The Steaks of Steak Revolution
If you even remotely enjoy a good steak and haven’t already seen Steak Revolution, do yourself a favor and check it out on Netflix. Franck Rivière travels around the world looking for the best steak. The trip is more than just a series of visit to expensive steakhouses; he spends time with farmers in Japan, Argentina, Brasil, Scotland, Sweden, France, London, New York, Montreal, Italy, and Spain. The movie was eye-opening and mouth-withering for this good ‘ol ‘merican raised on factory-farmed, CAFO-finished mediocre beef who has a basic understanding of the importance of browning and cooking technique, but very little knowledge of the effect breeding or rearing has on the overall quality. Nor did I realize there was such variety in rearing and breeding that, despite their vast differences, result in steaks of similar quality.
Suffice to say there is no one ‘right’ answer in creating or cooking the best steak. The Americans swear that beef should be corn-fed steers no older than 30 months, the Japanese prefer high-fat grain fed virgin females, and the Spaniards ancient 10-15 _year old _‘docile and noble’ steers. There is a Swedish breeder that grass-feeds his Wagyu beef and achieves remarkable marbling and and Italian breeder that feeds his Chianina barley, but prefers little marbling. All do agree in basic cooking principles: seared medium-rare with salt and/or pepper only, although there is some variation even there. The Brazilians dip the meat in salt-brine and sear over a charcoal fire, but their neighbors the Argentinians swear by rock salt. The Japanese fry steak in light oil on a steel grill to be used as a condiment for rice, the British coat in salt and pepper and sear, then bake over a gas flame. All of these varied techniques result in (according to Franck Rivière) the 10 best steaks in the world. Judging by the food-gasms of those in the film, all the steaks would easily surpass the cooked flesh that we mere commoners enjoy, despite the wide variety in breeding, cuts and prep.
Being French, Franck Rivière goes about his analysis in a heart-felt and meaningful, but hardly systematic or quantifiable way. We are not given a list of criteria for grading each steak, nor are we given all the breeding, rearing and cooking variables. He sometimes spends several minutes interviewing breeders about their specific breed, philosophy and technique, then little or no time on the cooked result. The movie jumps around seemingly randomly from #7 to #4, back to #10 and finally to #1. All of this perhaps makes for a warmer, less formulaic and more watchable documentary, but it makes it hard for my Germanic brain to get to the point: “How do I make the best steak?”
The contributing factors to steak quality cover everything from the animal’s birth (whether a male or female is chosen and/or castrated) to what cut and how it is selected after slaughter, to the finishing touch before serving. My attempt to extrapolate some criteria and each region’s variations are as follows:
Living Criteria: Breed, sex, feed, age
Raw Criteria: Carcass aging, marbling, and preferred cut
Preparing Criteria: Seasoning, heat type and technique (charcoal, gas, grill, etc)
All this made my Germanic roots politely request a detailed chart:
Watching mouth-watering steaks for an hour and a half was too much for me to bear, so I pulled a T-bone out of our freezer. We purchase a beef each year from a local farm that finishes beef yearlings on a mixture of pasture and grain. Buying the whole beef has the advantage that we always have meat in the freezer, and our steaks are cut to our specifications. In my case, 1.5″ thick. Steak Revolution makes it clear that proper browning and internal steak temperature is important, and my experience shows that steaks of 1.5″ thickness can be well-browned but still low enough temperature to be tender and juicy on the inside. I dry my steak by leaving it on a paper towel in an open container in the fridge for 24-48 hours, turning a couple times. Modern frost-free refrigerators circulate and dry the air sufficiently to allow the surface of the steak to dry.
To salt the steak I made a coarse-grind salt and pepper mix on a plate and pat the dry steak in the salt.
I chose to follow what I will call the Peter Luger technique - sear, cut, then bake, the difference with mine is that I sear in a pan instead of with gas. I seared on medium heat with avocado oil to get a brown crust:
After 2-3 minutes per side, I remove from the heat, cut the steak first off the bone, then in 1″ crosswise lengths, as they did at Peter Luger. Baked at 450ºF for 2.5 minutes.
The result was imperfectly delicious. My steak has flavor, but isn’t nearly as well-marbled as those on the show and was lacking in tenderness. It seemed clear to me the lack of tenderness was because of a lack of marbling, as the meat was certainly not over-cooked, so on a whim I went to the store to buy the best-marbled steak I could find:
Having no bone, I cooked this New York whole. I took a page from the French technique and cooked it in ghee, basting with butter at the end. What a difference the marbling made, this steak was much more tender, but with a much milder flavor. Interesting side note, the ghee works very well to sear the steak. Something about it makes it particularly slippery and I found it was much easier to brown the steak without it sticking.
Steak Revolution disproves the notion that grass-fed beef has to be tough and that grain-fed has better marbling, see the Yorkshire Longhorn served by Hawksmoor in London. In fact four of the top ten were partly or entirely grass-fed animals. It also proves that there are many delicious breeds to be had, and that no one breed was better. More important were how well the breed was adapted to its living conditions so that sufficient marbling was achieved. With the exception of the Matsusaka beef from Japan (curing simply isn’t mentioned), all the top five were dry-aged and heavily marbled. Not mentioned in the movie is the importance of having the surface of the steak dry before cooking. Excess moisture on the surface slows the browning of the meat because the boiling water holds the temperature below that required to brown. The extra time to brown means the inside will be over-cooked. When the surface is dry salt does not stick to the surface as well, and will not dissolve into the meat. This means it is nearly impossible to over-salt a dry steak.
The take-away: chose a very well-marbled porterhouse or rib-eye steak that has been dry-aged. Dry the surface, and salt well. Be sure to sear it well to gain the flavor of browning, but leave the inside medium-rare. Experiment. Enjoy!
