Steak

SO MANY FLAVORFUL CUTS OF PORK ARE AVAILABLE in grocery stores these days that it’s worth looking beyond pork tenderloin and pork chops. Pork blade steaks are long, thin, bone-in steaks cut from the pork shoulder; they’re an unusual cut, but available in most meat departments. Because the steaks can be tough, we created a marinade with a high acid content that breaks down the fibers in the pork, tenderizing the meat. Pork and chutney have a natural affinity, and we particularly like the sweet-hot flavor of Pasta & Co Roasted Tomato Chutney, but feel free to substitute your favorite brand.

SECRET INGREDIENT A tangy marinade sweetened with apple juice instead of sugar does double-duty when reduced to a sauce for grilled steak. In addition to Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and hot sauce, the marinade is further enlivened by an optional splash of whiskey.

GOOD TO KNOW When only a grilled steak will do, choose a leaner cut like top blade over more marbled porterhouse or rib-eye. Blade steaks have a rich flavor and are very tender; tri tip, sirloin, and strip steaks also take well to grilling without marinating. If only larger steaks are available, purchase fewer and cut them into six-ounce servings, for portion control.

FLAVOR BOOSTER Toasted sesame oil, used in many Asian dishes, has a robust and nutty taste. Combined with rice vinegar, lime juice, garlic, and red-pepper flakes, it multitasks in this recipe as both marinade and salad dressing.

WHY IT’S LIGHT This low-calorie Tex-Mex meal uses top round steak, a very lean cut of beef; you can also use other lean cuts such as eye of round or top sirloin. Corn tortillas have fewer calories and more nutrients than flour tortillas.

WHY IT’S LIGHT In this recipe, the steak and vegetables are cooked on the stove, with just one tablespoon of oil for the whole dish. Because flank steak is one of the leanest cuts of beef, be careful not to overcook it, and slice the meat thinly against the grain for the most tender results.

WHY IT’S LIGHT Serving small, lean steaks—only five to six ounces each—along with a lightly dressed salad of cauliflower and arugula keeps this meal low in calories. The only added oil is used in the dressing. The steak is seared in a dry skillet; the cauliflower is browned in the juices left behind.

SMART SUBSTITUTION Next time you make a sandwich wrap, reach for lettuce leaves instead of a flatbread or tortilla. This recipe is based on a popular Korean dish (ssam bap) that has a spicy filling of beef and fresh herbs encased in lettuce. Cellophane noodles, tossed with a bit of oil and scallions, round out the meal.

I don’t cook steak very often; but when I do, I choose grass-fed, organically raised beef and cook it on a grill over a wood or charcoal fire. A fine cut for steak is rib eye on the bone; a rib eye steak that is 2 to 2 1/2 inches thick will grill beautifully, crusty on the outside and pink and juicy on the inside, and there will be plenty of meat for two servings. Porterhouse steak is another substantial cut that serves two. For serving more people, try such flavorful, less expensive cuts as hanger steak, skirt steak, sirloin, and flatiron chuck steak. Individual fillet or tenderloin steaks are the most tender.

