BEEF, PORK, AND LAMB
Reviving the Original Drive-In Burger
Spice-Rubbed Steak on the Grill
Modernizing French-Style Pot Roast
Improving Pan-Fried Pork Chops
Grilled Glazed Pork Tenderloin Roast
Introducing Mexican Pulled Pork
Smoky Pulled Pork on a Gas Grill
Oven-Barbecued Ribs Worth Making
REVIVING THE ORIGINAL DRIVE-IN BURGER
J. KENJI LOPEZ-ALT, July/August 2008
Americans love hamburgers and, in spite of the myriad gourmet options featuring inch-thick patties with artisanal cheeses and dizzying arrays of toppings, fast-food burgers—as in billions served—remain the most popular choice. Our love affair with burgers began in the 1940s when a slew of drive-in hamburger restaurants sprang up in California. The best of these restaurants made their patties from freshly ground beef cooked to order. But as the biggest chains spread across the country, fresh-ground, high-quality beef gave way to preformed, deep-frozen patties made from scraps of meat you’d rather not think about.
These days, those of us outside of driving range from the few burger joints that continue to use the original methods have to be content with rubbery gray patties of questionable provenance and little beef flavor. But East Coasters got a break a couple of years ago when the Shake Shack opened in New York City. This humble stand, the brainchild of restaurateur Danny Meyer, offers burgers modeled after the drive-in original.
One taste of this burger opened my eyes to just how great the real deal could be. Like the California originals, these thin, quarter-pound burgers are made from freshly ground beef and cooked on a flat griddle. Fat rendering out of the meat collects on the griddle, frying the patty in its own grease and delivering a substantial crust. Crisp nooks and crannies riddle the patty’s surface, while the interior is very loosely packed. The craggy, porous texture of this ultracrisp, ultrabrowned, ultrabeefy burger is perfect for catching the dripping juices, melted cheese, and tangy sauce that tops it.
Smitten by the experience, I returned to the test kitchen in Boston determined to develop my own recipe for drive-in burgers.
CHUCKING OUT THE CHUCK
A quick test using ordinary preground chuck from the supermarket fashioned into thin patties proved disappointing. Prepackaged hamburger is ground very fine and packaged tightly, compacting it before it even comes out of the container. The result is dense, rubbery, and dry patties with little beef flavor or crisp crust, specifically lacking in the pitted surface and loose texture I wanted. To improve my burgers, I’d need freshly ground meat. But with the dearth of good butchers in the neighborhood, I was going to have to grind it myself.
Two types of beef, ground at home in a food processor, make for burgers with craggy surfaces and beefy flavor.
I put chuck roasts through a meat grinder for my next batch of burgers. These patties were certainly less dense, but my other problems—rubberiness, dryness, and lack of beef flavor—remained. By trying over a dozen different cuts of meat and having tasters rate each sample on flavor and juiciness, I discovered that beefiness was dependent on cut, while juiciness corresponded to fat. I decided to grind my burgers from sirloin steak tips (also known as flap meat), the winner for beefiness, and to introduce an outside source of fat to increase juiciness. Butter diluted the flavor of the burger, while smoky bacon overshadowed its beefiness. On a whim, I tried mixing oil from a tin of anchovies into the beef, which added a great savory (not fishy) flavor. Unfortunately, as the meat cooked, the anchovy oil wept out, and my dryness problem persisted. What about more beef fat? Suet would be the logical choice, but it’s not widely available. In the end, I found that well-marbled short ribs added the perfect amount of fat without diminishing beef flavor. The combination was more complicated than buying a single cut, I admit it. But why knock something that works?
That left me with rubberiness to deal with. After looking through my food science books, I discovered the culprit: collagen. As collagen proteins get heated past 130 degrees, they start to squeeze the meat, causing it to become dense and rubbery. (At 140 degrees, the collagen will begin to unravel, turning the meat from tough to tender, but this process takes hours—far longer than the mere minutes my burger would spend on the griddle.) The more that these proteins come in contact with each other, the more shrinkage and tightening will take place. So the key to a tender burger is to keep it as loosely packed as possible.
I knew that the meat got compressed as I lifted it up and formed it into patties in my hands. What if I never picked up the meat at all? I ground up more meat, letting it fall directly from the grinding tube onto a baking sheet. Then, without lifting it, I separated it into four piles and gently pressed each one into a patty. Even as they were cooking in the pan, I could tell that these patties were going to be different. Their juices bubbled up through the meat’s porous surface and dripped back down, basting the burgers as they cooked. Biting into one revealed meat so tender it virtually fell apart. Just to make sure this success really could be attributed to the loosely packed meat, I made a new batch and compared it with burgers I had molded into a tight shape. The compressed burgers were rubbery and uninspiring, whereas the loose burgers were once again an unqualified success.
A QUESTION OF PROCESS
One more problem: Most home cooks don’t own a meat grinder. Unless I could get around this roadblock, it made no difference how good the burgers were. I decided to give the food processor a shot. Almost immediately after I turned the processor on, long stringy bits of fat and meat got caught up in the blade, causing the machine to jam. I patiently cleaned and recleaned the blade as I ground until I had what looked like a passable texture. But when I cooked the meat, the rubberiness was back. Clearly, the rough action of the food processor was mashing the meat together and reviving my old enemy, collagen.
I knew from making sausages that when meat gets too warm, it ends up being smeared instead of cleanly chopped. The same thing happened to my burger meat as it got battered in the food processor. The solution? I cut my meat into chunks and chilled them in the freezer before placing them in the food processor. This time the chunks were chopped, not pulverized, and the burgers cooked up just as perfectly tender and with as crisp a crust as those I had chopped in the meat grinder.
TOPPING IT OFF
As for the sauce, this style of burger is commonly served with a tangy and sweet Thousand Island–style dressing, and I found no reason to change that. Adding relish, sugar, and white vinegar to a mayo and ketchup base proved to be the best foil for the juicy, salty burger. Although cheddar and Swiss cheese had their proponents, most people preferred American. It filled the cracks and crevices in the patty with gooey cheese that didn’t compete with the other flavors. A few thin slices of onion were preferred in lieu of “the works”—they allowed the flavor of the beef to take center stage unchallenged.
With my tender patty and toppings sandwiched by a soft toasted bun, I’d finally recaptured the flavor and texture that started a nationwide craze.
Best Old-Fashioned Burgers
SERVES 4
Sirloin steak tips are also sold as flap meat. Flank steak can also be used. If doubling the recipe, process the meat in three batches in step 2. Fry four burgers and serve them immediately before frying more, or cook them in two pans. Freeze extra patties, stacked, separated by parchment paper, and wrapped in three layers of plastic wrap, for up to two weeks. Thaw the patties in a single layer on a baking sheet at room temperature for 30 minutes before cooking.
10 ounces sirloin steak tips, trimmed and cut into 1-inch chunks
6 ounces boneless beef short ribs, trimmed and cut into 1-inch chunks
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
4 hamburger buns
½ teaspoon vegetable oil
4 slices deli American cheese (4 ounces)
Thinly sliced onion
1. Place beef chunks on baking sheet in single layer, leaving ½ inch of space around each chunk. Freeze beef until very firm and starting to harden around edges but still pliable, 15 to 25 minutes.
2. Pulse half of beef in food processor until coarsely ground, 10 to 15 pulses, stopping and redistributing beef around bowl as necessary to ensure beef is evenly ground. Transfer beef to baking sheet by overturning workbowl, without directly touching beef. Repeat with remaining beef. Spread beef over sheet and inspect carefully, discarding any long strands of gristle or large chunks of hard meat or fat.
3. Gently separate beef into 4 equal mounds. Without picking beef up, use your fingers to gently shape each mound into loose patty ½ inch thick and 4 inches in diameter, leaving edges and surface ragged. Season top of each patty with salt and pepper. Using spatula, flip patties and season other side. Refrigerate patties while toasting buns.
4. Melt ½ tablespoon butter in 12-inch skillet over medium heat. Add bun tops, cut side down, and toast until light golden brown, about 2 minutes. Repeat with remaining ½ tablespoon butter and bun bottoms. Set buns aside and wipe skillet clean with paper towels.
5. Return skillet to high heat; add oil and heat until just smoking. Using spatula, transfer patties to skillet and cook, without moving them, for 3 minutes. Flip patties and cook for 1 minute. Top each patty with 1 slice American cheese and cook until cheese is melted, about 1 minute.
6. Transfer burgers to bun bottoms and top with onion. Spread about 1 tablespoon burger sauce on each bun top. Cover burgers and serve immediately.
accompaniment
Classic Burger Sauce
MAKES ABOUT ¼ CUP
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon ketchup
½ teaspoon sweet pickle relish
½ teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon distilled white vinegar
¼ teaspoon pepper
Whisk all ingredients together in bowl.
BETTER BEEF FOR A BETTER BURGER
Chuck is the usual choice for burgers. For the best flavor and tender juicy texture, we opted for two better cuts of beef: sirloin steak tips (right), which contribute big meaty taste, and well-marbled boneless short ribs (left), which lend the fat that keeps the burgers juicy. For best results, buy ribs with at least as much fat as the rib in the photo.
BONELESS SHORT RIBS
SIRLOIN STEAK TIPS
When I hear the words “crispy orange beef,” I expect just that: a dish of shatteringly crisp strips of battered beef coated in a sweet, savory, and tangy citrus sauce. Unfortunately, this is a dish that rarely lives up to its name, especially in the home kitchen. All too often it has neither crispiness nor any kind of orange flavor. That’s because genuinely crispy results usually involve deep-frying in copious amounts of oil—something I think we’d all rather leave to the restaurant world. And who has dried tangerine peels, which give authentic versions their bright “orange” taste, just lying around the kitchen? My goal: to successfully bring this traditionally Sichuan, vibrantly flavored dish into my own kitchen without all that oily mess.
A quick search brought up dozens of recipes based on the Americanized version of the dish, first popularized by Manhattan’s Shun Lee Palace in the early 1970s. These recipes call for coating the beef in a mixture of cornstarch and egg whites before cooking and then tossing it with a sweet orange sauce. Many, I noticed, were more stir-fry than anything else—not a lot of oil there. But not a lot of crispiness either, I discovered after a few tests. I would have to start at square one.
FEAR OF FRYING
I began the testing process with the simplest step: the cut of beef. I tried both flank and flap steak, cutting them into thin, wide strips and using a basic recipe I cobbled together from the Web. Each cut was plenty beefy, but my tasters unanimously preferred the looser-grained flap meat to the flank, which wasn’t as tender. This easy decision out of the way, I turned to the more difficult matter at hand: frying.
Traditionally, crispy orange beef is made by deep-frying the strips of lightly battered beef in a full pot of oil—as much as 8 cups. During frying, water in the starchy crust turns to steam, leaving little crispy pockets in its wake. In the name of research, I tried a version cooked in this abundant amount of oil. Not surprisingly, it worked, producing crispy strips of perfectly cooked beef. But these traditional recipes call for painstakingly placing each piece of meat in the oil, one by one, and then removing each piece individually when fully cooked. All of that? A pain. I tried throwing in all of the beef together, but that yielded a sticky mess. The egg white and cornstarch batter acted as a glue, fusing the strips of meat together as soon as they hit the oil—and no amount of stirring could separate them. Between the large amount of oil and the persnickety frying technique, this method was out of the question.
Genuinely crispy beef without a full pot of oil is possible—as long as you treat the beef correctly.
