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To Broil A Steak
SIRLOIN and porterhouse are the choicest cuts, but the top round is juicy and often very tender. A steak should be cut from one inch to one and a half or two inches in thickness, according to fancy or taste. If there is reason to suppose that the steak is tough, it may be pounded for two minutes with a meat hammer.
Wipe clean, trim off the long ends; they are rarely tender enough to serve as steak, and are best put aside for stewing, for force-meat balls, a breakfast hash, etc., or for soup. Trim off the outer skin and any ends of superfluous fat, and with a sharp knife take out the bone very clean. Some prefer to have the bone of a sirloin left in, but it is much easier to cook and carve without it, and since the bone scorches easily over the hot blaze, it is better for the soup if not cooked, besides being easier to cut clean of the meat, which is most tender and juicy near the bone.
Rub the gridiron or broiler with a piece of the fat, and broil over clear, hot coals, turning it every ten seconds to sear both sides as quickly as possible and prevent the loss of the juices. Four or five minutes will be sufficient to cook a steak of medium thickness, if liked rare; double that time, if to be well done.
Have a hot platter in readiness, and as soon as done sufficiently place the steak on the dish, cover generously with butter, shake over it salt and pepper, stand it for two minutes in the hot oven, and serve.
This is direct-fire cookery over a bed of hardwood coals, written before thermostats or thermometers were in the kitchen. The method translates well to a charcoal grill or a heavy cast-iron pan; the timings need judgment rather than a clock.
- The hinge: frequent turningTurning every ten seconds sounds fussy but it is sound practice — repeated short exposures build a crust while keeping the interior from overcooking, and modern grilling has quietly rediscovered it. What it does not do is "prevent the loss of the juices"; searing seals nothing, though it does build flavour.
- Gridiron and broilerBoth words here mean a metal grate set over live coals, not the overhead element in an oven. A charcoal or gas grill run as hot as it will go is the nearest equivalent; a ripping-hot cast-iron pan or grill pan is the indoor substitute.
- "Clear, hot coals"Coals burned down past all flame and smoke, ashed over grey, radiating hard heat. Flames are what scorch the bone and the fat, which is why the recipe frets about the bone charring.
- TimingsFour or five minutes total for a steak of the thickness the recipe calls medium (it allows one to two inches) over genuinely fierce coals will give rare to medium-rare. Doubling it for well done is optimistic on anything much thicker than an inch. Judge by internal temperature: about 125F for rare, 135F medium-rare, 145F medium.
- Top roundModern top round is lean and coarse-grained, and rarely as tender as this text suggests. It suits marinating and slicing thin across the grain more than straight broiling; sirloin, ribeye or porterhouse repay the method better.
- PoundingTwo minutes with a meat hammer flattens and tears the fibres, which does tenderise but also drives out juice and thins the steak so the timings no longer apply. For a suspect cut, salting an hour ahead does more good.
- Boning a sirloinRemoving the bone before cooking is now unusual; bone-in steaks are commonly preferred, and the porterhouse is prized for its two muscles. If you do bone it, save the bone for stock as the recipe suggests, and expect the steak to cook slightly faster without it.
- The finishTwo minutes in a hot oven under butter is essentially a rest, and rest is what the steak needs. A warm platter loosely tented, off direct heat, does the same job; the butter and seasoning melt into the juices that run out. Season with salt before cooking as well as after.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; a boned sirloin steak cut one and a half inches thick would run roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb, enough for three or four when carved across the grain.
Broiling in nineteenth-century American cookery meant open fire, and the gridiron — a footed iron grate set over coals raked out of the range or hearth — was the standard tool for it long after coal and gas ranges arrived. The porterhouse and sirloin named here were the prestige cuts of the American steak trade, and the confident advice to set the trimmings aside for hash, force-meat balls or soup reflects a household economy in which nothing off a large primal cut was thrown away. The instruction to turn constantly and sear "as quickly as possible" belongs to the widely held Victorian belief, generally traced to the chemist Justus von Liebig, that a seared surface locks the juices inside; the theory has since been disproved, though the practice it produced happens to make a better steak than slow single-sided cooking does.