Thanks to all these stupid social media videos the insidious “for you” algorithms feed me, I've noticed something funny about how many folks cook steaks. They'll get their hands on a prime cut of beef, something that costs as much as a small appliance, and then treat it like it's shoe leather.
You see would-be foodies soaking their steaks for days in mysterious marinades. Or wrapping them in foil like they're afraid the meat will get cold or accept collect calls from space aliens. Some folks even boil their steaks. Boil them! As if they were making soup.
Then there are the gadget fans. They'll buy some fancy sous vide machine and spend hours precisely heating their steak to exactly 131.5 degrees. Because apparently, that extra half degree makes all the difference.
After all this prep work, what do they do? They cook the living daylights out of it. Medium. Maybe even medium well. And then, to add insult to injury, they'll drown the poor thing in sauce. "Double catsup," as a memorable Golden Corral customer of mine used to demand. At this point, why bother with an expensive cut of meat at all?
Here's my method: I get my hands on a good steak, ideally through a local hook-up.1 I put it on a hot pan. I flip it once. I eat it.
That's it. No soaking, no wrapping, no tenderizing, no incantations to the holy spirits, no burying it in topsoil, no offering it to my ancestors, no boiling in bag. Just meat, heat, and bon appétit.
This style of cooking has a name: Pittsburgh rare. The outside is charred, the inside is barely warm. It's the fastest way to cook a steak, and in my opinion, the best.
Now, I understand if this isn't for everyone. Some people are squeamish about rare meat. That's fine; we all have our things.2 But if you're going to cook a steak well-done, why not just get an extra-thin smashburger with the crispy edges? Or a hot dog that's been sitting on the grill all day? Those are actually better when they're cooked to oblivion.
The beauty of a good steak is its simplicity. It doesn't need to be fussed over. It doesn't need to be drowned in sauce. It just needs to be cooked quickly and eaten immediately.
And here's the real secret: it's not just about taste. It's about time. All those elaborate preparation methods take hours. My method takes minutes. Which means I can spend less time cooking and more time eating.
So the next time you get your hands on a good piece of beef, try this: Put your pan on high heat. Wait until it's smoking hot. Slap that steak on there. Count to 30. Flip it. Count to 30 again. Take it off the heat. Eat it.
You might find that you've been working too hard for too little reward. You might discover that the best steak is the one that's barely touched the pan. You might understand why Armand Tanny, a Mr. America contender many decades ago, would sit slouched over on public transportation gnawing on a raw steak he had hidden inside a brown bag. You might even find yourself eating steak more often, now that it's no longer an all-day project.
And if you don't like it? Well, there's always that hot dog stand. Those doggos can take a torching and come out tasting great. But for me, I'll consume my steak rare, by the pound, with nothing but its own juices as sauce.
As some of you know, I try to avoid paying much (or anything) for…well, everything. For example, I’ve got a brand new mattress and adjustable bedframe coming, so watch this space for a write-up. I’ve been in the game for so long that this is now the third mattress I picked up this way.
I don’t like kissing dogs or cats directly on the lips. Plenty of folks out there don’t seem to mind, though. A few of them are even slipping those furbabies a little tongue.
Pittsburgh Rare! Hell yeah! Ages back when you discussed this stuff I thought it looked disgusting, but looks can be deceiving because it's delicious. Hardly any cleanup either because you only need a fork and a pan. Tons of foods can be eaten raw, too. People make it more complicated than it needs to be. Just get the food and shove it down the feed hole. Easy.