A Quest for the Perfect Steak - Part 1

When I was a young boy I use to accompany my mother to the grocery store and while she was busy shopping I would hang around the meat department watching the butchers at work.  I was fascinated how they came up with so many different cuts of meat.  For a time, when other boys dreamed of becoming firemen or policemen or doctors, I harbored the secret desire to become a butcher.  I eventually grew out of it as most boys do, but I am still fascinated by the knowledge and skill necessary to render a side of beef into the variety of steaks and roasts found at the meat counter.  After all, there is more to steak than “steak.”

In one of my last postings I touched on my search for the perfect steak during our travels through the Great Plains in the spring of 2007. 
http://lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com/2021/02/nebraska.html
The main focus of this hunt was a planned visit to the Peppermill Restaurant, in Valentine, Nebraska, which, according to Jim Harrison, served the best steak – a two-pound Porterhouse – he ever had west of Chicago.  If luck would have it, I aimed to repeat the deed.  In fact, I did . . . twice!  Over the course of this trip which took my wife and I across Nebraska, the two Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Minnesota and Iowa, I enjoyed a number of very fine steaks and some were truly memorable.  It is probably not best to eat more than three portions of red meat weekly, but I decided to throw caution to the wind during my travels across the Great Plains.  Hard sacrifices are made in the name of research.  I would go back to being a good boy when I returned home to Maryland.

We spent the first night on the road in Kearney, Nebraska where we planned to view the spring sandhill crane migration along the South Platte River on the Central Flyway.  We treated ourselves to a relaxing meal at the Copper Mill Restaurant and the first one of many fine steaks I planned to enjoy over the next two weeks.  Harrison has written that it is difficult to find a good steak in the west except in Nebraska and Kansas and I planned to put this claim to the test.  I got off to a good start with a choice 14 ounce aged and well-marbled boneless Angus ribeye served with a loaded baked potato and bacon wrapped asparagus and a couple glasses of a nice Pinot Noir. 

A good steak should be aged for at least 14-21 days for enzymes to properly tenderize the meat fibers and for the more complex flavors to develop.   Most beef today is aged in plastic shrink-wrap – as one finds it in a grocery store – a process known as wet aging.  Dry aging, on the other hand, takes time and patience and the proper environment, ideally a well-ventilated and moist room at a temperature of 33-37F.  This will prevent the sides of prime beef from spoiling or freezing.  Once frozen the aging stops.  Dry aging beef, on the other hand, makes a steak more tender and flavorful, and given that it will lose as much as 10% of its weight due to evaporation as it ages coupled with the necessity to trim off the “bark,” the discolored and dried out exterior surfaces, before cooking.  As such, dry aged beef can cost much as 50% more than wet-aged beef.

The ribeye is probably my favorite cut which come from the rib section between the shoulder and loin or backstrap running the length of the spinal column.  It is routinely removed in two long strips producing the best quality steaks.  The ribeye’s rich interior marbling of fat tends to make it tender, juicy, and flavorful when prepared medium rare (cooked three to five minutes on either side to an internal temperature of ca. 140 degrees).  It is also my preferred manner of cooking as it allows for a rich exterior sear in the pan or clear grill marks and the meat is warm throughout yet retains it rich red coloring.  It is best plated after it is allowed to rest for up to ten minutes.  There is no need to add artificial seasoning to a well prepared ribeye steak.  A coarse sea or kosher salt rub prior to cooking helps break down the tissue to tenderize the meat and give it a more buttery texture.  Some course ground black pepper during cooking is really all one needs to bring out the integral flavor of the meat.  This first trip steak was very satisfying and what would follow would be faced with a bar set rather high.

On our second day we reached Valentine, the center of a major beef producing area,   after exploring Nebraska’s Sandhills and some of the most beautiful prairie landscapes I have ever see.  “Beef is a pleasure food,” Harrison tells us. “We desire pleasure because we live nasty, brutish lives.”  He also wrote in one of his food essays that the Peppermill Restaurant in Valentine served “the best porterhouse of my life.”   SallyAnn and I had dinner there that evening and I ordered the 32 oz grilled grass-fed porterhouse. 

Porterhouse steaks are cut from the rear end of the short loin and includes a smaller  tenderloin steak on one side of the bone, along with a larger top loin New York strip steak on the other.  The similar T-bone steak is cut closer to the front of the short loin and its tenderloin steak is smaller than that of the porterhouse (more on this later).  The strip steak portion is more flavorful than the tenderloin, but both are excellent cuts of meat which are leaner than a ribeye steak (although the porterhouse has even less fat than the T-bone).  In his essay “Meals of Peace and Restoration,” Harrison cautioned when trimming a two-pound porterhouse that one does not “make those false, hyper-kinetic motions favored by countermen in delicatessens.  Either trim it or skip the trimming.   Eat the delicious fat and take a ten-mile walk.”   Perhaps trimming fat before serving a steak might enhance the dining experience for some, it should only be removed once the meat has been cooked as the fat imparts a lot of flavor into the meat during the cooking process.  A porterhouse should be cooked (seared or grilled) for approximately 7-8 minutes on each side for medium rare.  The meat near the bone will cook slower than the rest of the steak, and the tenderloin portion will tend to reach the desired internal temperature of 130 degrees before the strip steak portion.  It takes care to prepare a good porterhouse.

I had steeled myself for this wonderful steak served with a few French fries that were good for sopping up the drippings.  The steak was everything I hoped it would be and I did eat what I considered to be an “acceptable” amount of fat.  Harrison recommended eating the fat and going for a long walk afterwards.  We were not up for such a rigorous outing as a 10-mile hike, but after dinner we did wandered around the cattle lots on the edge of town greeting all those wonderful steaks on the hoof.