I already knew that the few tablespoons of oil used in the stir-fry methods also didn’t work, but what if I struck a compromise? I decided to try frying in 3 cups of oil—an amount that seemed manageable for the home kitchen and yet was still enough volume (I hoped) to produce truly crispy beef. This lesser amount of oil would certainly mean frying in batches, since dropping all the beef into the pot at once would cause the oil temperature to plunge dramatically, and if the oil wasn’t hot enough, a crisp crust wouldn’t have time to form before the beef overcooked. Fortunately, I found that three batches did the trick, allowing me to fry up nicely crisp pieces. But my problems weren’t over. Even in these relatively small batches, the strips of beef still stuck together.
I had to try something new. I thought about other ways to create a crispy crust, and a classic bread-crumb coating jumped to mind. True, this type of coating is more typical of pan- or oven-fried foods, but why not give it a shot? I dipped the beef in flour, then egg wash, and then bread crumbs (panko, in this case) before frying. Sticking was not a problem with these strips of beef, and they looked bronzed and beautiful when they came out of the pot—I was ready to celebrate. But when we tasted them, we found that the large size of the crumbs relative to the size of the beef meant that the breading was actually thicker than the strips of meat themselves. To add insult to injury, this substantial crust contained deep crevices that sucked up the sauce, turning it soggy. Failure again.
I was feeling dejected and, for lack of any better ideas, decided to try simply dredging the meat in cornstarch alone. I was delighted to find that the cornstarch, which absorbed some of the juices at the surface of the beef, crisped up delicately in the hot oil, batch after batch. But I couldn’t do a victory dance just yet. The beef pieces were still sticking together here and there. Plus, with this new, delicate coating, the thin but wide pieces of beef were folding over on themselves as they hit the oil, so that some of the cornstarch coating never fully cooked, leaving a pasty residue. Stirring did not help this situation; I had to tediously pick through the beef and unfold individual pieces. It was clear: I’d have to change the shape. Instead of flat little rectangles, I began slicing the beef into matchsticks. And when I dropped them in the oil, these pieces didn’t fold up on themselves at all. They also had more surface area and more pointy edges and crags, further increasing crispiness. Even better, my tasters also raved at how remarkably ungreasy the meat seemed. Curious, I fried up a new batch, measuring the oil before and after cooking, and found that all of that beef had absorbed a total of just 2 tablespoons from the 3 cups of oil.
As good as my results were, I couldn’t resist one more tweak, which I borrowed from our Argentine grilled steak recipe: I spread out the pieces of beef on a rack set in a rimmed baking sheet and placed the sheet in the freezer for 45 minutes. The very cold, very dry air of the freezer removed moisture from the surface of the meat, further boosting crispiness and eliminating any residual sticking.
BETTER (BITTER) FLAVOR
Now that I was satisfied with the cooking method, I went back to flavor. I decided to keep things very simple and began by seasoning the beef in a tablespoon of soy sauce before dredging it in cornstarch.
I had been tossing my crispy beef in a sauce made with a few difficult-to-find ingredients including Chinese rice wine and sweet dark soy sauce. I looked for more-common pantry ingredients to replace these two. A combination of dry sherry, regular soy sauce, and molasses did the trick. But I had more trouble when it came to the orange flavor.
American versions of crispy orange beef call for orange zest, but traditional recipes use rehydrated tangerine peel. When I experimented with leaving fresh tangerine peel to dry for a few days in a sunny window, my tasters were wowed by the pungent depth it brought to the sauce—but this method took way too long. Dried orange peel is easy to find in the supermarket but has barely any flavor. This left me experimenting with fresh oranges. Instead of zesting the oranges, I used my vegetable peeler to pare away the peel as well as a portion of the bitter pith, which I sliced into slivers and tossed in the microwave to dry. While the pith added a subtle bitterness, the stint in the microwave robbed the peel of its volatile aromatic oils, diminishing its flavor. I decided to throw the strips of peel into a sauté pan. Letting the orange peel brown slightly introduced deeper, caramelized notes that came closer to the complex flavors of dried tangerine peel. Jalapeño added to the pan at the same time brought extra brightness.
After weeks of experimenting with crusts and sauce, here at last was a bright and flavorful, truly crispy orange beef worthy of the name.
Crispy Orange Beef
SERVES 4
We prefer to buy flap meat and cut our own steak tips. Use a vegetable peeler on the oranges and make sure that your strips contain some pith. Do not use low-sodium soy sauce. Serve this dish with steamed rice.
1½ pounds sirloin steak tips, trimmed
3 tablespoons soy sauce
6 tablespoons cornstarch
10 (3-inch) strips orange peel, sliced thin lengthwise (¼ cup), plus ¼ cup juice (2 oranges)
3 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons dry sherry
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1½ teaspoons toasted sesame oil
3 cups vegetable oil
1 jalapeño chile, stemmed, seeded, and sliced thin lengthwise
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
3 garlic cloves, minced
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 scallions, sliced thin on bias
1. Cut beef with grain into 2½- to 3-inch-wide lengths. Slice each piece against grain ½ inch thick. Cut each slice lengthwise into ½-inch-wide strips. Toss beef with 1 tablespoon soy sauce in bowl. Add cornstarch and toss until evenly coated. Spread beef in single layer on wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet and freeze until beef is very firm but not completely frozen, about 45 minutes.
2. Whisk orange juice, molasses, sherry, vinegar, sesame oil, and remaining 2 tablespoons soy sauce together in bowl.
3. Line second rimmed baking sheet with triple layer of paper towels. Heat vegetable oil in large Dutch oven over medium heat to 375 degrees. Carefully add one-third of beef and fry, stirring occasionally to keep beef from sticking together, until golden brown, about 1½ minutes. Using spider skimmer, transfer beef to paper towel–lined sheet. Return oil to 375 degrees and repeat with remaining beef in 2 batches. After frying, set aside 2 tablespoons frying oil.
4. Heat reserved oil in 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add orange peel and jalapeño and cook, stirring occasionally, until about half of orange peel is golden brown, 1½ to 2 minutes. Add ginger, garlic, and pepper flakes; cook, stirring frequently, until garlic is beginning to brown, about 45 seconds. Add soy sauce mixture and cook, scraping up any browned bits, until slightly thickened, about 45 seconds. Add beef and scallions and toss to coat. Transfer to platter and serve immediately.
TURNING ORANGE INTO TANGERINE
Traditionally, crispy orange beef is made with dried tangerine peels, which have a pungent and complex flavor but can be tricky to find. We mimic this flavor by leaving some bitter pith on orange peel that we brown in oil.
PURPOSELY PITHY
Leaving some pith on fresh orange peel helps to mimic the flavor of dried tangerine peel.
A BETTER CUT FOR FRYING
To prevent beef from folding over on itself while frying, cut flap meat steaks into 3-inch-wide lengths, then into ½-inch-thick slices, and the slices into ½-inch-wide strips.
I have long been a fan of cooking in cast iron. So when I set out to develop a recipe for a great steak—one with a perfectly seared exterior and an interior that was evenly cooked from edge to edge—of course I turned to my great-grandmother’s well-worn Wagner cast-iron skillet.
After an initial round of testing, though, I had found out a little secret: Despite cast iron’s many virtues, you can’t just plunk a steak into the pan and expect success. The recipes that I tried produced varied results, but none of them were encouraging. There were steaks with burnt exteriors and raw interiors and steaks with pale exteriors and overcooked interiors, and the browning was uneven across the board.
I decided to take a step back and investigate the cast-iron skillet a little more. It’s said to produce a great seared steak because it retains heat well, but I suspected there was more to it than that. I knew from previous test kitchen testing that cast iron does not heat up evenly, and that seemed likely to be the root of the problem with the recipes I tried. I wanted to know just how unevenly cast iron heats and whether there was a way I could fix that.
GOING TOE TO TOE
I started by pitting cast-iron skillets against stainless steel–clad skillets to see how the heat was distributed in each. I lightly dusted both types of skillet with flour—since I wanted to be sure that the evenness of heating was not due to any inherent quality of the heat source—and, without any preheating, set the skillets over gas, electric, and induction burners at both medium and medium-high heat. The results were consistent for all three types of heat: evenly toasted, nicely golden-brown flour in the steel-clad skillets, and in the cast-iron skillets, pale flour with black splotches marking the places where the heat source actually came into contact with the pan.
But, I thought, since the dark spots were more well defined over medium-high heat than medium heat, maybe the heat level was the problem. To find out, I heated a cast-iron skillet over small and large gas flames, as well as over electric and induction burners. I took the temperature at the center, 3 inches off center, and at the inside edge of the skillet every 30 seconds for about 10 minutes during each test. The results confirmed what I was seeing with the flour test: No matter the level of heat or its source, the skillet had hot and cool spots.
Our science editor explained that most stainless steel–clad cookware is made up of layers of stainless steel around a core of aluminum, which conducts heat about 2½ times better than cast iron. Therefore, the heat moves across the skillet very easily. Since heat doesn’t move as easily across cast iron, the skillet initially develops hot spots where it is directly touching the heat source.
For the ultimate sear in cast iron, how you preheat the pan matters as much as how you cook the steaks.
OVEN TO THE RESCUE
But I realized there was a change that could provide a solution: heating the pan in the oven. It would take a little longer, but because the oven’s heat is not concentrated on a single part of the pan but rather comes at the pan more or less evenly from all directions, it guaranteed an evenly heated pan. An added advantage was that the oven could be set to a specific temperature, no matter what the heat source, whereas when using the stovetop I had found it difficult to accurately specify a single burner setting that worked across all types of heat sources.
But what was the best oven temperature? My goal was to get the skillet hot enough so that vegetable oil, which has a smoke point of between 400 and 450 degrees, would start to smoke as soon as I added it to the skillet. I put the skillet in the cold oven, as there was no sense in waiting for the oven to heat before adding the skillet, and set the oven temperature to 400 degrees. However, when I added the oil after heating the skillet, it took some time to start smoking. I continued to test temperatures at 25-degree intervals, pulling the skillet out and searing steaks, and eventually worked my way up to 500 degrees, which I found to be the ideal setting.
Now for the steak itself. I chose thick boneless strip steaks because they have big, beefy flavor and are easy to find. Salting the steaks and letting them sit while my pan heated in the oven would not only season the meat throughout but also help keep it moist and juicy. Patting them dry before searing helped them brown even more.
My next question was how much oil to use—and it turned out that I needed more than I thought I would. As meat cooks, it contracts; any ridges or divots get bigger, and without oil, they don’t touch a heat source, resulting in a spotty brown steak rather than a gorgeously browned one. I settled on 2 tablespoons of oil, a hefty but necessary amount.
FLIPPING OUT
Two problems remained: I was still getting a rather large gray band, the area between the crust and interior that dries out and turns chalky. And my beautifully preheated pan was so hot that the crust it produced was actually too good—it was too thick and almost unpleasantly crunchy. To eliminate the gray band, one of my coworkers suggested that I try flipping the steak more often (I had been flipping it only once). The idea made sense, since each time a steak is flipped, the side not touching the skillet cooks with residual heat, which penetrates the meat more slowly, resulting in a smaller gray band. I wondered if flipping might also help prevent an overly thick crust. I found that flipping once every 2 minutes was just the right amount to ensure a perfectly rosy interior, but the crust was still thicker than I liked.