A steak is perfect for the grill; tender, well marbled, cut thin and flat, it is tailor-made for searing over a bed of hot coals. A properly grilled steak is mouthwatering: brown and crisp on the outside, pink and juicy on the inside. Is there an easier, less complicated dinner than a grilled steak with a green salad? And, agreeably, the cleanup is practically effortless. Most any cut of steak will do. The classics are rib eye, New York, fillet or tenderloin, and porterhouse. There are others that are more economical, but every bit as tasty. Flatiron from the chuck, skirt steak, hangar steak, and bavette are all flavorful cuts, as are flank, top sirloin, and tri-tip. Steaks can be grilled as single portions, or larger steaks can be grilled whole and sliced for more than one. When bound for the grill, a steak is best cut 1 to 2 inches thick. Any thinner and the inside will be overdone before the outside is properly seared; any thicker, the outside starts to char before the inside is ready. Trim off all but a 1/4 -inch layer of fat; the less dripping fat, the fewer flare-ups. While seasoning a steak simply, with only salt and fresh-ground black pepper, is enough, I especially like an herb crust. I chop lots of fresh herbs together—thyme, oregano, and marjoram, in any combination, but always with rosemary—and mix them with coarse salt and fresh-ground black pepper. This is rubbed onto the steak with a bit of olive oil an hour or so before grilling. For even cooking, steak should be taken out of the refrigerator and allowed to come to room temperature, which takes 30 minutes to an hour. Prepare a hot fire and preheat and clean the grill with a wire brush. You should not be able to tolerate the heat for more than 2 seconds when you hold your hand over the grill. Oil the grill and put on the steak. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes and if you want to make nice crosshatched grill marks, rotate the steak a little over 90 degrees. Cook for another 2 to 3 minutes and then turn the steak over. (If the steak has a border of fat, turn this onto the grill, holding the steak up with tongs, to sear the fat for a minute or two before grilling the other side.) Cook the other side for 2 to 3 minutes and rotate a little over 90 degrees. Start checking for doneness after another 2 minutes, pressing your index finger or the back of the tongs into the meat. It will still be soft when rare, a bit springy when medium-rare, and quite resilient when well-done. You can verify this by cutting into the steak, but keep testing by pressure—after a few steaks, you will be able to judge without cutting. Take the steak off the grill when it is a little less done than you want; residual heat will continue to cook the meat while it rests. A 1-inch steak will be grilled rare in about 8 minutes, and grilled medium in about 10 to 12 minutes. Monitor your fire while the steak is cooking, moving the coals to make the fire hotter or cooler as needed. If the fire flares up, move the meat out of the flames right away or the fire will burn the meat, forming an acrid, black crust. After you take a steak off the grill, let it rest a few minutes before serving to stabilize the internal juices so that they don’t run out excessively when the steak is cut into. If it’s not to be served right away, cover it loosely with foil to help keep it warm; but don’t seal it tightly or it will continue to cook.

This is a simple dish with an impressive presentation, and it works with any combination of grilled meat, fish, poultry, or vegetables. A molcajete is a mortar made of lava rock that is usually used with a pestle (also made of lava rock) to make fresh salsas. Because it is made with a natural rock, it has an excellent ability to preserve heat and keep a dish hot, and that’s how I use it in this recipe. If you do not have two molcajetes, ovenproof earthenware bowls (about the size of cereal bowls) are an acceptable substitute.

In Italy, as in this country, steak and eggs are a classic combination. But while you’ll most often find the dish on breakfast menus here, Italians would be more likely to eat it at lunchtime, their most substantial meal of the day. I remember Todd flipping for it when he first tried it many years ago at my uncle’s house in Rome, and now it’s one of our favorite easy dinner recipes. Sometimes I serve the steak on a bed of greens, such as arugula, and serve slices of rustic bread alongside to sop up the runny yolk and meat juices. Steak, salad, egg, and bread—what more could you want, any time of day?

Other than in Tuscany, where the thick-cut steak fiorentina reigns supreme, you won’t find a lot of simple grilled steaks in Italy. Instead, Italians tend to serve their beef pounded thin and braised in a flavorful sauce. Pounding is a good way to tenderize a tougher (and less expensive) cut of beef such as London broil, and the cheesy stuffing here adds lots of flavor. Plus, I find that everyone, especially kids, enjoys the surprise of discovering the rich, melted filling inside these cute little breaded rolls. I know I did when I was a kid . . . and I still do!

The sauce for this pasta is really a simple fresh salsa, and if you are making it in the summer months, feel free to substitute two or three diced beefsteak tomatoes for the canned. It is just as good at room temperature as it is served hot, so it can be made ahead of time—perfect for large get-togethers and buffet-style parties. The sliced steak turns this dish into a meal. I’m seeing smoked almonds used more and more in Italy and I have fallen in love with the deep flavor they add; however, as they are quite salty, when I use them in a dish I reduce the amount of salt I would normally add.