The next day we headed west across the roof of Nebraska and into South Dakota, passing through Wounded Knee and the Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux reservation on our way to the Black Hills.  After a visit to Mount Rushmore we stopped for dinner at the Ruby House in nearby Keystone, South Dakota before heading to Rapid City where we would spend a few nights while exploring the area.  For a change of pace I ordered a “buffalo” ribeye steak served with steamed broccoli.

I should point out that this was actually a bison steak; the two terms are often used interchangeably yet buffalo and bison are two distinct animals; both members of the bovidae family yet not closely related (a true buffalo is the Cape and water buffalo native to Africa and Asia while bison are found in North America and Europe).  Bison was not new to me as there are two bison farms here in Maryland that we would visit on occasion to stock up on various cuts of meat for the home larder.  A quality bison steak has the same vitamins, minerals and other nutrients found in beef as well as iron, higher levels of proteins, and omega-3 fatty acids but it is leaner and significantly lower in saturated fat with nearly 25% fewer calories than beef.  Due to its lower fat content, bison has finer fat marbling thereby rendering a more tender meat.  Bison steaks are best served rare to medium with an internal temperature of 145 degrees to maintain the moisture and flavor of the meat as it tends to dry out during preparation due to the lower fat content.  Beef ribeye steaks are quite flavorful due to the fat marbling and are in no need of marinades or seasoning (IMHO), but bison, which tastes very similar to beef although somewhat sweeter, can be a tad gamey and coarser and can benefit from either or both.  I have found that marinating a bison steak for a few hour before cooking followed by a gentle rub of sea salt and herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, savory or basil) will do the job very nicely.  The steak at Ruby House was well-prepared and nicely complimented by the broccoli and a nicely structured Cabernet Sauvignon. 

Touring through the Black Hills and the South Dakota Badlands for a couple days, I decided to take a break from my steak quest and clear my palate with some other local treats.   On a snowy afternoon in Deadwood, South Dakota, sitting in the same saloon where Wild Bill Hitchcock was shot in the back and killed, my wife and I sat at the bar and I ordered a large plate of Rocky Mountain oysters (bull testicles).  They don’t mean a thing if they ain’t got that swing.  Sally Ann had never tried them, had never even seen them served and she opted for the shrimp basket.  When the bartender brought them out and placed them before me along with a mug of cold beer, SallyAnn commented that they looked a lot like popcorn shrimp (they do a little only larger) and asked why they weren’t round. “So they won’t roll off the plate,” the bartender and I answered in unison. They were as good as I remembered while dipping them in a tasty salsa.

The next day, after a snowy drive through the Badlands east of Rapid City, we stopped in Wall, South Dakota to visit the anonymously famous drug store advertised for miles along Interstate 90 (you have to see it to believe it) after which we retired across the street to the Badlands Saloon and Grille where I was served a succulent walleye fillet.  Who can forget the de rigeur Friday fish fry dinners back home in Wisconsin when I was growing up.  Heady piles of the ubiquitous yellow and lake perch although every once in awhile one was lucky enough to score fillets of fresh caught walleye.  I fished for them regularly when I was a boy and it had been a few years since I had enjoyed one for dinner.  What better place than South Dakota where it is the state fish?  I personally consider it a crime to fry such a delicate fish; I prefer mine poached or broiled which is how it was served to me that evening.

Our road trip took us farther west and we stopped for lunch in Belle Fourche, South Dakota and I had the a “Buffalo Burger” (yes, bison) well seasoned and served medium rare with mushrooms and onions and a side of tater tots and a tall schooner of cold beer.  Continuing into Wyoming we had a close encounter of the first time at Devil’s Tower which we circumnavigated on foot to insure that we would have sufficient hunger come dinnertime which arrived as we reached Buffalo, Wyoming.   One would think this would be the perfect place to order a well-prepared bison steak.  We retreated to The Virginian dining room at the historic Occidental Hotel where instead I order the 8 ounce elk tenderloin pan seared to order with thyme beurre blanc (an emulsified butter based sauce made with a red wine reduction) and served with mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables.   

If you have never had a chance to sample free range elk, the flavor is rather similar to bison.  I rarely get a opportunity to enjoy a nice cut of elk; it had been three years since the last time I had it in Gardiner, Montana at the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park where large herds of elk still roam.  So I could not pass it up when I once again found it on the menu.  The tenderloin, also known as the filet mignon cut, is perhaps the tenderest cut and also arguably the most desirable and therefore the most expensive.  Served medium rare from the grill or roasting oven it can be an ethereal eating experience.  
 
Elk has even less fat that bison and therefore its flavor is derived from the meat fiber rather than from the fat content.  Some find the elk fat unpleasant.  Its flavor is dependent to some extent on what the animal has been feeding on.  I prefer that the fat be left on, at least while it is cooking.  If it’s not up to snuff, it can always be trimmed off before eating.  Of course this is not an issue with the tenderloin cut.  What fat there is helps lower cholesterol and the meat is rich in proteins as well as a good source of iron, niacin, and riboflavin.  The American Heart Association considers elk to be the “Heart Smart Red Meat.”  Since there is so little fat in elk, it is best to cook steaks quick to no more than 140 degrees internal temperature to prevent the meat from drying out.  Roasting in the oven is one of the easiest and most low maintenance ways to cook an elk steak.  To insure that the meat remains moist it does not hurt to add some herbal butter on top of the steak before you put it in the oven just as they did for my tenderloin at The Virginian.  A couple glasses of Shiraz from California and this wonderful meal was an ideal grace note to an interesting day on the road.   We spent that night in Sheridan, Wyoming and the next day we headed north into Montana where my quest for the perfect steak would continue.

Continued in Part II