Then I did something I never thought I would do when searing: I turned down the heat. Because the cast iron retained the heat so well once it got up to the proper temperature, turning down the heat actually maintained the temperature I wanted, whereas keeping the heat high increased the skillet’s temperature as time went on. So I got a great initial sear over medium-high heat and then reduced the heat until I found a sweet spot: about 8 minutes over medium-low heat. Combined with flipping every 2 minutes, this produced a perfect, gorgeously browned crust and a rosy interior from edge to edge.
The steak was now fantastic on its own, but a simple accompaniment would make it that much more special. Mixing up a compound butter to melt over the resting steaks was easier than making a pan sauce and was just as flavorful.
Cast Iron Steaks with Herb Butter
SERVES 4
Don’t forget to take the butter out to soften at least 30 minutes before you start to cook.
2 (1-pound) boneless strip steaks, 1½ inches thick, trimmed
Salt and pepper
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons minced shallot
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
1 tablespoon minced fresh chives
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1. Adjust oven rack to middle position, place 12-inch cast-iron skillet on rack, and heat oven to 500 degrees. Meanwhile, season steaks with salt and let sit at room temperature. Combine butter, shallot, parsley, chives, garlic, and ¼ teaspoon pepper in bowl; set aside.
2. When oven reaches 500 degrees, pat steaks dry with paper towels and season with pepper. Using potholders, remove skillet from oven and place over medium-high heat; turn off oven. Being careful of hot skillet handle, add oil and heat until just smoking. Cook steaks, without moving them, until lightly browned on first side, about 2 minutes. Flip steaks and cook until lightly browned on second side, about 2 minutes.
3. Flip steaks, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook, flipping every 2 minutes, until steaks are well browned and meat registers 120 to 125 degrees (for medium-rare), 7 to 9 minutes. Transfer steaks to carving board, dollop 2 tablespoons herb butter on each steak, tent with aluminum foil, and let rest for 5 to 10 minutes. Slice steaks ½ inch thick and serve.
variation
Cast Iron Steaks with Blue Cheese–Chive Butter
Omit shallot and parsley. Increase chives to 2 tablespoons and add ⅓ cup crumbled mild blue cheese to butter with chives.
HOW CAST IRON HEATS
Cast iron doesn’t heat as quickly as stainless steel–clad cookware because its thermal conductivity—the ability to transfer heat from one part of the metal to another—is lower. But it holds heat much more effectively; even when a relatively cool steak is added, the pan’s temperature drop is minimal and the steak browns better. The trick is to make sure that the pan preheats thoroughly and evenly, which we do in a very hot oven (not on the stovetop) because the convective heat minimizes hot spots. Once the pan is hot, we set it over a moderate flame to maintain the heat and to avoid creating an overly thick crust.
Toasting flour demonstrates the uneven heating of cast iron on the stovetop.
PERFECT STEAK, INSIDE AND OUT
Searing steak in cast iron can produce the ultimate crust—but often at the expense of a rosy, tender interior. Here’s how to get both.
USE LOTS OF OIL A generous 2 tablespoons of oil keeps the steak (which contracts during cooking) in contact with the heat, for more even browning.
TURN THE HEAT DOWN After the initial sear, reduce the flame to medium-low; the pan will stay hot enough to sear the meat.
FLIP REPEATEDLY Turning the steak every 2 minutes prevents a gray, overcooked band from forming under the surface.
Filet mignon may be revered as the elite superstar of steaks, but it needs serious help in the kitchen to live up to that reputation on the palate. Chefs compensate for the relatively mild flavor of beef tenderloin by wrapping it in bacon or puff pastry, searing it to develop a dark, flavorful crust, and serving it with rich wine sauces or flavored butters.
Another popular way to dress up a filet is with a crust of cracked black peppercorns. I envisioned the pleasing contrast of a thick center of pink, soft-as-butter beef and a crunchy, spicy coating—a peppery hit with every bite. The daydreaming ended as I recalled the test kitchen’s prior frustrations with peppercorn crusts. Peppercorns fall off in the pan, interfere with the meat’s browning, and—used in sufficient quantity to create a real crust—deliver punishing pungency.
Simmering the peppercorns in oil tames their bite so they complement the buttery steak, not overpower it.
REMEMBRANCE OF STEAKS PAST
Our earlier recipe for Steak au Poivre solved these problems by coating only one side of each steak with the cracked peppercorns. The overall heat level was reduced by half, and the uncoated side got nicely browned, providing the necessary fond (browned bits in the pan) to create the classic brandy-cream sauce. A neat solution, but not one that could help me this time. That recipe used strip steaks that were, at most, an inch thick. Because the tenderloin muscle is small, filet steaks are usually cut almost twice as thick. I suspected a one-sided crust would not be sufficient, and a quick test proved it: Too many bites came with little or no crust, and when I did get a bite with peppercorns, peppercorns were all I tasted.
Thick, lean, tender, mild—how best to use peppercorns to complement these traits without overwhelming them? I started with the test kitchen’s standard technique for cooking a filet mignon: searing it first in a hot pan with a small amount of oil, then finishing in the oven. Immediately, I encountered a problem. The cracked pepper kept the meat from making direct contact with the hot pan, so beneath the crust the steaks were unappealingly pale. I tried adding extra oil to the skillet, hoping it would bridge the gap between the pan and the meat. This was a partial success. On the downside, peppercorns were still falling off. Next, I made a thick paste of cracked peppercorns and oil, which I rubbed over the raw steaks. Before cooking, I pressed down on each peppercorn-adorned steak through a sheet of plastic wrap. Problem solved.
DOCTORING PEPPER
Now I had steaks that were well browned and coated in an attractive pepper crust, but the overall heat level was still intense. Inspired by an article on blooming spices in infused oils, I wondered how heating my peppercorn-oil paste might affect its flavor. I brought the mixture to a gentle simmer in a saucepan, and I was amazed at the change. In place of the stinging heat was a pleasant warmth that spread slowly across my palate. Now I could have a substantial peppercorn crust without the usual punishing heat.
FLAVOR ENHANCERS
To augment the flavor of the steaks’ thick interior, I added a tablespoon of salt to the peppercorn paste and let the steaks sit, covered, for an hour before cooking. Sure enough, the meat became noticeably beefier—and flavorful enough to stand up to the assertive pepper crust.
As for accompaniments, the salting step bought me plenty of time to simmer a rich reduction sauce. Because it is so lean, filet mignon is also excellent with flavored butters.
Pepper-Crusted Filet Mignon
SERVES 4
For a milder pepper flavor, drain the cooled peppercorns in a fine-mesh strainer in step 1, toss them with 5 tablespoons of fresh oil, add the salt, and proceed. Serve with Port-Cherry Reduction or Blue Cheese–Chive Butter. If serving with Blue Cheese–Chive Butter, spoon 1 to 2 tablespoons of the butter over the steaks while they’re resting.
5 tablespoons black peppercorns, cracked
5 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon kosher salt
4 (7- to 8-ounce) center-cut filets mignons, 1½ to 2 inches thick, trimmed
1. Heat peppercorns and 5 tablespoons oil in small saucepan over low heat until faint bubbles appear. Continue to cook at bare simmer, swirling pan occasionally, until pepper is fragrant, 7 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside to cool. When mixture has cooled completely, add salt and stir to combine. Rub steaks with peppercorn mixture, thoroughly coating top and bottom of each steak. Cover steaks with plastic wrap and press gently to make sure peppercorns adhere; let stand at room temperature for 1 hour.
2. Meanwhile, adjust oven rack to middle position, place baking sheet on rack, and heat oven to 450 degrees. When oven reaches 450 degrees, heat remaining 2 teaspoons oil in 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Place steaks in skillet and cook, without moving them, until dark brown crust has formed, 3 to 4 minutes. Using tongs, turn steaks and cook until well browned on second side, about 3 minutes.
3. Off heat, transfer steaks to hot sheet in oven. Roast until meat registers 115 to 120 degrees (for rare), 120 to 125 degrees (for medium-rare), or 130 to 135 degrees (for medium), 3 to 7 minutes. Transfer steaks to wire rack, tent with aluminum foil, and let rest for 5 minutes before serving.
accompaniments
MAKES ABOUT 1 CUP
1½ cups port
½ cup balsamic vinegar
½ cup dried tart cherries
1 shallot, minced
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
Salt
1. Combine port, vinegar, cherries, shallot, and thyme in medium saucepan; simmer over medium-low heat until liquid has reduced to about ⅓ cup, about 30 minutes. Set aside, covered.
2. While steaks are resting, reheat sauce. Off heat, discard thyme, then whisk in butter until melted. Season with salt to taste.
MAKES ABOUT ½ CUP
1½ ounces mild blue cheese, crumbled (⅓ cup), room temperature
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
⅛ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons minced fresh chives
Combine blue cheese, butter, and salt in medium bowl and mix with stiff rubber spatula until smooth. Fold in chives.
DECODING TENDERLOIN STEAKS
Cut from the center of the back, the tenderloin is the most tender (and most expensive) cut of the cow. Depending on their thickness, tenderloin steaks may be labeled (from thickest to thinnest) Châteaubriand, filet mignon, or tournedos.
KEY STEPS FOR PEPPER-CRUSTED FILET MIGNON
Choking heat, gray exteriors, peppercorns that fall off with the slightest provocation—we encountered all these problems during recipe development. To avoid them, take these steps.
SIMMER Gently simmer the peppercorns in olive oil to mellow the heat.
COAT Coat the tops and bottoms of the steaks with the pepper mixture, pressing the excess into the sides.
REST Cover with plastic, pressing to make sure the peppercorns adhere. Let rest one hour.
BROWN and roast Sear the steaks in a well-oiled skillet until browned beneath the peppercorn layer, then finish cooking in a hot oven to ensure browning on the sides of the steaks.
Spread half of peppercorns on cutting board. Place skillet on top. Pressing down firmly with both hands, use rocking motion to crush peppercorns beneath “heel” of skillet. Move skillet back and forth, redistributing peppercorns as needed. Repeat with remaining peppercorns.
We were relieved to learn that the pungent heat of black peppercorns can be mellowed by a brief simmer in oil. We were pleased with the effect but curious as to the cause. Research revealed that the natural irritant in peppercorns is called piperine. As peppercorns age, the piperine is converted into closely related molecules (called isomers) that have different flavor characteristics and that are less irritating to the nose and throat. Left sitting at room temperature in your cupboard, the peppercorns may take years to undergo this reaction, but the hot oil serves as a catalyst, driving the conversion at hundreds of times its natural speed, quickly tempering the pepper’s pungency.
SPICE-RUBBED STEAK ON THE GRILL
ANDREA GEARY, May/June 2012
As a dedicated practitioner of the silk-purse-out-of-a-sow’s-ear approach to cooking, I enjoy the challenge of transforming inexpensive ingredients into a memorable meal. But I’ve always conceded that when it comes to grilled steaks, there’s no way around it: You get what you pay for.
With their tender texture and big-time beef flavor, pricey cuts from the middle of the steer (like rib eyes and T-bones) need little more than salt, pepper, and a few minutes over a hot fire to render them impressive. Try that minimalist technique on cheaper steaks from farther down the animal (the sirloin and the round) and you get meat that’s chewy and dry, with flavors that veer toward liver-y and gamy. It’s probably these flavor and texture challenges that inspire cooks to take a page from the barbecue manual and apply spice rubs to less expensive steaks. Unfortunately, in my experience that approach doesn’t really work. Because cheap steaks exude little fat to bond with the spices, the rub tends to fall off in chunks. If by some stroke of luck the rub remains intact, it usually tastes dry and dusty; plus, nuances of flavor can vaporize over the fire.