This dish, which often appears on bistro menus in France, fits the need for a good steak served with something powerfully salty and rich (anchovy butter or a combination of butter, soy sauce, and ginger will also do the trick). Some might consider the sauce overkill, but not those of us who crave it. My favorite cheese for this sauce is Roquefort, which is made from sheep’s milk. But it’s entirely a matter of taste—Stilton, Gorgonzola, Maytag blue, or any high-quality, fairly soft blue cheese will work equally well. Don’t bother, however, trying to make this sauce with commercially produced domestic blue cheese, such as that sold precrumbled for salads. Not only will its taste be inferior, but it will not give the sauce the same creaminess. This is a case where the usually too-lean and mildly flavored tenderloin (filet mignon) will do just fine. Its tenderness is welcome and its blandness more than compensated for by the sauce. I’d still prefer a good strip steak or rib-eye, which are chewier and more flavorful, but you will notice their higher fat content when they’re combined with the rich sauce.

Another great, simple sauce based on anchovies (there are two in the pasta chapter; see pages 263 and 271). You get acidity, astringency, and fruitiness from the wine, piquancy from the garlic and anchovy, complexity from the thyme, and a smooth finish from the butter—all in about the time it takes to preheat a grill for the steaks. You don’t need great red wine for this sauce, but it should be one with a fair amount of fruit and at least a little structure.

Maybe you don’t have a grill, maybe it’s freezing outside, maybe you don’t want to eat dinner in the choking cloud of smoke that stovetop steak cookery unfailingly produces. Fear not: a minimalist preparation if ever there was one, this technique will put a great crust on your steaks and keep your kitchen (largely) smoke free.

The easiest way to make compound butter is to mince all the flavorings and then cream them and the butter together with a fork, just as you would butter and sugar in making a cake. But if your butter is ice-cold (or frozen), use a small food processor to combine all the ingredients quickly; there will be some waste here, as you’ll never get all the butter out of the container and blade, but the process will take just seconds. Skirt steak, the long, thin band of wonderfully marbled muscle (actually the cow’s diaphragm), was not easy to get even a couple of years ago but is now almost ubiquitous. It ranges as high as ten dollars a pound, but can often be found for well under half that, especially at supermarkets. It’s a moist, juicy steak, but not exactly tender—a little chewier than good strip steak—and does not respond well to overcooking. If someone insists on having it cooked beyond medium-rare, take no responsibility.

Like Oven-“Grilled” Steaks, this is a great way of cooking steaks indoors without sacrificing a good crust or setting off the smoke detector: sear the steak quickly, then remove it from the pan before building a quick sauce in which you can finish cooking the meat. This is such a good technique, with so many options, that you’re sometimes likely to eschew the grill just to do it this way. Use fairly thin steaks for this recipe. Judging the doneness of thicker ones can be tricky, and inevitably the sauce evaporates before the meat is cooked through. The ideal setup for four people is four small, boneless steaks, cut from the top blade, sirloin, or rib. But two larger steaks will work nearly as well, as long as they’re thin. And though it isn’t necessary to use butter in this preparation, a small amount—there is little more than a teaspoon per person in the recipe—adds not only creaminess but also flavor.

There are just two reasons for marinating before grilling: to add flavor and promote browning and crispness. Neither of these requires much time, although dunking the meat or fish for a few minutes in what is best labeled a grilling sauce may contribute to a slightly greater penetration of flavor. (On the other hand, if you really have no time at all, simply smear the food with the sauce as it’s going on the grill.) Promoting browning is easy: anything with sugar browns quickly—often too quickly, as you know if you’ve ever slathered a piece of chicken with barbecue sauce before grilling it. Which flavor to add is a matter of taste. My favorite is soy sauce; I love its taste, and it always seems to contribute exactly the right amount of saltiness. Any marinade that is made with a sweetener will need some acid to balance it; lime goes best with soy, but almost any acidic liquid will do, from lemon to white vinegar. One last note about marinades: Marinade that is applied to raw food should not be brushed on during the last few minutes of cooking, nor should it be used as a sauce unless it is boiled for a few minutes. And, as always, marinade brushes and other utensils that are used with raw food should not be used near the end of cooking.