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Broiled Beef Steak
Put either porter house or a good surloin steak on a buttered gridiron over hot coals, turn often, cook nicely, and season with pepper, salt and butter, when done place them upon a hot platter and serve.
A nineteenth-century breakfast steak, written for live coals and a hinged gridiron. The method translates cleanly to a charcoal grill or a heavy cast-iron pan; the only real change is that seasoning now goes on before the steak meets the heat.
- "Surloin" and porterhouseNineteenth-century cutting terms were not standardised, and a steak sold as sirloin then may have come from nearer the loin end than the large sirloin roast section a modern butcher would use. Porterhouse still means much the same cut: a T-bone with a substantial piece of tenderloin attached, usually 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick.
- Season first, not lastThe recipe leaves the salt to the end, which may reflect a belief that salt drew out the juices. Salting on both sides at least 40 minutes ahead, or immediately before cooking, will give a better crust and more evenly seasoned meat. The butter and pepper are best added at the end, as written.
- Hot coals means very hotA gridiron over coals put the meat perhaps three inches above a bed burned down to grey ash, radiating hard. Aim for a grill you can hold a hand over for two seconds, or a cast-iron pan preheated until it just begins to smoke.
- Buttering the gridironButter was rubbed on the bars to keep the meat from sticking and tearing. Butter burns at this heat; a light coat of a neutral high-smoke oil on the meat itself does the job without the acrid smoke.
- "Turn often" is soundThis runs against the later rule of turning once, but frequent turning does cook a steak more evenly and is now the better-supported practice. Every 30 to 60 seconds is not too often.
- Doneness"Cook nicely" left it to the cook. For a 1 1/4-inch steak, pull at 125F for rare, 130-135F for medium rare, 145F for medium; the temperature will climb several degrees as it rests.
- Rest itThe recipe sends the steak straight to the platter. Give it five to eight minutes on the hot platter before cutting, loosely tented, or the juices run out onto the plate.
- YieldA porterhouse of 1 1/2 to 2 lb serves two at breakfast, three if there are eggs and potatoes alongside.
Beefsteak for breakfast was unremarkable in American households of the later nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the period often list it among the morning dishes, though it appears in dinner sections as well. The gridiron — a flat rack of parallel iron bars, often with a hinged lid or a grooved surface to channel fat away from the coals — was standard equipment on a wood or coal range, and broiling over live coals was considered the most wholesome way to cook meat, the theory being that the intense heat sealed the surface and kept the juices in. That theory has since been disproved, though the technique it produced is still the right one. The near-total absence of instruction here is typical of the genre: books like this one assumed a cook who already knew what a properly heated bed of coals looked like and needed only the reminder of which cuts were worth the trouble.