Still, my skinflint tendencies aren’t easily subdued. Surely there was a way to create a recipe for inexpensive grilled steak that was also tender and juicy, with a flavorful, crunchy crust that stayed in place.
CALLING ALL GLUTAMATES
First I had to find a steak that provided the best taste and texture for the money, so I looked to the sirloin and the round, settling on what we here in New England call the shell sirloin steak (variously called top butt, butt steak, top sirloin butt, top sirloin steak, and center-cut roast, depending on where you live). Tasters described the shell steak as having a relatively beefy taste, unlike cuts from the round, which were liver-y.
Salting the shell steaks before cooking was a given. Salt sprinkled liberally on the surface of the meat draws moisture from inside, which over time is then reabsorbed as the meat sits, seasoning it and changing the structure of the muscle fibers so that they hold on to more juices. But I’d have to do more than that to close the gap between a $6 steak and a $12 steak. Some recipes suggest that allowing a spice rub to sit on the meat for a period of time enables its flavors to be absorbed for more complex-tasting results. Science, however, refutes this: Most flavor compounds in spices are fat-soluble rather than water-soluble, so they can’t penetrate below the surface of the steak. Furthermore, in tests of marinades, we’ve found that other than salt, the only water-soluble flavor compounds that can travel deep into the meat are glutamates.
So, what about glutamates? Scanning my pantry, I singled out two of the most potent sources of these compounds: tomato paste and—odd as it may sound—fish sauce, a condiment that we’ve called upon in other unlikely applications to amp up savory taste. I applied a rub made with kosher salt and a couple of teaspoons each of these two ingredients (to compensate for their extra sodium I cut back a little on the salt) and applied it to a set of steaks an hour before grilling. The difference in these steaks was remarkable: They boasted a much deeper flavor without any trace of my secret enhancements. Spurred by this success, I decided to add ½ teaspoon each of garlic powder and onion powder to the rub. Though neither substance contains significant levels of glutamates, their water-soluble flavors are potent enough (especially in concentrated powdered form) that even if they penetrated only ¼ inch into the meat, they might make a difference in the overall flavor. Tasters confirmed that my hunch was correct: The steaks treated with the powdered alliums along with salt, tomato paste, and fish sauce had noticeably richer flavor. On to the spice rub.
SPICING THINGS UP
My plan was to treat the steak with the salt-and-glutamate-packed paste first, wait an hour, and then apply a second, more conventional dry rub right before grilling. I tried a variety of rubs, but I found that those made mostly with dried herbs lost their flavor, while those based on spices fared better. It turns out that the flavors in herbs such as rosemary, sage, and thyme fade in the intense heat of the grill, but the compounds in certain spices do much better, particularly those containing capsaicin—namely, peppers, chiles, and paprika. Thus, rubs made predominantly from chile or pepper were clearly the way to go.
Scoring inexpensive shell sirloin steaks gives our potent spice rub serious sticking power.
First I tried rubs made with preground spices, but these formed a coating that was more pasty than crunchy. Since I had some time to spare between applying the salty glutamate rub and firing up the grill, I tried toasting some whole spices (cumin, coriander, red pepper flakes, and black peppercorns) in a skillet along with some earthy-tasting dried New Mexican chiles, and then I ground them coarsely in a coffee grinder. To round out the flavors, I also incorporated sugar, paprika, and ground cloves before pressing the rub onto the surface of the steak.
Tasters pronounced these steaks juicy, tender, and flavorful, and they greatly preferred the more robust texture of this home-ground rub. Still, there were two problems to be solved. First, despite the toasting step, the spices retained a slightly raw taste, the result of being cooked with very little fat, so the flavors couldn’t “bloom.” Second, tasters requested a more substantial crust. I sheepishly informed them that there had been more rub when I started grilling, but half of it had been left on the cooking grate. Clearly, I needed to find a way to help the spices stick to the steak and not to the grate.
I remembered when a coworker who was developing a recipe for pan-fried pork chops had difficulty persuading the breading to adhere to the meat. He eventually came up with the clever solution of making shallow cuts into the meat to give the breading more purchase. Doing the same with my steaks before adding the first rub seemed likely to be doubly advantageous: It would increase the surface area, which could give that first rub more opportunity to really get into the meat; plus, it could help the spice rub stick to the meat.
As I liberally greased the cooking grate in preparation for grilling my newly crosshatched steaks, I wished that there were some way to put a layer of oil on the steaks themselves without disturbing their spice crust (which—I was pleased to see—was sticking quite nicely). The easy solution: A light spritz of vegetable oil spray or oil from a mister helped the steaks keep their rub intact through the grilling process.
These steaks were crusty and crunchy on the outside, with just enough heat and spice to complement the meat’s rich flavor, and that little bit of added fat imparted by the spray gave the spices that fully developed “bloomed” flavor that tasters were after. The tender and juicy meat belied its $5.99-per-pound price tag. My inner cheapskate quietly rejoiced.
Grilled Steak with New Mexican Chile Rub
SERVES 6 TO 8
Shell sirloin steak is also known as top butt, butt steak, top sirloin butt, top sirloin steak, and center-cut roast. Spraying the rubbed steaks with oil helps the spices bloom, preventing a raw flavor.
Steak
2 teaspoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
2 (1½- to 1¾-pound) boneless shell sirloin steaks, 1 to 1¼ inches thick, trimmed
Spice Rub
2 dried New Mexican chiles, stemmed, seeded, and flesh torn into ½-inch pieces
4 teaspoons cumin seeds
4 teaspoons coriander seeds
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon paprika
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
Vegetable oil spray
1. For the steak: Combine tomato paste, fish sauce, salt, onion powder, and garlic powder in bowl. Pat steaks dry with paper towels. With sharp knife, cut 1/16-inch-deep slits on both sides of steaks, spaced ½ inch apart, in crosshatch pattern. Rub salt mixture evenly on both sides of steaks. Place steaks on wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet; let stand at room temperature for at least 1 hour. After 30 minutes, prepare grill.
2. For the spice rub: Toast chiles, cumin, coriander, pepper flakes, and peppercorns in 10-inch skillet over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until just beginning to smoke, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to plate to cool, about 5 minutes. Grind spices in spice grinder or in mortar with pestle until coarsely ground. Transfer spices to bowl and stir in sugar, paprika, and cloves.
3A. For a charcoal grill: Open bottom vent completely. Light large chimney starter mounded with charcoal briquettes (7 quarts). When top coals are partially covered with ash, pour two-thirds evenly over grill, then pour remaining coals over half of grill. Set cooking grate in place, cover, and open lid vent completely. Heat grill until hot, about 5 minutes.
3B. For a gas grill: Turn all burners to high, cover, and heat grill until hot, about 15 minutes. Leave primary burner on high and turn other burner(s) to medium.
4. Clean and oil cooking grate. Sprinkle half of spice rub evenly over 1 side of steaks and press to adhere until spice rub is fully moistened. Lightly spray rubbed side of steak with oil spray, about 3 seconds. Flip steaks and repeat sprinkling with spice rub and coating with oil spray on second side.
5. Place steaks over hotter part of grill and cook until browned and charred on both sides and center registers 120 to 125 degrees (for medium-rare) or 130 to 135 degrees (for medium), 3 to 4 minutes per side. If steaks have not reached desired temperature, move to cooler side of grill and continue to cook. Transfer steaks to clean wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet, tent with aluminum foil, and let rest for 10 minutes. Slice meat thin against grain and serve.
variations
Grilled Steak with Ancho Chile–Coffee Rub
Substitute 1 dried ancho chile for New Mexican chiles, 2 teaspoons ground coffee for paprika, and 1 teaspoon cocoa powder for ground cloves.
Grilled Steak with Spicy Chipotle Chile Rub
Substitute 2 dried chipotle chiles for New Mexican chiles, 1 teaspoon dried oregano for paprika, and ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon for ground cloves.
GETTING THE RUB TO STICK
Scoring the meat with shallow slits helps the salt paste and spice rub adhere to the meat and penetrate more deeply.
INVESTIGATING STEAK TIPS
ELIZABETH GERMAIN, May/June 2003
Steak tips have never been on my list of favorite meats. It’s not that I am a premium steak snob, but I was skeptical about a cut of meat that has long been the darling of all-you-can-eat restaurant chains where quantity takes precedence over quality. There is also some confusion about what constitutes a steak tip. Some steak tips are sautéed and served with a sauce (these are often called pub-style steak tips), some are marinated and grilled (known as tailgate tips). I was drawn to grilling and so began by testing five such recipes.
The recipes differed in the ingredients used to marinate the meat and the marinating time. The simplest recipe marinated the tips in a bottled Italian-style salad dressing for 24 hours. The most complex one marinated the meat for three days in a mixture that included aromatics and herbs. Despite such variations in time and ingredients, none of these grilled tips was very good. Some were mushy, but most were tough and dry. At this point, steak tips still seemed like a cheap cut of meat with promising beefy flavor but poor texture.
A soy sauce–based marinade acts like a brine, improving the flavor and juiciness of steak tips.
CHOOSING A CUT AND A MARINADE
Thinking that the problem might be the cut of meat, I went to the supermarket only to discover a confusing array of meats—cubes, strips, and steaks—labeled “steak tips.” Still more confusing, these cubes, strips, and steaks could be cut from a half dozen different parts of the cow.
After grilling more than 50 pounds of tips, it became clear that the only cut worth grilling is one referred to by butchers as flap meat. When I grilled whole flap meat steaks and then sliced them on the bias before serving, tasters were impressed. Although the meat was still a bit chewy, choosing the right cut was a start.
I now turned to marinades. Given the long-held belief that acidic marinades tenderize tough meat, I created four recipes using four popular acids: yogurt, wine, vinegar, and fruit juice. To determine the best timing, I let the meat sit in each marinade for 4 hours and for 24 hours. Curious about marinades’ other claim to fame—flavoring—I added aromatics, spices, and herbs.
The yogurt marinade was the least favorite, producing dry meat that was chewy and tough. Tasters also panned the wine-based marinade. The meat was tough and dry, the flavors harsh and bland. Some tasters liked the complex flavor of the vinegar marinade, but everyone found the tips to be “overly chewy.” The marinade prepared with pineapple juice was the favorite. Both the four-hour and 24-hour versions yielded juicy, tender, and flavorful meat.
Why did pineapple juice make the best marinade? My first thought was proteases, enzymes that help to break down proteins. Proteases are found in pineapple, papaya, and other fruits. One of them, papain from papayas, is the active component of some meat tenderizers. But the juice I had been using was pasteurized, and the heat of pasteurization can disable such enzymes. To see if proteases were in fact at work, I devised three tests in which I made three more marinades: one with pasteurized pineapple juice from the supermarket; a second with pasteurized pineapple juice heated to the boiling point and then cooled; and a third with fresh pineapple pureed in a food processor.
The result? The fresh juice was a much more aggressive “tenderizer,” so much so that it turned the meat mushy on the inside and slimy on the outside. I had learned three things: proteases do break down meat, but they don’t make it any better (tasters universally disapproved of these tenderized tips); pasteurization does kill this enzyme (the fresh juice was much more powerful than the supermarket variety); and proteases were not responsible for the strong showing made by the original pineapple marinade. Why, then, did tasters prefer the pineapple marinade to those made with yogurt, wine, and vinegar?
