible and removes any flavor value from this very expensive cut. You will get more flavor from putting A-1 on an old shoe.
Filet mignon, the tenderest of the tender cuts, is also extremely lean. This makes it a favorite of faux foodies. The absence of fat makes filet very bland; this is why in classical cuisine it was bacon wrapped to add fat, or served with buttery rich sauces like bearnaise. Fat is flavor. The price-to-flavor ratio is too low for me to order filet mignon.
In my view the two best steak cuts are the New York strip and the Ribeye. If you like the intense fatty flavor of beef, have the ribeye. You prefer a leaner but still flavorful cut? Go with the New York strip. The cap fat is easy to eat around with a favorable meat-to-fat ratio that provides more flavor than a filet with the center strip being most tender. The hip end cut has a large nerve of connective tissue, and most restaurants serve these lesser steaks to those who order well done steaks. In my view the best part of the cow is the ribeye. It’s encased in a generous fat cap, with plenty of marbling, and a generous fat kernel. The ribeye is excellent grilled or pan seared.
This month get your grill on and do your own steak feast with these recipes. Grilled New York Strip with Blue Cheese Bacon Potato Salad, Grilled Ribeye with Creamed Spinach and Herbed Roasted Potatoes, and Chipotle Skirt Steak with Mexican Street Corn.
Recipes from this issue