After rereading the ingredient list in my pineapple marinade, I devised a new theory. The pineapple marinade included soy sauce, an ingredient that is packed with salt and that was not used in any of the other marinades. Was the soy sauce tenderizing the meat by acting like a brine? In the past, the test kitchen has demonstrated the beneficial effects of brining on lean poultry and pork.
To answer these questions, I ran another series of tests without any pineapple, trying various oil-based marinades made with salt or soy sauce (in earlier tests, I had determined that oil helped to keep the meat moist and promoted better searing). To use salt in a marinade, I first had to dissolve it. Because salt doesn’t dissolve in oil, I used water, but the liquid prevented the meat from browning properly. That said, brining did make these steak tips tender and juicy.
I concluded that soy sauce, not pineapple juice, was the secret ingredient in tasters’ favorite marinade. The salt in soy sauce was responsible for the improved texture of the steak tips, and the soy sauce also promoted browning. After experimenting with brining times, I determined that an hour was optimal. It allowed for the thicker parts of the meat to become tender while preventing the thinner sections from becoming too salty.
I then went to work on flavor variations: an Asian marinade with garlic, ginger, and orange zest; a Southwest-inspired marinade that included garlic, chili powder, and cumin; and a simple garlic-herb version with thyme and rosemary. I found that a squeeze of fresh citrus served with the steak provided a bright acidic counterpoint.
GRILLING DETAILS
Because this relatively thin cut cooks quickly, high heat is necessary to achieve a perfect crust. The uneven thickness of many tips presented a problem, though. The exterior would scorch by the time the thick portions were cooked, and the thin parts would be overcooked. A two-level fire, with more coals on one side of the grill to create hotter and cooler areas, solved the problem. I started the tips over high heat to sear them and then moved them to the cooler area to finish cooking.
I prefer my steaks grilled rare, so I was surprised to find that when cooked rare the meat was rubbery, whereas longer cooking gave it a tender chew—without drying out the meat. Even when cooked until well done, these tips were exceptionally juicy. I had the brine to thank again: The salty soy marinade helped the meat hold on to its moisture.
Conventional wisdom prompted one more test. As a chef in a restaurant, I learned that letting meat rest before slicing gives the fibers time to reabsorb the juices that have been dispersed during cooking. I grilled two more batches of tips and sliced one immediately after it came off the grill and the other five minutes later. Sure enough, the rested tips were both more juicy and more tender. Finally, a recipe for steak tips as pleasing to my palate as they are to my pocketbook.
Grilled Sirloin Steak Tips
SERVES 4 TO 6
Sirloin steak tips, also known as flap meat, are sold as whole steaks, strips, and cubes. We prefer to buy whole steaks for this dish. A two-level fire allows you to brown the steak over the hotter side of the grill and then move it to the cooler side if it is not yet cooked through. If your steak is thin, however, you may not need to use the cooler side of the grill.
1 recipe marinade (recipes follow)
2 pounds sirloin steak tips, trimmed
Lime wedges
1. Combine marinade and beef in 1-gallon zipper-lock bag and toss to coat; press out as much air as possible and seal bag. Refrigerate for 1 hour, flipping bag halfway through marinating.
2A. For a charcoal grill: Open bottom vent completely. Light large chimney starter filled with charcoal briquettes (6 quarts). When top coals are partially covered with ash, pour two-thirds evenly over half of grill, then pour remaining coals over other half of grill. Set cooking grate in place, cover, and open lid vent completely. Heat grill until hot, about 5 minutes.
2B. For a gas grill: Turn all burners to high, cover, and heat grill until hot, about 15 minutes. Leave all burners on high.
3. Clean and oil cooking grate. Remove beef from bag and pat dry with paper towels. Place steak tips on grill (on hotter side if using charcoal) and cook (covered if using gas) until well browned on first side, about 4 minutes. Flip steak tips and continue to cook (covered if using gas) until meat registers 120 to 125 degrees (for medium-rare) or 130 to 135 degrees (for medium), 6 to 10 minutes longer. If exterior of meat is browned but steak is not yet cooked through, move to cooler side of grill (if using charcoal) or turn down burners to medium (if using gas) and continue to cook to desired doneness.
4. Transfer steak tips to carving board, tent with aluminum foil, and let rest for 5 to 10 minutes. Slice steak tips very thin against grain on bias and serve with lime wedges.
marinades
MAKES ABOUT ¾ CUP
⅓ cup soy sauce
⅓ cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Combine all ingredients in bowl.
Garlic, Ginger, and Soy Marinade
MAKES ABOUT ¾ CUP
Serve the steak tips with orange wedges instead of lime wedges if you use this marinade.
⅓ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons grated orange zest
1 scallion, sliced thin
3 garlic cloves, minced
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
Combine all ingredients in bowl.
MAKES ABOUT ¾ CUP
⅓ cup soy sauce
⅓ cup olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
1 tablespoon packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon pepper
Combine all ingredients in bowl.
Steak tips can come from two areas of the cow. One kind comes from tender, expensive cuts in the middle of the cow, such as the tenderloin. But true steak tips come from various muscles in the sirloin and round. After tasting 50 pounds of cheap steak tips, tasters had a clear favorite: a single muscle that butchers call flap meat and that is typically labeled “sirloin tips.” Flap meat may be sold as cubes, strips, or small steaks. It has a rich, beefy flavor and a distinctive longitudinal grain.
It’s best to buy flap meat in steak form rather than cubes or strips, which are often cut from nearby muscles that are neither as tasty nor as tender. Because meat labeling is so haphazard, you must visually identify this cut; buying it in steak form makes this easy.
First things first: London broil is a recipe, not a cut of meat. You take a thick steak, grill, broil, or pan-grill it, then slice it thin, on the bias across the grain. It’s essentially a convenience food, a 20-minute protein blast that can form the backbone of any dinner.
The traditional cut for London broil is flank steak, a long, thin, boneless muscle that weighs a couple of pounds and comes from the flank section of the cow. Since it has some marbling—a key to flavor in meat—and is not a super-tough cut, it’s really the perfect choice. And, historically, it has been inexpensive. But these days, flank steak is one of the more expensive cuts, which is how inexpensive round and shoulder steak have come to be labeled London broil, along with the required part-of-cow designation. You might see, for example, “top round steak for London broil.” These cheaper cuts seemed worth a try.
For London broil that is both flavorful and inexpensive, choose the shoulder cut.
Before narrowing down the cuts, I decided to settle on a cooking technique. When the goal is simply a broiled steak, cooking is simple. All you want, after all, is a crisp crust and a rare-to-medium-rare interior. (Because they are so lean, rareness is especially important for these cuts.) Ideally, the dry crunch of the crust contrasts with the tender, juicy interior in every single slice. But my broiler doesn’t generate enough heat to brown the exterior of even a 1½-inch thick steak before the interior becomes overcooked. Grilling worked fine, but I needed an alternative for indoor cooking. Pan-grilling was the most obvious solution, but there was also an obvious problem: smoke. When I got a cast-iron skillet blazing hot and threw the steak in there, it browned beautifully on both sides, and took about the same amount of time as grilling. But within a minute, the entire house—not just the kitchen—was filled with blue haze.
I decided to try the oven. Roasting couldn’t possibly work; the oven wasn’t going to produce the sudden “shock” that is so necessary for good searing. I thought about preheating my pan in the oven, but then I realized I could employ the same technique many restaurant chefs use—start the meat in a hot skillet on the stovetop, then transfer it to the hottest possible oven.
After some experimentation, I got this to work perfectly and the total cooking time was less than 10 minutes. I set the oven rack at the lowest position and preheated the oven to 500 degrees. When it was ready, I preheated a skillet for a few minutes, then added the steak and immediately moved the skillet into the oven. After 3 or 4 minutes, I turned the steak and finished the cooking. Now, I had a fairly crusty rare steak without having to light the grill. Eventually I made one further refinement to this technique: I used a pizza stone and preheated my oven for at least 30 minutes. The stone transferred more heat to the bottom of the skillet and produced a better crust, but I wouldn’t consider it essential.
Timing varied according to the thickness of the steak. A 1-inch-thick flank steak could be done in 5 minutes. A thicker shoulder or round steak—say, 1½ inches or more—might take 8 minutes, or even a little longer. I learned to rely on my instant-read thermometer, and yanked the steak off the heat the second it read 120 degrees.
COMPARING THE CUTS
Having settled on a cooking method, I began comparing the different cuts. To work as London broil, a cut must be made up of one muscle; otherwise it simply falls apart when you slice it. There are only a few cuts of beef that meet this criterion. I eliminated one of them, the tri-tip cut, because it is too difficult for most consumers to find, and top sirloin along with the flank because it is too expensive. Eye of round has the wrong shape for steaks, while bottom round is almost always used for roasts.
That left me with two cuts: the top round and the shoulder. I quickly made an important discovery: Although supermarkets tend to market top round and shoulder the same way, the differences are enormous.
If you treat a 1- or 1½-inch-thick cut of shoulder exactly like flank you’ll get decent results, a chewy but fairly flavorful steak at a substantial savings. Not only is shoulder the least expensive steak you can buy, it also has a little bit of fat, which you want. If, however, you cook a thick cut of top round that way, you’re going to be disappointed. Round is lean and tight-grained, with a liver-like flavor that’s almost disgusting in quickly cooked muscle meat. Having experimented with top round alongside shoulder during the early stages of my work (and including it in my final tests), I would say that shoulder is the best inexpensive substitute for flank steak. My tasters confirmed this. When they sampled London broil made from flank, shoulder, blade steak, and bottom and top round, they all preferred shoulder for its robust beef flavor and reasonably tender texture.
Now that I had the right cut and had learned how to cook it, I thought I’d see what help I could give it. With a properly cooked shoulder steak, both flavor and texture were good, but the first could be stronger and the second had a somewhat flaccid quality I could do without. I tried marinades and spice rubs, but both simply added their flavors, creating a different critter from the plain, simple steak I wanted. There was another problem with these treatments: Instead of improving the texture of the steak, they detracted from the quality of its crust. Even after I carefully dried the surface of the meat with paper towels, the wet marinades inhibited the formation of a good crust during the relatively short cooking times. And the dry rubs tended to burn or give the crust a completely foreign flavor. I moved one step closer to my goal when I began to serve the plain broiled steaks with a huge lump of compound butter. Its flavors complemented rather than overwhelmed the meat, but the taste of the butter still remained more distinctive than I wanted.
At that point my quest forked, and I pursued two roads at once. I began “aging” the meat in my refrigerator, both with salt and without. I knew the salt was a gamble because it would draw out moisture, which would leave the meat with even less juice and make cooking times more critical. But I hoped that salt would intensify the flavor, and I knew enzymatic action would tenderize the meat some. The aging worked, although much better with salt than without. The meat gained flavor and a certain firmness. And the drier surface formed a better, crunchier crust than the untreated or wet-marinated steaks.
But there were considerable disadvantages to this process, not the least of which was that it required the kind of plan-ahead thinking that virtually destroyed the convenience of a simple steak. Furthermore, it became too salty for many people. Yet aging small pieces of meat like these without salting didn’t do much at all. By the time the unsalted meat became tender and flavorful, it was so dried out that when I sliced it thin and left it raw, it resembled aged, air-dryed beef like bresaola. To me, the results were clear: No salting or aging was needed.
When I was finished, I compared a well-cooked, untreated shoulder steak to a flank steak, the traditional cut for London broil. The flank steak had better texture and flavor, but the differences were not that great. And the fact that I can buy the shoulder steak more cheaply and in a thicker cut will make it my London broil of choice in summers to come.
“Oven-Grilled” London Broil
SERVES 4
Using a pizza stone in the oven helps super-heat the pan bottom, but this method works well without the stone, too. You will need an ovensafe skillet for this recipe; cast iron or stainless steel with an aluminum core work well.
1. Adjust oven rack to lowest position; place pizza stone, if using, on rack and heat oven to 500 degrees for at least 30 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, heat 12-inch skillet for at least 3 minutes over high heat. Generously sprinkle both sides of steak with salt and pepper; add to pan. As soon as steak smokes, about 5 seconds, carefully transfer pan to oven; cook 3½ to 4 minutes, then flip steak and cook until well-seared and meat registers 120 to 125 degrees (for medium-rare), 3½ to 4 minutes longer. Transfer steak to cutting board; let rest for 5 minutes. Slice meat very thin against grain on bias. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve immediately with meat juices.
SINGLE-MUSCLE CUTS FOR LONDON BROIL
OVEN GRILLING
To achieve the high heat necessary for a good crust, preheat a pizza stone on an oven rack set in the lowest position.
ULTIMATE CHAR-GRILLED STEAK
DAN SOUZA, July/August 2015
While it’s hard to beat the smoky char of a grilled thick-cut steak, since I started using the test kitchen method for pan-searing steaks, the indoor version more often approaches perfection. The technique calls for first baking a thick steak in a low oven and then searing it in a smoking-hot preheated skillet. The initial baking not only evenly cooks the meat but also dries and warms the steak’s surface, resulting in lightning-fast searing—just a minute or so per side. The result is the platonic ideal of a steak: a crisp, well-browned crust and medium-rare meat from edge to edge. The time is so fast that, unlike with most methods, only a sliver of meat below the crust overcooks and loses its rosy hue.
But with grilling, though I’ve created some pretty hot grill setups over the years, it takes so long to evenly brown the steak that I overcook a fair amount of meat below the surface. This summer I decided to hold grilled steak to a higher standard: perfectly cooked meat, a well-browned and crisp crust, and great charcoal-grilled flavor.
SEARING QUESTION
To reach perfection, I suspected that I’d need to think outside the box—or as it turned out, the grill. In my research I came across a novel technique that relied on a charcoal chimney starter to not just light the coals but actually do the cooking. To produce an amazing sear, celebrity chef and food science guru Alton Brown mimics the intensity of a steakhouse-caliber broiler by placing a porterhouse steak on the grill grate and then putting a lit chimney of coals right over it. Other sources took a similar approach but flipped the setup, placing the chimney on the grill’s charcoal grate and then arranging the steak, set on the cooking grate, on top.
I gave both methods a try (I settled on strip over rib-eye steaks since the former don’t have as much internal fat and would thus cause fewer flare-ups) and one thing was for certain: Searing over a chimney was faster than any traditional grill setup I’d ever used, browning one side of the steak in about 2 minutes. Why? For much the same reason that a chimney is so effective at lighting a pile of coals: access to oxygen. In a chimney, the coals rest on a grate surrounded by big slits that let in lots of air, the sides of the chimney are perforated for additional airflow, and both the top and bottom of the chimney have wide openings. Together, these features allow a huge supply of oxygen to access the coals, which makes them burn hot. Plus, the cylindrical shape is ideal for focusing intense radiant heat toward the open ends.
But there was a downside to the chimney-based recipes. They all cooked the steaks start to finish over high heat, which inevitably led to an overcooked interior. To address this, I decided I would cook the interior of my steaks using our low-temperature oven method for pan-seared steaks and then move outside to sear them and give them that charcoal-grilled flavor.
After cooking a few steaks in a 275-degree oven for 30 minutes until they reached 105 degrees, I tried searing them both under and on top of a chimney. I quickly developed a preference for the latter. While putting the steak under the chimney avoided any chance of flare-ups because the fat dripped away from the heat source, ashes fell on the steak as it cooked and monitoring the browning required picking up the blazing-hot chimney. Putting the steak on top avoided both of these problems.
That said, the technique still had its issues. Placing a grill grate that measured more than 20 inches in diameter, on top of a glowing-hot 6-quart chimney starter that was a mere 7½ inches in diameter was precarious to say the least. In addition, the grate itself posed a problem: The hot bars of the grill grate seared the parts of the steak touching it faster than the radiant heat from the coals could brown the rest of the steak’s surface. The result was blackened grill marks over an unappealing background of gray meat. And finally, flare-ups were a problem, even with strip steaks. Cutting off the fat cap was a simple way to extinguish the flare-up issue, but I didn’t have a simple solution for the grill grate. Or maybe I did. Could I ditch the cooking grate entirely?
Keeping the coals in the chimney delivers steaks with a killer crust and rosy meat from edge to edge.
BETTER THAN GRATE
Cooking over a live fire without a grate isn’t a new concept—think of a pig on a spit. But even with this precedent in mind, it felt a little odd as I ran two metal skewers, parallel to each other, lengthwise through the center of a 1¾-inch-thick strip steak. (One steak would easily serve two, so I figured that once I had my method down I could double the recipe.) After cooking my skewered steak through indoors, I moved outside and lit a chimney starter filled halfway with charcoal. As soon as the coals were ready, I set the skewered steak on top with the protruding ends of the skewers resting directly on the rim. I was finally onto something. In about 2 minutes the entire surface of the steak facing the coals turned a rich mahogany color and the edges charred beautifully. The gray band of overcooked meat was pretty small and the flavor was good. I just needed to make a few tweaks to reach perfection.
I noticed that the steak charred best at the edges, which made sense because the edges have more exposed surface area. With that in mind, I sliced the steak in half crosswise to create two more edges and thus more browning. This worked well, with the added benefit of making serving a breeze—I simply slid the cooked steaks off the skewers. Scoring the surface of the steaks in a crosshatch pattern before cooking provided additional edges to brown and char.
Many tasters complained that the interiors of the steaks were bland, so I salted the meat and let it sit for an hour before putting it in the oven. This made a big flavor difference, but I saw a chance for improvement. I salted some more steaks and immediately popped them into a superlow 200-degree oven to cook for about an hour and a half (I cooked them to 120 degrees since carryover cooking would be minimal). The steaks were now well seasoned and cooked internally to perfection. And because the exterior had more time to dehydrate, these steaks browned and charred in just 60 seconds per side.
All that was left was to double the recipe to make four steaks on two sets of skewers. Since I was cutting each strip steak in half crosswise, I paired up the narrower ends on one set of skewers and the wider ends on another to ensure even cooking. I could only sear one pair at a time given the chimney’s diameter, but it happened so fast that this didn’t pose a problem.
With that, I had grilled steaks that lived up to the highest standards.
Ultimate Charcoal-Grilled Steaks
SERVES 4
Rib-eye steaks of a similar thickness can be substituted for strip steaks, although they may produce more flare-ups. You will need a charcoal chimney starter with a 7½-inch diameter and four 12-inch metal skewers for this recipe. If your chimney starter has a smaller diameter, skewer each steak individually and cook in four batches. It is important to remove the fat caps on the steaks to limit flare-ups during grilling.
2 (1-pound) boneless strip steaks, 1¾ inches thick, fat caps removed
Kosher salt and pepper
1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 200 degrees. Cut each steak in half crosswise to create four 8-ounce steaks. Cut 1/16-inch-deep slits on both sides of steaks, spaced ¼ inch apart, in crosshatch pattern. Sprinkle both sides of each steak with ½ teaspoon salt (2 teaspoons total). Lay steak halves with tapered ends flat on counter and pass two 12-inch metal skewers, spaced 1½ inches apart, horizontally through steaks, making sure to keep ¼-inch space between steak halves. Repeat skewering with remaining steak halves.
2. Place skewered steaks on wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet, transfer to oven, and cook until centers of steaks register 120 degrees, flipping steaks over halfway through cooking and removing them as they come to temperature, 1½ hours to 1 hour 50 minutes. Tent skewered steaks (still on rack) with aluminum foil.
3. Light large chimney starter filled halfway with charcoal briquettes (3 quarts). When top coals are completely covered in ash, uncover steaks (reserving foil) and pat dry with paper towels. Using tongs, place 1 set of steaks directly over chimney so skewers rest on rim of chimney (meat will be suspended over coals). Cook until both sides are well browned and charred, about 1 minute per side. Using tongs, return first set of steaks to wire rack in sheet, season with pepper, and tent with reserved foil. Repeat with second set of skewered steaks. Remove skewers from steaks and serve.
GRILLING STEAK OVER A CHIMNEY STARTER?
Coals are at their hottest in the chimney, not in the grill, where airflow is far more restricted. So leaving the coals in the chimney produces deep browning fast. Here’s how it works.
Nothing beats the extravagantly buttery texture of beef tenderloin. It may not be the most intensely flavored cut, but that is easily overcome by a rich sauce or accompaniment. The challenge is in expertly cooking the meat. The moist, delicate texture of tenderloin can easily be compromised by the oven’s harsh heat. And considering its steep price, overcooking this special-occasion roast is not an option (my preferred cut rings up at about $18 per pound).
Yet when I tried a handful of recipes and techniques, all of which gave fairly vague instructions, the tenderloins emerged from the oven with one of two problems. Some cooked evenly but didn’t have the dark, caramelized crust that gives meat a deep roasted flavor. Others had optimal flavor and an appealing brown crust, but were marred by a thick, gray band of overdone meat near the edge. I wanted a technique that produced perfectly cooked and deeply flavored meat—ideally without too much fuss.
To do justice to this luxurious cut, sear last, not first, and rub it with flavored butter.
GETTING EVEN
With only two options, whole and center-cut, choosing the style of tenderloin roast was straightforward but critical to my success. Whole tenderloin is huge—the typical roast is 5 or 6 pounds, serving up to 16 people. It often comes covered in a thick layer of fat and sinew that is time-consuming to trim and peel. Plus, its long, tapered shape is a challenge to cook evenly. Over the years, we’ve become fond of the smaller center-cut roast, known in industry argot as the Châteaubriand, after the 19th century French author and statesman François-René de Châteaubriand (who is said to have particularly enjoyed this prized meat). Some butchers charge significantly more for center-cut versus whole tenderloin, but it comes already trimmed (so there’s no waste) and its cylindrical shape practically guarantees that both ends cook to the same degree of doneness. What you’re getting is the best of the best—the centerpiece of the most exquisitely tender part of the cow.
To achieve a good crust on the meat, I could either sear it first in a skillet or simply crank up the oven as high as it would go, at the beginning or end of cooking. As oven-searing wouldn’t require splattering grease on my stovetop or dirtying an extra pan, I started there. I tied the meat crosswise with twine at intervals to make it more compact and help form an even crust, and then placed the meat in a roasting pan that I’d preheated to further encourage browning. But no matter what I tried—starting out high (at 500 degrees) and dropping down much lower (400 degrees), or the reverse—the meat would not brown adequately. My best results came from simply cooking the tenderloin at 425 degrees for half an hour and turning it after 15 minutes. The roast that emerged from the oven looked promising, with a somewhat dark crust. But any hopes I had were dashed when I cut into the meat: The slices were a nice deep pink at the center but marred by a pesky band of gray, overcooked meat at the edge.
Pan searing it would have to be. I heated a few tablespoons of vegetable oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet and then added my roast, browning it on all sides before transferring it to the oven. This time, with browning already done, I placed it on a rack set in a rimmed baking sheet to promote air circulation and more even cooking. I prepared several roasts this way, and experimented with different oven temperatures, from 500 degrees on down to 350. Naturally, each of these roasts had a good-looking crust, but each also had an overdone “ring around the collar.” The best of the bunch was the tenderloin roasted at 350, but there was still plenty of room for improvement. Tinkering around, I decided to try reversing the cooking order, roasting first, then searing, a technique we’ve used successfully in other meat recipes. The switch worked wonders here as well. Because the roast started out warm and dry, it could reach the 310 degrees necessary for browning to occur a lot faster than searing when it was raw, cold, and wet. (Until the moisture burns off, the surface of the meat can’t rise above 212 degrees, the boiling point of water.) Less searing time, in turn, minimized the overcooked layer of gray.
Could I get rid of the gray band altogether by taking the oven temperature down further? In the past, the test kitchen has roasted meat at even lower temperatures with great success, transforming tough, inexpensive cuts into meltingly tender meat (see “Slow-Roasted Beef”). I hadn’t initially thought to try slow roasting because tenderloin is so soft to begin with. Now I reconsidered. After tying several more roasts, I put them in the oven and began dialing back the temperature from 350 degrees. As it turned out, I didn’t have that far to go: 300 degrees proved the magic temperature for yielding consistent ruby coloring from edge to edge.
BEEFING UP FLAVOR
Despite decent progress, I still hadn’t coaxed deep beefy flavor from my mild-mannered tenderloin. The issue was the meat itself: With so little fat, it was lacking ideal flavor, even after searing to create a crust and carefully calibrating the cooking. I knew I could lean on a rich sauce like a béarnaise or an intense wine reduction—indeed, I was planning to add an accompaniment of some sort—but I was also set on intensifying the flavor of the meat itself.
First I was curious to explore some of the offbeat techniques I’d come across in my research. The most appealing involved roasting the meat wrapped in a couple slices of bacon, which then get discarded and the meat seared. I had high hopes; after all, what doesn’t taste better with bacon? Tenderloin, as it turned out; the bacon caused the meat to steam and didn’t really add flavor. Shrouding the tenderloin in butter-soaked cheesecloth produced similarly uninspiring results. Soaking the meat in a soy-Worcestershire mix—ingredients often used to accentuate beef flavor—was just plain overpowering, more teriyaki than tenderloin.
In the end, a tried-and-true test kitchen method proved best—sprinkling all sides of the meat with salt, covering it with plastic wrap, and then letting it sit at room temperature. After sitting for an hour, the roast cooked up with significantly more flavor. Here’s why: The salt draws juices out of the meat and then the reverse happens and the salt and moisture flow back in, drawing flavor deep into the meat.
I got the best results when, after salting the meat, I rubbed it with a couple of tablespoons of softened butter before cooking, which added satisfying richness. In fact, this technique was so effective that I decided against a rich sauce and instead created some easy compound butters, combining shallot with parsley, rosemary with Parmesan cheese, and chipotle chile with garlic and cilantro. The aroma of the flavored butter melting into the crevices of the meat proved irresistible to tasters. I had spent $1,200 on more than 25 tenderloins, but that satisfaction made it worth every penny.
Roast Beef Tenderloin
SERVES 4 TO 6
Ask your butcher to prepare a trimmed center-cut Châteaubriand from the whole tenderloin, as this cut is not usually available without special ordering. If you are cooking for a crowd, this recipe can be doubled to make two roasts. Sear the roasts one after the other, wiping out the pan and adding new oil after searing the first roast. Both pieces of meat can be roasted on the same rack.
1 (2-pound) beef tenderloin center-cut Châteaubriand, trimmed
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 recipe flavored butter (recipes follow)
1. Using 12-inch lengths of kitchen twine, tie roast crosswise at 1½-inch intervals. Sprinkle roast evenly with salt, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour. Meanwhile, adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees.
2. Pat roast dry with paper towels. Sprinkle roast evenly with pepper and spread butter evenly over surface. Transfer roast to wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet. Roast until center of roast registers 120 to 125 degrees (for medium-rare), 40 to 55 minutes, or 130 to 135 degrees (for medium), 55 minutes to 1 hour 10 minutes, flipping roast halfway through cooking.
3. Heat oil in 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Place roast in skillet and sear until well browned on all sides, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Transfer roast to carving board and spread 2 tablespoons flavored butter evenly over top of roast; let rest for 15 minutes. Remove twine and cut meat crosswise into ½-inch-thick slices. Serve, passing remaining flavored butter separately.
accompaniments
MAKES ABOUT ½ CUP
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
½ shallot, minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
1 garlic clove, minced
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
Combine all ingredients in bowl.
Chipotle and Garlic Butter with Lime and Cilantro
MAKES ABOUT ½ CUP
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon minced canned chipotle chile in adobo sauce plus 1 teaspoon adobo sauce
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon grated lime zest
½ teaspoon salt
Combine all ingredients in bowl.
MAKES ABOUT ½ CUP
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary or ½ teaspoon dried
1 garlic clove, minced
Pinch red pepper flakes
Combine all ingredients in bowl.
TENDERLOIN TROUBLES
CRUSTY BUT OVERCOOKED
Tenderloin with a good flavorful crust is often marred by a band of gray, overcooked meat near the edge.
EVENLY COOKED BUT NO CRUST
Tenderloin that is rosy from edge to edge typically lacks a good crust and meaty flavor.
IMPROVING CHEAP ROAST BEEF
DAVID PAZMIÑO, January/February 2008
For most families, Sunday roast beef isn’t prime rib; it’s a lesser cut that’s sometimes good, sometimes not. The roasts my parents prepared throughout my childhood were typically tough and dried-out and better suited for sandwiches the next day. But when my grandfather was at the stove, he could take the same inexpensive cut and turn it into something special—tender, rosy, beefy-tasting meat that had everyone asking for seconds. I wanted to work the same kind of wizardry on my own Sunday roast.
First I needed to zero in on the most promising beef. After a week in the kitchen testing a slew of low-cost cuts, I had a clear winner: the eye-round roast. Though less flavorful than fattier cuts from the shoulder (the chuck) and less tender than other meat from the back leg (the round), my eye roast had one key attribute the others lacked: a uniform shape from front to back. This was a roast that would not only cook evenly but look good on the plate as well.
THE SHOWDOWN: HIGH OR LOW HEAT?
My next challenge was choosing between the two classic methods for roasting meat—high and fast or low and slow. I began with the more common high-heat approach, quickly searing the meat on the stovetop and then transferring it to a 450-degree oven for roasting. The technique works great with more upscale rib and loin cuts but showed its flaws with the leaner eye round, yielding meat that was overcooked and dried-out.
But before heading down the low-temperature path, which normally involves roasting meat in an oven set between 250 and 325 degrees, I wanted to try something more extreme. To extract maximum tenderness from meat, the popular 1960s nutritionist Adelle Davis advocated cooking it at the temperature desired when it was done. For a roast to reach an end temperature of 130 degrees for medium-rare, this process could involve 20 to 30 hours of cooking.
Tossing aside practical considerations like food safety and the gas bill, I decided I had to replicate this expert’s findings. I set the one oven in the test kitchen capable of maintaining such a low temperature to 130 degrees and popped in an eye round. Twenty-four hours later, I pulled out a roast with juicy, meltingly tender meat that tasters likened to beef tenderloin. What special beef magic was going on here?
THE LOWDOWN
When I thought back to the test kitchen’s discoveries when cooking thick-cut steaks, I had my answer: Beef contains enzymes that break down its connective tissues and act as natural tenderizers. These enzymes work faster as the temperature of the meat rises—but just until it reaches 122 degrees, at which point all action stops. Roasting the eye round in an oven set to 130 degrees allowed it to stay below 122 degrees far longer than when cooked in the typical low-temperature roasting range, transforming this lean, unassuming cut into something great.
But given that most ovens don’t heat below 200 degrees—and that most home cooks don’t want to run their ovens for a full day—how could I expect others to re-create my results? I would have to go as low as I could and see what happened. To accommodate the widest possible range of ovens, I settled on 225 degrees as my lowest starting point. I also decided I would brown the meat first to give it nice color and a crusty exterior. (While tender, my 130-degree roast had an unappetizing gray exterior.) Searing would also help to ensure food safety, since bacteria on roasts are generally confined to the outside.
When I took the roast out of the oven, however, I was disappointed. It was tender, but nothing like the texture of the eye round cooked at 130 degrees. What could I do to keep the meat below 122 degrees longer? A new idea occurred to me: Why not shut off the oven just before the roast reached 122 degrees? As the oven cooled, the roast would continue to cook even more slowly.
Using a meat-probe thermometer to track the internal temperature of the roast, I shut off the oven when the meat reached 115 degrees. Sure enough, the meat stayed below 122 degrees 30 minutes longer, allowing its enzymes to continue the work of tenderizing, before creeping to 130 degrees for medium-rare. Tasters were certainly happy with this roast. It was remarkably tender and juicy for a roast that cost so little.
To transform an eye-round roast into an impressive centerpiece, cook it in a low oven—then turn off the heat.
THE HOME STRETCH
With the tenderness problem solved, it was time to tackle taste. So far I’d simply sprinkled salt and pepper on the roast just before searing it. Perhaps the flavor would improve if the meat were salted overnight or even brined. Brining—normally reserved for less fatty pork and poultry—certainly pumped more water into the beef and made it very juicy, but it also made it taste bland, watery, and less beefy. Next I tried salting the meat for first four, then 12, and finally 24 hours. As might be expected, the roast benefited most from the longest salting. Because the process of osmosis causes salt to travel from areas of higher to lower concentration, the full 24 hours gave it the most time to penetrate deep into the meat. There was another benefit: Salt, like the enzymes in meat, breaks down proteins to further improve texture.
At last I had tender, flavorful beef for a Sunday roast that even my grandfather would have been proud to serve to his family.
Slow-Roasted Beef
SERVES 6 TO 8
Open the oven door as little as possible, and remove the roast from the oven while taking its temperature. If the roast has not reached the desired temperature in the time specified in step 4, reheat the oven to 225 degrees for 5 minutes, then shut it off and continue to cook the roast to the desired temperature. We don’t recommend cooking this roast past medium. For a smaller (2½- to 3½-pound) roast, reduce the amount of kosher salt to 1 tablespoon and pepper to 1½ teaspoons. For a larger (4½- to 6-pound) roast, cut the meat in half crosswise before cooking to create two smaller roasts. Slice the roast as thin as possible and serve with Horseradish Cream Sauce, if desired (recipe follows).
1 (3½- to 4½-pound) boneless eye-round roast, trimmed
4 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons plus 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 teaspoons pepper
1. Rub roast thoroughly with salt, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 18 to 24 hours.
2. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 225 degrees. Pat roast dry with paper towels, rub with 2 teaspoons oil, and sprinkle with pepper.
3. Heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Brown roast well on all sides, 12 to 16 minutes; reduce heat if pan begins to scorch. Transfer roast to wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet and roast until meat registers 115 degrees (for medium-rare), 1¼ to 1¾ hours, or 125 degrees (for medium), 1¾ to 2¼ hours.
4. Turn oven off and leave roast in oven, without opening door, until meat registers 130 degrees (for medium-rare) or 140 degrees (for medium), 30 to 50 minutes.
5. Transfer roast to carving board and let rest for 15 minutes. Slice meat crosswise as thin as possible and serve.
accompaniment
Horseradish Cream Sauce
MAKES ABOUT 1 CUP
Buy refrigerated prepared horseradish, not the shelf-stable kind.
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup prepared horseradish
1 teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon pepper
1. Whisk cream in bowl until thickened but not yet holding soft peaks, 1 to 2 minutes. Gently fold in horseradish, salt, and pepper.
2. Transfer cream sauce to serving bowl and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or up to 1 hour before serving.
THE TRANSFORMATION FROM TOUGH TO TENDER
Along with salting and searing, the key to our eye round’s makeover into a tender, juicy roast is keeping its internal temperature below 122 degrees for as long as possible.
1. SALT Salt the roast and allow it to rest for 18 to 24 hours. Salt breaks down proteins to improve texture.
2. SEAR Sear the meat in a hot pan before roasting. While this won’t affect tenderness, it will boost flavor.
3. OVEN ON Cook the meat in an oven set to 225 degrees and open the door as infrequently as possible.
4. OVEN OFF When the roast reaches 115 degrees, turn off the oven and continue to cook the roast as the oven cools.
LOW-COST LINEUP
Not all bargain cuts have the potential to taste like a million bucks—or look like it when carved and served on a plate.
OUR FAVORITE EYE-ROUND ROAST
We singled out this cut not only for its good flavor and relative tenderness but also for its uniform shape that guarantees even cooking and yields slices that look good on the plate.
While undeniably tender and flavorful, its fat and gristle make this meat better for stew and pot roast than roast beef.
ODD SHAPE TOP ROUND
A deli staple for sandwiches, this cut comes in irregular shapes that can cook unevenly.
TOUGH TO CARVE BOTTOM ROUND RUMP
We ruled out this roast for being both tough and hard to carve against the grain.
ELEVATION IS IMPORTANT
Rather than placing our eye-round roast directly in a roasting pan, we first sear it in a hot skillet to develop a flavorful crust on the meat. But when we transfer the roast to the oven, we elevate it on a rack set inside a rimmed baking sheet. The rack allows the oven heat to circulate evenly around the meat and prevents the bottom crust from steaming in the oven (which would happen if the roast was set directly in a pan).
Boeuf à la mode—“beef in the latest fashion”—is a classic French recipe that dates to a time when a multiday recipe was the rule rather than the exception. The earliest reference I found to this dish appeared in Le Cuisinier François (1651), an encyclopedic book that systematically catalogued French cuisine. Larding (inserting strips of marinated fat) and braising (searing the roast and simmering it partially submerged in liquid in a sealed pot) could transform an otherwise dry and chewy cut into a tender, moist, and flavorful roast. An added bonus of this cooking technique is that the braising liquid itself—red wine and beef stock—reduces into a thick, rich sauce to accompany the meat.
Although boeuf à la mode bears some similarity to American pot roast, this elegant French dish relies heavily on wine for flavor, adds collagen-rich veal and pork parts for body, and has a separately prepared mushroom-onion garnish. After spending days making five classic renditions of this old-fashioned recipe, I understood its allure—and its challenges. It is to pot roast what croissants are to refrigerated crescent rolls and, as such, required up to four days of preparation. To bring boeuf à la mode up to date for the modern home cook, some of the fussy techniques and hard-to-find ingredients would have to go.
Streamlining this old-world classic doesn’t mean sacrificing complexity, thanks to a rich chuck-eye roast and a wine reduction.
BYE, BYE MARINADE
Traditionally, this recipe starts with threading strips of seasoned, brandy-soaked salt pork or fatback through the beef roast using a long needle, or lardoir. In addition to making up for the lack of marbling in the meat, larding adds flavor. I cut some fatback into thin strips, marinated them in brandy and seasonings, and struggled to pull them through the roast. For the amount of effort these steps took, I was disappointed when tasters felt the payoff wasn’t that great. Today’s grain-fed beef gets little exercise and has much more marbling than the leaner, grass-fed beef eaten in France when this recipe was created. As long as I chose the right cut (tasters liked a boneless chuck-eye roast best), there was plenty of fat in the meat and larding was just overkill. I was happy to ax this step from my recipe.
In all of the classic recipes I uncovered, the meat was marinated in a mixture of red wine and large-cut mirepoix (carrots, onions, and celery) for a significant period of time, up to three days in several cases. Testing various lengths of time, I found the effect superficial unless I was willing to invest at least two full days. Even then, the wine flavor penetrated only the outer part of the meat, and the vegetables didn’t really add much. Frankly, the meat picked up so much wine flavor during the hours-long braising time that marinating didn’t seem worth the effort.
In fact, some tasters actually complained that the meat was picking up too much wine flavor as it cooked; the beef tasted a bit sour and harsh. I reviewed a Julia Child recipe that called for marinating the roast in a mixture of wine and vegetables and then reducing that marinade by half before adding beef broth and beginning the braising process. Would cooking the wine before braising the beef in it tame its unpleasant alcoholic punch? I put the wine in a saucepan and reduced it to 2 cups. When I combined the reduced wine with the beef broth and used this mixture as the braising liquid, tasters were much happier. The wine tasted complex and fruity, not sour and astringent.
Most of the vegetable flavor in this dish comes from the garnish of glazed pearl onions and white mushrooms, which is traditionally cooked separately and added just before serving. To speed up the process, I used frozen rather than fresh pearl onions. But the sauce needed some vegetables to balance the wine and meat flavors. Sautéed onion and garlic helped build depth in the early stages of cooking, and tasters liked the sweetness contributed by large chunks of carrots added to the braising liquid later in the cooking process.
THE SAUCE MATTERS
I had the wine and vegetables under control, but my recipe didn’t seem as rich and meaty as some of the test recipes I had prepared. My first thought was to salt the meat, something we do in the test kitchen to improve the beefy flavor in thick-cut steaks. It works by drawing moisture out of the meat and forming a shallow brine. Over time, the salt migrates back into the meat, seasoning it throughout rather than just on the exterior. Eventually, I discovered that salting the meat for just an hour was worth the minimal effort. The roast was nicely seasoned and tasted beefier.
Salt pork is traditionally added to the sauce for richness, but tasters preferred the smoky flavor of bacon. I decided to brown the meat in the bacon drippings and then add the bacon bits back to the braising liquid. My sauce was improving.
Compared with regular pot roast braising liquid, which is flavorful but relatively thin and brothy, the sauce that accompanies boeuf à la mode is richer and more akin to a sauce that might be found on a steak at a fine restaurant. Adding some flour to the sautéed onion and garlic helped with the overall consistency, but the sauce still lacked body. I tried adding pork rind, split calves’ feet, and veal bones and liked the effect they had on the sauce—the collagen in these animal parts breaks down in the long cooking process and releases plenty of gelatin. But what if I went directly to the source instead?
I tried adding a tablespoon of powdered gelatin rehydrated in ¼ cup of cold water at the beginning of the recipe, but to no effect. The lengthy cooking time and high heat rendered the gelatin ineffective. I decided to try again, adding the gelatin during the sauce reduction stage. This helped, but not enough. It wasn’t until I’d added the gelatin after the sauce had finished reducing that I got the results I had been looking for. Finally, it became rich and velvety, on par with the best classic recipe I’d tried at the beginning of my journey. Drizzled with this intense sauce and surrounded by the well-browned mushroom-onion garnish and tender carrots, this old-fashioned pot roast was the best I’d ever tasted.
French-Style Pot Roast
SERVES 6 TO 8
Use a medium-bodied, fruity red wine, such as a Côtes du Rhône or Pinot Noir, for this recipe. The gelatin lends richness and body to the finished sauce; don’t omit it. To prepare this dish in advance, follow the recipe through step 7, skipping the step of softening and adding the gelatin. Place the meat back in the reduced sauce, cool it to room temperature, cover it, and refrigerate it for up to two days. To serve, slice the beef and arrange it in a 13 by 9-inch baking dish. Bring the sauce to a simmer and stir in the gelatin until completely dissolved. Pour the warm sauce over the meat, cover it with aluminum foil, and bake it in a 350-degree oven until heated through, about 30 minutes. Serve this dish with boiled potatoes, buttered noodles, or steamed rice.
1 (4- to 5-pound) boneless beef chuck-eye roast, pulled apart at seams and trimmed
Kosher salt and pepper
1 (750-ml) bottle red wine
10 sprigs fresh parsley, plus 2 tablespoons minced
2 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
3 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into ¼-inch pieces
1 onion, chopped fine
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 cups beef broth
4 carrots, peeled and cut on bias into 1½-inch pieces
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups frozen pearl onions, thawed
2 teaspoons sugar
10 ounces white mushrooms, trimmed and halved if small or quartered if large
1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin
1. Season beef with 2 teaspoons salt, place on wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet, and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour.
2. Meanwhile, bring wine to simmer in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook until reduced to 2 cups, about 15 minutes. Using kitchen twine, tie parsley sprigs, thyme sprigs, and bay leaves into bundle.
3. Pat beef dry with paper towels and season generously with pepper. Tie 3 pieces of kitchen twine around each piece of meat to keep it from falling apart.
4. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees. Cook bacon in Dutch oven over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until crispy, 6 to 8 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer bacon to paper towel–lined plate and reserve. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons fat from pot; heat fat over medium-high heat until just smoking. Add beef to pot and brown on all sides, 8 to 10 minutes total. Transfer beef to large plate and set aside.
5. Reduce heat to medium; add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to soften, 2 to 4 minutes. Add garlic, flour, and reserved bacon; cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add broth, reduced wine, and herb bundle, scraping up any browned bits. Return beef and any accumulated juices to pot; increase heat to high and bring to simmer, then place large sheet of aluminum foil over pot and cover tightly with lid. Transfer pot to oven and cook, using tongs to turn beef every hour, until fork slips easily in and out of meat, 2½ to 3 hours, adding carrots to pot after 2 hours.
6. While beef cooks, bring butter, pearl onions, ½ cup water, and sugar to boil in 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook until onions are tender, 5 to 8 minutes. Uncover, increase heat to medium-high, and cook until all liquid evaporates, 3 to 4 minutes. Add mushrooms and ¼ teaspoon salt; cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are browned and glazed, 8 to 12 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside. Sprinkle gelatin over ¼ cup water in bowl and let sit until gelatin softens, about 5 minutes.
7. Transfer beef to carving board and tent with foil. Let braising liquid settle, about 5 minutes; using large spoon, skim fat from surface. Discard herb bundle and stir in onion-mushroom mixture. Bring liquid to simmer over medium-high heat and cook until mixture is slightly thickened and reduced to 3¼ cups, 20 to 30 minutes. Season sauce with salt and pepper to taste. Add softened gelatin and stir until completely dissolved.
8. Remove twine and slice beef against grain into ½-inch-thick slices. Divide meat among warmed bowls or transfer to platter; arrange vegetables around meat, pour sauce over top, and sprinkle with minced parsley. Serve immediately.
ONE ROAST BECOMES TWO
The chuck-eye roast has great flavor, but we found that the interior fat is best trimmed before cooking. Simply pull the roast apart at the natural seam and trim away large knobs of fat from each half.
TOO FATTY
GOOD TO GO
